The Charlotte News

Monday, April 18, 1938

SEVEN EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Fascism, all observers are agreed, is fundamentally a return to the barbarian pattern of organization--to the purely military state dedicated to the primary end of conquest abroad," says "A House on Sand". Words worth remembering.

Thus Dave Clark in an editorial in the current number of his Textile Bulletin.

But it seems to us that Dave is a little hard on the Representative. After all, isn't it entirely possible that he happens to believe that the wage and hour bill is really for the best interest of the South, and that the reorganization bill would have been best for the nation? Ourselves, we actively advocated the latter bill without in the least being aware of any subserviency or lack of independence. Or does Dave perhaps measure "independence" or "subserviency" by whether one's opinions do or do not coincide with Dave's?

Doc Leon Lilienfeld, the news reports say, hails from and still resides in Vienna. The Doc is a man who has just been granted a patent by the Patent Office in Washington. And the invention on which he got it is unhumorous enough to charm the heart of a prohibitionist, for, in brief, it is a compound to keep intoxicating liquors from intoxicating! The stuff is called cellulose ethyl ether, and when mixed with liquors, acts as a dam to keep the alcohol from being absorbed into the bloodstream through the walls of the stomach and intestines. It literally reduces strong drink to the innocence of soda pop. But, said the Doc hopefully, it leaves the taste and aroma intact.

Shades of the woods behind Vienna! And the green wine they peddle in the little inns in those woods to used-to-be singing thousands of Viennese! Does a fellow townsman of Johann Strauss actually mean to tell us that he believes people drink that stuff for its horrid taste and horrid aroma?

Mr. John D. M. Hamilton looks with disfavor upon the new Roosevelt spending proposals, says they are simply a snide bait for the Congressional elections this year, and that the President is going at the current depression all wrong--and that instead of spending more, he ought to lift the "paralyzing fear" of business by abandoning "the economic heresies" of the New Deal.

It may all be true. But, by Mr. Hamilton's own rule, it is fair to surmise that the conclusion to which he argues is that the party he represents ought to be put back in power. And that would mean what? Well, by the record, it would seem to mean one of two things:

1--The Republican program as outlined in the platform of 1936. Which is to say, "the economic heresies" of the New Deal all over again. For that platform, you will recall, adopted them almost in toto. It did, indeed, claim that "we can do it better" and promised to balance the budget. But there is considerable doubt that if it actually kept its promise about these "heresies" it could keep the last promise any better than Mr. Roosevelt has kept his to do the same thing, or that the burden of taxes could be much lighter on business. And it is our guess that it is the size of the burden, and not whether a tax is called "capital gains" or "corporate income," which explains the fear Mr. Hamilton is talking about.

2--If not the Republican program of 1936, then a return to the traditional Republican policies which operated between 1920 and 1929 to land us in the dreadful mess from which nobody has so far been able to move us very far.

Conviction or acquittal of four men in Recorder's Court on a charge of gambling hung on the burning question, is Kelly pool a game of luck or a game of skill? In Kelly pool numbered buttons are drawn secretly from a leather bottle, and the player who pockets the ball corresponding to his number wins the game and collects the money.

That this game takes skill, the skill to maneuver, without giving away information, for position on the money ball, all old Kelly pool players will tell you. But even if pure luck alone were involved, the law is hardly more than a spoil-sport when it breaks up a friendly foursome at Kelly pool for stakes of 20 cents per man, and carries the participants, as well as the proprietor, off to court about it. There are laws against gambling, to be sure, but they are violated openly without pangs of conscience by the very best people. Most golfers play for something, if only 10-cent "cats"; and bridge, while the game is the thing, loses some of its zest and lets the characteristic overbidder get away with murder unless a stake is agreed upon. But the cops use discretion in not spying upon the best people at their gaming.

Furthermore, we'll take a small bet--thus showing how ingrained in man is the instinct to gamble when he knows he can win--that, of the police officers who stood by as "spectators" of the Kelly pool game until they saw money change hands, not one believed that there was anything morally wrong in the pastime or hadn't done worse himself and thought nothing of it. Any takers?

And while we are about it, we are reminded that Solicitor Carpenter was complaining the other day that he can't put down murder in this town, which had 37 murders last year, because the town hasn't an adequate police force--that he needs 60 cops more properly to patrol the Negro districts where most of the murders are done.

Perhaps if our policemen didn't have to spend their time standing around pool rooms waiting to catch peewee gamblers, they wouldn't be so inadequate. Maybe they could even prevent murder in the Negro districts now and then.

The new "alliance" between England, France and Italy, which Mr. Chamberlain is fathering, is one of the most curious which has been concocted in modern times.

The fundamental flaw in it is that it exists only at the will of Mussolini. And to suppose that he will continue to will its existence once he has availed himself of the immediate advantages it offers is to fly in the face of common sense. For it is to suppose that he is going to abandon the Rome-Berlin Axis and make no further encroachments on the interest of England and France.

That he is going to do anything of the sort is highly unlikely. His stooge newspapers says flatly, indeed, at the very moment the new "alliance" is being made, that he is going to do no such thing.

Fascism, all observers are agreed, is fundamentally a return to the barbarian pattern of organization--to the purely military state dedicated to the primary end of conquest abroad. And if Mussolini were to abandon conquest abroad, he would be in effect abandoning fascism, and sealing his own doom. But the only conquests open to him are conquests, like that of Spain, made against the essential interests of England or France. It may be true enough that he feels that he was double-crossed by Germany in the case of Austria, that he fears for the safety of the old German territory south of the Brenner, and for Trieste. But it is also true that he knows that Germany's concern for a long time to come will be not these territories but the grain fields to the east which she must have to carry out her dreams. And meantime she is organized precisely as Italy is organized, for conquest against the essential interests of England or France, and thus is his natural ally.

Robert M. Hanes of Winston-Salem, a past president of the YMCA there, is coming down to Charlotte this week to give the sponsors of the local Y modernization campaign some tips on how to raise the money. Winston-Salem raised $500,000 for the same purpose some years ago, and this, of course, makes Mr. Hanes an expert authority. Charlotte's goal is only $[indiscernible figure],000.

And Charlotte will undoubtedly make it of course and after the expenditure of more effort, probably, than it took Winston to raise a half-million. And this is an indication of the essential difference in the two cities, which is at one and the same time the advantage and the disadvantage of both. For Winston is blessed with a coterie of monied people who are unusually public spirited and generous, whereas Charlotte, with but one or two really rich men, must look for financial assistance for its civic undertakings to greater numbers of people who are only moderately well-to-do. This takes time and much solicitation, but it results in the better distribution of proprietary interest in civic assets.