Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE SUN. NEWBERRY. S. C, FRIDAY. JULY 19, 1940 Washington, D. C. ATTACK SOVIET IN SEPTEMBER If Hitler succeeds in his boast re garding the conquest of Great Brit ain, next move on the Nazi time table is almost sure to be Russia. You can write it down as fairly cer tain that Hitler will invade the So viet around September 1. There is one big reason for this— food. Europe is sure to be famine- stricken this winter. The Polish wheat crop is bad; so are the Bal kan crops. The French will not be able to reap much of a harvest. Den mark is already killing its cattle for lack of grain. Norway never was entirely self-supporting. However, just across the Carpath ians lies one of the richest granaries in the world—the Ukraine. Its wheat crop this year, although not the best, will be sufficient to keep down a lot of anti-Nazi unrest in a hungry Eu rope. Hitler not only needs it, but long ago announced in that infalli ble document, Mein Kampf, that he will take it. Obviously Stalin knows this. That is why he has sent tremendous re inforcements into the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That also is why he has edged his borders across Bessarabia up to tho Carpathian mountains. * * * RIBBENTROP WARNING Key to Hitler’s Russian policy was contained in a cable received here in diplomatic code which told of the great numbers of Red troops crowd ing into Lithuania, and how the Lith uanian minister in Berlin reported this to Foreign Minister von Rib- bentrop. He said, among other things, that Red troops from as far away as Siberia had entered Lithu ania, and asked Ribbentrop’s advice as to what his government should do. “Don’t do anything,” Ribbentrop advised, according to the cabled re port. “After we finish with Great Britain we’ll take care of them.” • • • RADIO SPIES Five hundred men are being add ed to the staff of the Federal Com munications commission to do a job of wartime counter-espionage of a type never d^ne before in our en tire history. For this war presents a problem that/was not known in World War I. Widespread use of radio makes pos sible the transmission of spy mes sages or interference with U. S. gov ernment messages by spies. To prevent this, the FCC intends to police the ether waves. Us ing an allotment of $1,600,000 from the defense appropriation, they will expand the field force sufficiently to monitor radio messages 24 hours a day in all parts of the country. If it is suspected that an unli censed operator is sending messages from a certain section, the monitors move in with mobile equipment and start their detection. Through the triangulation method, they pick up the beam of the pirate radio, and track it to the house of origin. If it is a large building— office building or apartment house— they prowl around with a detection apparatus strapped to the waist, which, like a witch’s crooked stick, gives the signal when the vital spot is reached. Meantime, the FCC requires that persons licensed for radio transmis sion give proof of American citizen ship. Also it forbids amateurs to broadcast outside the U. S., and warns all operators to stop useless chatter by wireless. Note—There are 55,000 licensed radio amateurs in the United States. • • • LOVES HOT AIR Summer heat has come to Wash ington, but the President’s only air- conditioning method is to take off his coat and hang it over the back of a chair. The executive offices of the White House are air-conditioned, but the President will have none of it in his office. He keeps the vents turned off and opens the French doors look ing out on the rose gardens and the south grounds. This, and the coat removal, are enough for him. In the White House proper, sepa rate air-cooling units have been es tablished in the various rooms. (This was preferred to air-conditioning, so as to avoid tearing out walls to in troduce new vents.) But the Presi dent at first declined to have even a cooling unit in his rooms. Finally he was persuaded to ac cept it, with the understanding that it would not be turned on when he was there. The same is true of the Presi dential yacht, Potomac. Air-condi tioning equipment has just been in stalled throughout the boat, but the President insists that it be turned off in his room. • • • MERRY-GO-ROUND Miss Marguerite LeHand, private secretary to the President, won $25 in bets that Willkie would be nomi nated. She gave the money to the Red Cross. SEC Commissioner Leon Hender son gets to work before most officials are awake. A congressman found him there at 7:00 one morning; he had been at his desk since 5:00. With the $20,000,000 credit from the Export-Import bank, Argentina will buy a flock of U. S. buses for her new transportation system. General Johnson Jays': UBiUd Feature* WNU Service Washington, D. C. LESSON FOR C. S. Most of the lessons of the war are too obscure to learn. The fall of France can’t be explained. Gossip filtering back indicates a stench to heaven. We are already officially blamed for not doing something that we were somehow supposed to be obliged to do. Who obligated us? Mr Bullitt did say openly that we wouldn’t be in it at the beginning but would be in the end. The end came too soon for France. If she relied on Mr. Bullitt, she missed the bus. The lesson from France is not clear enough to learn but there is one lesson from the whole bloody mess that simply shrieks. No na tion can rely on any other and cer tainly not we on the British navy, or Latin America, or on anything but our own strength. France created the “cordon sani- taire”—the ring of little nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Ruma nia, to keep Germany captive. She relied on them and they on her. She relied on the British navy. Britain relied on the French army. When Hitler began to show strength, France wanted to stop him. Britain wouldn’t play. When Mussolini hi jacked Ethiopia, Britain wanted to stop him. France wouldn’t play. Both let Hitler and Mussolini build up the strength to ravage the French and British reliance on little nations in the “cordon sanitaire” and their reliance on Britain and France. • * • One by one they fell. Britain and France were helpless or unwilling to stop it. They are responsible for the threat to us today because, finally, came the case of Poland. Britain and France at last were drowsily preparing. But neither was remotely ready. Nevertheless they shoved Poland into the guns. The case was weak. Danzig was a Ger man city. The Polish corridor was a monstrosity. Furthermore, worst of all, Hitler wanted no war in the west, he was headed east and southeast. France, under British pressure, joined in declaring war when Hitler marched. It was one of the greatest and most stupid blunders in history —if not the very greatest. It forced Hitler to turn to the west. The re sult already has been the destruc tion of six small neutral nations— and the French empire. It terri bly threatens the British empire. It threatens us. Recriminations have already be gun. We hear that France didn’t want to go to war and Britain forced her—that the French government didn’t want to abandon the defensive and plunge into the disastrous Bel gian pocket—that Britain forced it and didn’t support it. The facts aren’t clear. But the blunders are. They shout their lessons to us. Don’t start anything you can’t finish. Get fully ready before you start slapping down ears. Don’t rely on anybody but yourself. Don’t push other na tions into warlike positions to de fend yourself. • • • In this blundering diversion of Hitler to our direction when he might have gone eastward to wear himself out in battle with the bear of Russia, we are not blameless. We supported and encouraged it moral ly. Part of the argument to bring France in was that only if she were in war could she be sufficiently unified and mobilized for war, and that if she did get in she would have time to get ready afterward. Exactly that is being said to us in this country today. There is anoth er way to say it. It is “Get a dic tator.” Step by muddled step we have fol lowed blundering European war pol icies. We are still following them. Our two new war cabinet members believe in doing that. That is why they were chosen. Our greatest need is new and competent leadership— before it is too late. * • * WANTED: A PRODUCTION MAN Industrial mobilization isn’t just madly appropriate billions. Billions are necessary, but suc cess is threatened if they are thrown away. Contracts with suppliers are necessary, but they are no good if they don’t result in swift and ac ceptable production so regulated that all the separate parts come to the assembly line properly timed to all other deliveries and with no spoiled work or parts that do not fit. I doubt if we are giving enough attention to either one of these prin ciples. There is too much ballyhoo about billions. It tends to pacify the demand of the people for drive and effectiveness. This column began insisting years ago that we call in Bill Knudsen— but not in his present job of pass ing on and clearing contracts. What this situation needs is a great production man and Bill is the best we have. He may be good at contracts, but if he is it’s just luck. That has not been his life’s work. There are many men more expert in contracting. What he should be doing is fitting army design and specification to ci vilian manufacture to insure the speediest, best, and most economi cal production. They’re Ready to Defend America’s Coast Manning coast defense guns will be one of the important military operations in the new defense program of the United States. Members of the 207th coast artillery of New York are shown receivi ig instructions in their duties. A number of regiments of the National Guard, particularly along the Atlantic seaboard, are being transformed into coast artillery units. They will be trained to repel attacks coming from either the sea or the air. Regular army coast defense units are likewise being expanded. England Moves German Prisoners to Canada The Germans have landed in Canada, as this photo shows. But they came as prisoners of war and not as conquerors. The above detachment are shown marching through train sheds in Quebec, on their way to Canadian prison camps. Canada was regarded as an extremely safe place for these prisoners because they are all specialists, including air pilots, parachutists and navy men. Originally imprisoned in England, they were moved to prevent danger during Hitler’s attack on England. Willkies Look Over Their Fan Mail Refugee Princess Mr. and Mrs. Wendell L. Willkie are shown at work on a laundry basket full of congratulatory letters and telegrams. While the avalanche of mes sages that followed Willkie’s nomination for the Presidency at Philadelphia tapered off somewhat, they continued to receive hundreds of letters every day from all parts of the country. The Republican nominee took a short vacation before opening his drive for the Presidency. Princess von Starhemberg, wife of the former vice chancellor of Austria, is shown with her son, John. The princess, a refugee from her Nazi-ruled native land, is in Amer ica pleading the cause of refugees seeking a haven here. Sonja and Husband on Honeymoon French Fighter Sonja Henie, skating star and a favorite among movie fans, is pic tured here with her husband, Daniel Reed Topping, whom she married recently in Chicago. Topping, millionaire sportsman, is president of the Brooklyn Dodgers football team. This is Sonja’s first venture in mat rimony. It is her husband’s third. She is 27 and he is 28. Gen. Charles de Gaulle, under secretary of war in Paul Reynaud’s cabinet, who heads a French war committee in London to continue the war against Germany. He has juris diction over ail French citizens in England. Kathleen Norris Says: Good Mediciije for Foreign-Bom Isms (Bell Syndicate—WNU Service.) Lively arguments will trail themselves right out of the dining room and con tinue over the dishpan, but that*s exactly what you want. Drill them all in Amer icanism. By KATHLEEN NORRIS ERHAPS you are one of the mothei3 — the many, many mothers! — who are vaguely worried today for fear that a “fifth column” is form ing, or is already formed, in America, and that Nazism and Fascism and Communism are about to break out in our midst. “Fifth column,” you know, is one of the phrases coined in the late Spanish war. It means those enemies within our own ranks, those quiet forces that operate underground, winning converts and gaining strength that is someday to be used against America. How strong these elements are, in our country, I don’t know, and I don’t suppose anyone else does. When I was young it was the So cialists who were appealing to the restless and rising generation. But they never put a candidate into of fice ; they never formed anything like a formidable party. And so much more violent, radical and un natural are the isms of today that much that the Socialists advocate has come to seem to us quite prac ticable. America Has Progressed. For although we never adopted a socialist platform, our ideals have changed. Working hours and wage scales and living conditions have all undergone changes. Time doesn’t bring about ALL that the reformers want, but it does much, and to read Henry George’s great land value classic “Progress and Poverty” to day is to realize that the world really HAS grown better—at least in America, since 1878. If fear for Americanism, our in stitutions and ideals, our Constitu tion and our Bill of Rights, really haunts you, there is a simple thing that you can do to check, combat and eventually destroy the last shred of anti-American activity in our midst. For these foreign doctrines, brought here by the disaffected from other lands, reach our rising genera tion first. In other words they reach your children and mine. And those children, like the children of every generation, are looking about the world critically, wondering why so many things are stupidly done, wrongly done; why there is so much preventable poverty and idleness and suffering and sin. When strange panaceas are presented to them they accept them gladly, neither able nor anxious to criticize them too keenly. The cure for this situation, which is actually worrying America very much, was suggested to me a few days ago by a fine old American woman who has raised sons, taken an active part in the hundred civic and social activities, and who served America as one of California’s rep resentatives in congress for many years. I see no reason to conceal her name: Florence Kahn. Study the Constitution. Mrs. Kahn and I were talking about the recent awakening—or be ginning of awakening, of American women to a sense of civic responsi bility and civic power, and I told her that many of our groups in the National Legion of the Mothers of America were taking their first in terest in the Constitution, and had formed clubs to study it. “I wish,” she said, “that they’d go a little deeper than that. I wish they’d take the matter right into their homes, read the Constitution aloud at the dinner table, discuss it, get the children to discuss it, and keep it up—keep it up—keep it up! Until,” she finished, “every grow ing American girl and boy would realize the simple truth, that there is no reform, no desirable change, to benefit humanity and right wrongs, to control privilege and ex tend opportunity, that they can’t ac complish right here in their own country, under their own flag.” If our worrying parents, alarmed at the half-baked red doctrine that so many of our collet^ students seem to be imbibing today, would take this simple suggestion to heart, we should soon see not only she decline of anti-American influence, but the healthy growth of new Amer ican movements that might bring our country back once more to the standards of the great Fathers of the Constitution. Revive Dinnertime Discussions. It has often occurred to me that it is a pity that the old fashion of good talk at dinner-time has gone out. Judging from old American books and biography and letters it was a pretty usual custom a hun dred years ago. It may do the whole family good to have you re vive it. The father or man of the house hold may greet this idea with a groan. “Darling, I’m dead tonight. Do we have to have politics at the ta ble?” he may plead. But persist anyway. The best system is quietly to produce the book that is to be read; handing it from one to an other, and keeping steadily to a 10- minute program, night after night. Of course it will presently run to far more than 10 minutes, and lively arguments will trail themselves right out of the dining room and con tinue over the dishpan, but that’s exactly what you want. Drill them all in Americanism until there re mains no question as to the potenti alities of their own Constitution that they need leave unanswered. Don’t warn anyone of what you are doing, for both husband and children have a deep-rooted objection to being edu cated, but make your dinner-table a little political forum for a few months, and you’ll find that they want to keep it up longer than you do. It is a great tragedy that with a governmental system as flexible and as inspired as ours; with a begin ning only 165 years ago that star tled the whole world with its ideals of universal suffrage, equality and humanity, we should let our chil dren grow up with the idea that we are just about as reactionary, as filled with class distinctions and so cial injustices as are the old nations of Europe. It is surely no fault of America’s founders that we know so little of our own country’s ideals, and use so imperfectly those that we do know. History’s Greatest Experiment. Truly, injustices and suffering have long had a foothold here. We have slums, we have unemploy ment, we have crime. But we also have, as an excuse, the largest in ternational population that the world has ever seen; we are making his tory’s greatest experiment in the amalgamation of races, and inciden tally succeeding at it. It is .inevitable that to the top of our great melting-pot scum Shall arise. The laws of all the Euro pean countries are far from being the same; it is for us to reconcile them. America must teach us the lesson that Europe never has learned, that all these may live together in peace. Meanwhile, if that hot-headed revo lutionary boy of yours can be made to read the Declaration of Independ ence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and if you ask him temper ately and sympathetically what he and his new red friends want from their country that is not obtainable under these franchises, you will be taking a great step to reduce all our little scattered disease spots of for eign isms to our one great ism; Americanism.