The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1938-10-08
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
A FIDDLER TO BE PAID
Sur lie pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse

But the old bridge is broken now and NOBODY
dances there or anywhere else IN France today
The French are reckoning up the cost of the bar
gain into which they were dragged headlong hS
Mr. Bundle of Downing Street. They see them
selves stripped of the last shred OF influence IN
Central Europe, deprived of all support from angry
Russia. confronted with rising German colossus
which soon or late is likely to turn back from the
east to resurrect "the right of German mlnoritieS
in Alsace-Lorraine, being pulled heading toward
agreeing to let Mussolini have Spain and so put
ting an enemy on the southern border and being
nplIed too into a Horsepower pact whereunder
their sole role will be humby to echo Albion per-
6de. And 50 their feet are heavy, and their songs
are silent ; -
But in the Sudetenland-there they dance to-
day, to be sure Not all of them, no. Not the
Jews. and not those thousands of Germans who
want last of everything to become Nazis. These
run, as fast as they can CO. But for the rest they
dance. Bohemian mountaineers in the bright cos
tune of that country for 500 years. Pink-cheeked
girls with their yellow hair in two braids down
their backs, as their mothers before them have
worn it for centuries In the streets of all the
towns and villages of Sudetenand they dance and
sing and shout for joy and cast flowers to carpet
the way For Lord Hitler, the Deverer, has come.
And their dancing is sadder than the silence
and the heaviness of Gaul For it is the very last
time they shall dance for a great while to come,
save as marionettes dance upon the strings of the
master of a puppet-show. For what, indeed is this
Delverance that has come to them? 1t is this.
| Yesterday they were free men. They could and
did openly speak sedition against the Prague gov
eminent without having their heads chopped oil.
But now they must be joyful, however bitter their
hearts grow within them. Now they must take
good care not to think but only necessarily to cry
"He Hitler" lest club descend upon their. skulls
and they with their families, be dragged off to a
concentration camp. - r
Yesterday that peasant, dancing so joyously now,
owned the land upon which he dwells, as his IA
theirs had owned it before him for centuries. He
could and did grow what and as much as he
pleased, sell where and when and for what price
he pleased and no man could tell him no, or de-
prive him of his own. But tomorrow Nazi COM
mittee will begin to tell him what, and how much
he must grow, and where when, and for what
price he must sell it. And tomorrow good half
of what he makes must begin to go for the sup
port of the Nazi armies. And if he balks, or fails
to measure up to the demands upon him? Then
he will be adjudged unfit to be farmer and his
lands will be sold away from him at price fixed
by the Nazi committee. -
80 WIN IndC IdJ manufacturer roaring MS ue-
light as he cavorts. Free yesterday, he too must
begin tomorrow to make what and as much as he
is ordered, to hire whom he is told, to pay them
what he is told, to turn over the half of what his
masters estimate his profits ought to be, for the
Na5i armies. And if he fails or Balks, he will suf-
fer the same fate as the farmer.
+ And that Sudetenland laborer, so full Of good
Pilsen brew and gladness? Yesterday, he was the
best paid workngman in Central Europe. He had
his unions and could strike when he did not like
the terms of his work Tomorrow his pay will be
sharply cut, his hours heightened, his unions abol-
ished. Tomorrow he will begin to hand over some
what more than the half of his pay for the support
| Of the Nazi armies And if he balks? He will be
beaten within inch of his life and clapped into
| forced labor battalion, to work for bare bread
Yesterday all these people were the best fed
| people on the continent as their red cheeks and
stout well-formed bodies plainly proclaim. To-
morrow, the eggs and meat and milk and butter
will begin to be carted away from the farms and
to vanish from the market places-to go for the
feeding of the armies and an accumulation of sup
Plies for future wars. Tomorrow, all these people
will begin 20 learn the Joys of Ersstz foods
! which is to say in essence, of sawdust.
Such are the things, precisely, which Lord Hitler
brings. Such is the Deliverance. for which they
dance today, as the yellow October sun streams
| over the old kingdom of Bohemia, conquered at
last, after thousand years, without a, fight
Charlotte News ~ ...' '''.