The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1939-07-06
The Cherry Tree
Where We Hutchet Out
The Truth
. THE SILLY SEASON
q EGG WITH THE "W"
q NEWSPAPERS BEATING
DRUMS
. FOES OF FEDERATION
MAKE SILLY CHARGES

Now cometh the silly season.
The sea serpents is with US again and
other improbables of the land, sea and
air disport in the columns of the news
papers if not in reality.
This year the sea serpent-good old
standby of the silly season. is a crit
ter equally at home on sea and land,
which made it's summer debut on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland, the news
papers reported.
Soon the sea serpent can be expect
ed to rear it's hideous head off the New
England and other vacation coasts and
the silly season will be in full swing.
For the silly season, as far as the
memory of man runs, has been the
time of the dull summer months when
news is often scarce and the sea SER
pent, the flying wahoo, the hoop snake,
the egg bearing ''W" come to their
own.
The egg with the "W" is due to be
reported most any day now, along with
other alleged portents of war.
For the letters "W" on an egg-in
the silly season-stands for war,
though why it might not stand for
"work," "wafhes," "whiskers" or any
other word beginning with "W" is
hard to explain.
But in the silly season "W" always
means war, no doubt about it. True,
the war doesn't always arrive. And
that brings us to war in Europe, SO
often asserted to be right at hand.
X X X
After some weeks of comparative
surcease of war hysteria, the news
papers are again beating the drums,
which may or may not be due to the
onset of the silly season.
The coincidence is interesting, how
ever. War is marvel to stir the hu-
man animal beyond and sea serpent
ever imagined and talk of it is sure to
boost newspaper circulation. Ideal silly
season material, in fact.
Newspapers, though, have been
shouting the dangers of war for two
years and war has not come at this
writing. One "crisis" after another
has come but there has been no gen.
eral confagration. So the war scare,
like the cry of "Wolf!" in Aesop's ia
BILE, has lost some of it's power to
alarm. Which is all to the good, as
far as this country is concerned.
We have all we can do at home,
without having heart failure over
Europe's quarrels.
Renewed war talk may or may not
be the result of the silly season. But
charges that the American Federation
of Labor is trying to destroy the Fed
eral relief policy and to wreck the
National Labor Relations Act are cer-
tainly due to the silly season. Other
wise how could they get notice in the
newspapers?
Foes of the Federation are making
all sorts of silly charges and the news
papers, some of them anyway, have
been giving the charges space entirely
out of relation to their Importance.
Evidently they think the charges make
good reading at this time of the year.
In that The Cherry Tree asserts
they are mistaken. The vaporings of
the A. F. of l.. foes, from the highest
CIO mogul to that of the most bigoted
of the Stalinist gang, have long been
discounted in the eyes of the public.
They are taken with many grains of
salt and are regarded as much in the
same category as stories of the sea
serpent and other marvels of the silly
season.
AS matter of fact, they are far
from being in the same category, as
most silly season yarns have the
merit of being entertaining, while
current charges against the A. +. of
l.. bring only yawns.