The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1940-05-16
The Cherry Tree
Where We Hdfchet Out
The Truth
. ALWAYS LOOK A GIFT
HORSE SQUARE IN THE
FACE
. MANY FIFTH COLUMNS
. NOW ON PARADE

INOV O4N L AAN&AOG
We hear lot in these parlous days
about Trojan Horses and Fifth Col
umns.
Most everyone knows that a Trojan
Horse is just plain no good for haul
ing truck around the place, or from
door to door; you can't ride it and you
can't put harness on it.
And fifth column isn't the one in
which millionaires put their pennies
down for the income tax man.
Once upon time the Siege of Troy
took place and great wooden horse
was rolled up to the walls. A kind of
flap door was let down and a whole
pile of soldiers hoped out of the in
terror of the wooden nag. So a Trojan
Horse came to be one that wasn't what
he seemed to be inside and then it got
to mean most any kind of camoufage
trickery.
The Fifth Column comes to about
the same thing. 1t is made up of dis
ciplined adherents stationed in an
alien and ikely-to-be enemy land,
where they will break out with be-
hind-the-scenes destruction the mo-
ment invasion begins.
The Communist Party in the United
States is Joe Stalin's Fifth Column
among us. The Bund and the Chris
tian Frontiers constitute Hitler's Fifth
Column among US.
And both of these Fifth Columns
probably contain several factors about
which we don't know anything at all.
Surreptitious hell raising is part of the
job of the Fifth Column, which is So
called because it comes after and sup
plements the four open and armed col
umns of warfare.
A great many Americans are
so doggoned dead set against hav-
ing any part of the world war
show that they don't even want to
recognize the current dangers or
take any steps to guard against
them.
They don't like to believe we have
any Fifth Columns among us.
But we do have them, good and
plenty and good and plenty mean and
devilish, too.
We have at least four of them: Hit
ler's, Stalin's, Mussolini and Hirohito's.
Two of them are allies now; all of
them may be allies at any moment!
Of course know plenty of people
will shout 'pipe dreams" at the very
idea of such thing.
Well, we always have among us
those who didn't know the gun was
loaded and those who thought they
could beat the under-tow.
The Fifth Column is on the march
in the United States.
And the Fifth Column aimed at us
isn't all on United States soil. A good
ly and dangerous detachment is in
Mexico.
We have, as a people, great many
friends in Mexico; but we also have
some enemies and a great many who
play the Mexican political game (just
as some of our own politicians do),
waving the flag and wringing out the
bloody shirt all over the place.
| President Cardenas politically
doesn't love the United States any too
well, nor does the gentleman whom he
has picked to be his successor.
The Fifth Column, collectively, is
doing very well in Mexico, thank you.
And when-when, not if-war comes
to the United States, just watch that
Rio Grande border!
| think we are a credulous people.
We don't like war, we don't want war
and we keep our eyes pretty we'll
closed to anything that may smell
like the threat of war.
! We hate to believe what we know
we ought to believe.
We kid ourselves a great deal, in
order to keep away from thinking Of
the possibility of war.
The fact is-hateful though it may
be-that we face, not the possibility,
but the probability of war. Its ad-
vance scouts are not at our doorstep.
And organized labor is so absorbed
with it's own affairs that it takes little
account of the messing around of plot
ting international arsonists.
But the hour is at hand for taking
account of these doings.
For very soon we may be faced with
the fact of war-and the Vaccinations
of the Fifth Columns to which we have
been so childishly hospitable.
; Not wolves, but cut-throats in
sleeps clothing.