Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-08-05
Urges Keep
Your Shirt On
As u. S.Mo++o
PeeIer Thinks We Need
a New Booster
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER

string national motto real
quick. TO supplement "E pluribus
unum,' my effort would be
common low-down Americanese
phrase that was current in the
sport business 20 years ago and
probably was tossed off in the
heat of argument around the
Old Garden or the Pioneer by
some such rough-and-tumble wit
as the late Leo Flynn. Will Nc
Carney or Jimmy Square GUY
Johnston.
Mine would be keep your
shirt on and | hereby propose
that the same be worked into
one Of our cphemeral Scent
issues from the Post Office De-
partment, stamped on a special
two-bit piece. rubber-stamped on
the postal cancellations and stem
ciled hithcr and yon over the
country.
a backward glance over the
last two and a half decades
reveals that we have gone
through several mass manias or
periods of hysteria and that we
did not realize at the time that
we were more or less nuts.
GRANTING that the American
~ people are as intelligent as
we all insist we are and assum-
ing that the time and money
spent on douSing our young with
learning has produced results. it
is absurd to think now that we
can shift the blame for any vast
popular folly 10 any individual
or external influence.
A peruSal Of the debates. a
review Of the insulting abuse Of
our hospitality by the German
I and Austrian governments.
recollection Of the arrogance or
the German Kaiser and the long
forgotten but authenticated bes-
/ tialltieS Of the German armies
and the German administrators
! of conquered country then. will
explain why the American people
went Whooplng 10 the war.
Possibly shrewder way
would have been 10 hang back
and arm 10 the teeth somewhat
as Wheeler. Lindbergh. Nye and
the rest are proposing now but
we didn't
Nobody who ought we
should do that could get a hear
ing or even escape mob action
or solemn. legal prosecution for
saying so.
In Florida we saw frantic men
and women trading sheets OF
paper which stood for little So
foot or 100-foot strips or acre
age plots of dreary. bog and
snake infested land. and parcels
that were not land at all but
Sea-bottom.
TffF.Y SChcmcd, hustled, con-
Il nlved and gyppcd one an
other in "A frenzy Of greed and
speculation and drove up prices
so high that any one could see
that actual or potential value
of the land OF Sea-boitom. iSelf.
bore no more relation to the
trading price than existed be-
tween a blue chip in a gambling
Joint. intrinsic value, 5 cents.
and the $50 that the bug-eyed
client cheerfully paid for the
same in stacks of 20.
The Florida boomSters were
nuts and some Of them knew
they were but hoped to cash in
before The terrible realization
spread through the whole pack.
we're nuts.
And everybody turned sane
and sorry at once.
Chicago had a similar but less
widespread spett Of -tunacy and
then we all went crazy in con-
cert. except mo and four or five
others out of the whole country,
over stock market speculation.
| knew II was lunacy early
i'm the game, thanks 10 casual
experience one sunny Winter
day in Florida when a man who
had been a newSboy, then a fight
promoter. stopped IN at a
brokers' Office, ordered some
stock. summed himself couple
of hours on the beach and. re-
turning TO his hotel stopped
again at the brokers TO sell at a
profit of $1,000
/ told him he was nuts and he
said / was but he has held no
pair since the market exploded
and ! haven't seen him since to
ask who's looney now.
WE WENT nuts about golf
w and country club life. and
crazy over liquor TO the extent
that the adult, responsible citi-
zens would haggle and traffic
with the lowest criminal vermin
in the land TO obtain case of
poisoned hootch mixed in some
dirty cellar and would drool and
carry on like imbeciles over the
beauties of a label when they
knew il must be counterfeit.
The Germans can drive them
selves to mass slaughters which
cancel their pretense 10 civiliza-
ton. but unlike us, they never