The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-06-30

ers His articles serve the good purpose
of making people Think
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1S45, BY King Features Syndicate).
NEW YORK, matter that intend to take
up with myself one day soon is this little bust
ness of my attitude. Several acquaintance
have said to me lately that, although to know
me is to love me and have heart of gold,
do myself great injustice and deny the world
measure of sweetness and laughter which it
easily could absorb.
In consultation with my conscience, have
decided that there is some ground for this
criticism but with several extenrating condi-
tons, among them the undeniable fact that
quite number of communist and other left
wing publications and some of their orators
have been downright mean to me. Moreover,
in the last few years, I have heartily ignored
as completely unimportant frequent ntima-
tons that am anti-labor because have run
a temper over corruption and other excessive
behavior and that hate foreigners because l
think we should bar the doors until we, our
selves, have jobs, opportunities and homes to
live in. 1t has seemed to me that the questions
whether l am anti-labor and whether l think
all immigrants are devils are beside the point
and tended to substitute personality for
issues as the subject of discussion
think, however, that my little embarrass-
ment has been the result of conditions that
have had similar effect on all of us, such
as the long depression, which was a nice, up
holstered euphenism for panic, our politics,
he ayno inns ant in Ia o11.tio
and, finally, the war, and the concurrent de-
cline in sports and other grim frivolites on
which we used to expend our passion. In other
words, aren't we all and so, why pick on me?
It has not been altogether good for us that
we discovered the United States Constitution in
these years since the passing of the era of
wonderful nonsense and the Monroe Doctrine
and took to reading the opinions of the United
State Supreme Court, some of which have been
Harold L. Ickes.
AS look back now, I recall that my late
colleague, Haywood Broun, who really was a
friend in the old days, foreswore his sense of
hu1nor and, I thought, his sense of fairness
when he became a man with a message or
crusader and that a couple of professional
humorists OF my old acquaintance who used
to produce joviality on schedule have gone in
to profound sulks, emerging only on rare &C.
casions when they are feeling uncontrollably
nasty over some momentary issue at which
times they prostitute their gift Of gentle mirth
to excite hatred.
1t may help my explanation to point out that
even actors, God help us, not content with the
undeserved privilege of the vote for which
they, like sculptorS and eartoonists are
obviously unqualified, have become statesmen
with solemn missions and social consciousness
and that Joe Louis, great prizefighter and
exemplary character has been exploited to
make us aware that Negroes and white people
suffer mutually from lack of acquaintance and
mutual aloofness. 1 dare say that if we could
track them down we would find that the
grotesqre herd Of professional wrestlers whose
hilarities in thousand rings around the coun-
try used to rouse our citizens to harmless and
feeting hatred as they threshed and whinnied
in the sly mockery of their trade are now
political, theological and economic partisans of
genuine ferocity and given to debates on the
poll tax Our professional baseball is ersatz
where 1t is not defunct and comedians in the
shows step out OF character to give little can
ned recltations, done by a press-agent in the
United States Treasury, reiterating familiar
reasons why we ought to buy war bonds rather
than luxuries, with the notable exception of
theatre tickets which, of course are prescr o.
tons for our morale. And, as a measure of the
distance we have wandered off the beam un-
consciously. a proportion of our people, and
do hope exaggerate their number have taken
to formulating their individual political pre-
JUDGES and foreign policies from material
which they discover in that once harmless if
sometimes irritating, institution, the published
gossip OF the gaudier saloons
Accuse me, if you will, of endorsing back
Wardness, Indifference and ignorance but let me
ask in return, whether we were not much
happier when our RACES involved questions
whether the referee gave Tunney long count
in Chicago or Dempsey hit Jack Sharkey low
Or Babe Ruth would have hit sixty home runs
in the days before they quit stuffng the Of
fetal ball with possum fuzz and substituted
tina. of the kangaroo. Are we happier for know
ing the history and all the interpretations of
the Fourteenth Amendment or for having heard
angry men and women Of both sides call one
another liars, communists and Nazs in the last
presidential campaign? In this connection, let
me say that, in porting over some of the back
numbers for September and October recently
concluded that the vote was dictated not by
intelligent decision political and moral
issues but by a pure, vindictive hope that one
or the other would be crushed discredited for
all time historic mountebank and driven
to obcurity in desperate humiliation.
AS I say. I have taken inventory and found
quite low my stock of merry jape and ready
wit and am considering steps to correct this
but, for the defense, if it be any defense to say
that one has practically the entire human race
as partners in crime, let me ask again, aren't
we all?
-V-