The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-12-24
Fair Enough
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

By WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1915, BY King Features Syndicate.)
NEW YORK, Dec. 23.-At this particular
time it is important to remember that in all
the wild record Of intimidation and violence
on the picket lines, there occurs not one word
Of excuse or justification for this Hitlerian
anarchy from any of the mob leaders or sny
Of their non-combatant sympathizers and
political allies. From John L. Lewis and
Philip Murray down to the ignorant small
city chief of police who refuses to preserve
order and protect the rights of law-abiding
citizens, all concerned in these instructions
have simply defied government. None of them
has dared defend this Fascism, and they in
clude Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Wallace.
In the early days of the CLIO, some of it's
publicists, mostly recreant lawyers and sedan
tary essayists, to whom bloody heads and
broken legs were not intimate matters, liked
to say that this was not ordinary disorder,
but war. It was class war, or civil war and
governors, mayors and police officials were
conjured to take their place on the side of
the worker against militant and brutal bosses.
It has not been war, however, in any sense
of the word, because there has been no oppo-
sition. The bosses, however militant and brutal
they may have desired to be, had no organiza-
ton, no fighters on their side and, in most
cases, lacked even the protection which the
state owed property according to our laws.
The law forbade them to import mercenaries
who used to break strikes and fight the rioters,
but the same government actively helped the
unioneers to shift whole stats Of organized
and trained riot leaders from Ohio to Michigan
to Pennsylvania to Indiana. The public was
equally helpless.
Many Of these were Communists using
methods developed in street fights in the Euro
pean revolutions after the First World war
who never had been employed in any of the
struck plants nor had even lived in the
stricken American towns. There are still in
existence old moving picture reels taken from
the windows of the beleagured plants showing
some of the same men who are now blockad-
ing Michigan automobile works, patrolling
with clubs, "arresting' workers and hustling
them into union offices where they were forced
to sign applications and pay dues, smashing
windshields and overturning automobiles.
AL this, Of course, is not class war or civil
war but Fascism and it is ironic that the very
Fascists who are using the Black shirt and
Brown shirt techniques Of Mussolini and Hit
Ter in their early days still are able to some
extent to deceive the American people with
anti-Fascist slogans. We find that ssme Henry
Wallace who has denounced American industry
as FIscism, acquiescent in Fascist program
az ugly and lawless as Hitler's Brown shirt
terror in the cities Of Germany. These Fascists
are his political supporters and he would have
been their President Of the United States to-
day but for the developments at the Chicago
convention which ditched him and nominated
Harry Truman.
The definition of riot and unlawful assembly
in our laws is simple and plain beyond even the
powers of Felix Frankfurter to confuse or dis
tort AL these acts are unlawful and subject to
punishment and yet we find a COON leader
frankly threatening to call out more panzer
divisions and others warning mayors and the
police that they will not permit anyone to
proceed on lawful business through their
picket lines. And these Wretched CUTTERS
whether from cowardice or Fascist conviction,
are submitting to the terror. We even have
justice on our Supreme court who VIGOROUSLY
hinched and defaulted his duty in the great
organizing riots Of the CLIO when Lewis was
its chief, and now, between squirms on the
floors Of night-clubs, dares to interpret our
laws.
These are not actually problems Of national
government and the national police power
Government Is backed by force in the person
Of the familiar uniformed American policeman
and when that force fails or quails in the
presence of 4 mob, government has abdicat-
ed The governments closest to the citizen, to
which he looks for protection and enforcement
OF his rights, is the town or city government
OF the place where he lives. For long time
now he has seen that government covering in
fear OF organized mobs and today, terrorized
threatened and helpless, he sees public Off
Gals, including even national officers, plead
ing and reasoning in conference rooms with
men who have given orders to their mobs of
thugs to impose Fascism on the United States
Huey Long said that when Fascism came it
would come disguised as something else. That
disguise is that vicious and hateful word
Democracy which has no place in the American
constitution any of the state constitutions
and which, in practise, has discredited the
spirit, the laws and the very theory of this
republican sisterhood of republican states.
Things equal to the same thing are equal to
each other and now we see that this Wanted
Democracy is Fsscism.