The Wilmington morning star., 1946-12-24
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

the retired police commissioner, VINO oleo
last week, was put away with a modest oe.
corum in contrast to the maWKlsh farewen
TO Jimmy Walker only a little while before.
Thew were opposites in character and yet,
when the good cop died, few were the tributes
and restrained, to a man who had 1one MS
duty and served the people better than they
knew. None of the self-lmportant ana mock
modest trash of the middle-world OF Broao-
way and Hollywood, a twilight world Whlch
lies between habitual decency and the great
badlands of corruption, always dlsparaSlng
the one and patronizing the other, elboWed
FOR white paper and radio time to euloglze
a man who had properly desplsed their Whole
kind and would have been dishonored by their
tributes. But good men and women, VINO
might properly have raised a sign over the
sad end of a faithful servant just didn't know
Valentine Or what they owed him. And so,
ne went to his grave without public mourn
ing, honored only by his family and friends
and with only the formal respects OF the po-
lice department and the city.
O. course Mr.. Valentine would not have
had it otherwise. He always regarded nm
| self as a person when he could nave oeen
a Celebrity and he stuck to his duty, work
ed much harder than he need have AMI were
himself out, whereas Walker quit cold to temp
tation, shirked his responsibilities, betrayed
the peoples trust and, by the underWorlds
own code, logged it under pressure. jimmy
came to the mayoralty with the confidence
and, actually, the love, of a majority OF the
people of the city Of New York. He had his
chance. So did Valentine. Walker threw them
down. He was a crook in office; he ran with
r~ascals by preference who were delighted to
run with him because their only hope OF
equality lies in degrading high position to
their own level, and there is no way to
measure the actual harm that he wrought
in return for the affection of the people. 10
what degree he impaired the peoples conf
dence in their own ability to govern them
selves by e~lecting their officials; to what de-
gree he planted cynicism in the hearts o. a
generation of children and young adults IN
New York and elsewhere, substituting slick
ness. flippancv and dishonor for the teachings
of his own church, God will judge. Not even
his old enemies hated him when he died and
Few of them hated him and many still loved
him in his ~guiltiest years. But it is an ironic
fact that these same people and the emotional
opinionarians of New York, who probably do
interpret the morals and feelings of the pub
lie, flooded the Styx with a torrent OF tears
to float him across, but hardly knew that Val
entine had been loyal, courageous, honest and
Industrious, in their behaE.
l often saw him IN his moldy old office,
the commissioners room at police headquar-
ters, during the war. His responsibilities
now were terrible and frightening. Not only
were his young policemen being drafted when
the social corruption of war was rising fast
but he knew that his boss LaGuardia had
imposed unnecessary dangers on HIM by hui
initiating the traditional authority and dignity
of the New York cop in Harlem and other
~polyglot neighborhoods and in conflicts with
the disorderlv picket lines Of the unions. He
was a hard man in his discipline but now
he had to send out policemen wearing their
own handouts so to speak.
Harlem was LaGuardia's political preserve.
He was the boss and Vito Marcantonio the
congressman was LaGuardia's deputy and
the 'protector." The policemen were given
tacitlv but firmly to understand that they
must not enforce the laws with the same i'm
partial authority in neighborhoods Inhabited
by LaGuardia's special political following that
they asserted in more mannerIy districts.
Consequently the public department fell and
the decent colored people and Italians and
Porto Ricans suffered from the impudence
of criminals with the implied suggestion that
they were all disorderly by nature and not
accountable by decent standards.
Inevitably the gangsters reorganized after
Tom DeWey's crusades and became SO conf
dent in their political immunity that, recently,
in the aftermath of the election day murder
in Harlem, a condition has been discovered
So rotten that not even Cicero, Ills, iii the
days of Al Capone was worse.
The official investigators of other depart
ments of the city had to 60 by twos and
uniformed policemen, answering calls, were
meek and requesting to groups OF men and
women blockading doorways.
In his office, pale, sickly and apprehensive,
Commissioner Valentine might call for a card
board container of lukeWarm. bellywash cof-
fee and a ptomaine sandwich from around
the corner and pull out a leaf of his desk
as a table, while he lunched and ran his job.
A regiment Of unframed, undisciplined, utter
ly unreliable troops were moved into New
York and sent to guarding docks and bridges
and Valentine was shocked. One soldier fired
his rifle at a harmless civilian in a little
truck crossing a bridge and, fortunately, miss
ed.
''He says he called on the fellow to halt"
Valentine said. land then fired. God Almighty
can you imagine what will happen If we nave
these soldiers shooting at everybody
who doesn't hear them yell Halt?'
He was offered a force of emergency police
men. nondescripts, without the seniority, the
training and the responsibility OF New York
policemen. He knew that that meant a danger
of German and italian agents carrying police
authority and pistols and racketeers and neu-
rotics, cops-and-robbers adventurers, proving
the streets, spying on citizens shaking them
down, framing them, and firing at Will. He
wanted his own New York cops.
At a guess, the reason why Lew bowed to
LaGuardia's conditions, degrading the prestige