The Wilmington morning star., 1946-01-24
Fair Enough
BY wEsTBROoK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features syndica

BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features syndicate)
AS an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celt of more
than fifty years experience. I should like to
call attention to some injustices that have
been put upon us by persons, whose very pur-
pose has been to abate injustice to others.
ton calling itself the Writers War Board, and
very self-important lot of hacks 1 thought
they were, ran propaganda against the use
of Anglo-Saxon names exclusively for the he
roes and heroines of fiction stories The point
was wel-taken, because. after all, the tele
phone books contain millions Of Latin, Slav,
German and Jewish names, suitable for imag-
mary characters arbitrarily endowed with
strong virtues, fine principles and lofty sane
tions.
But, on further though, it has occurred to
me that if we are always the heroes and
heroines, we are also always the murderers
and swindlers, conspirators, dead-beats,
rakes, trollops and man-grinding magnates of
brutal capitalism.
Agreeing that we are not demonstrably finer
than any other element, which is handsome
concession, because our record is distinctly
superior to most others, I insist that we have
no monopoly of evil traits and conduct as the
patter of fiction suggests. Yet we are forever
taking the blame for all kinds of dirty work,
as though the files of the FBI., the courts
and the precinct police stations were absolute
~ barren of names identified with other
groups or strains of our population. Inciden-
tahy, dislike and suspect that use OF the
Woro group common practice With Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt in her splendid little les
sons IN grammar and literary composition,
because 1t tends to segregate people in groups
IN their thinking and their psychology, except
not conscious of membership in any group and
have worked and associated all my life with
men and women bearing all kinds of names
In the last 20 years or so, many men and
women bearing Jewish names have become
renowned as liberals, by virtue of fine think
ing and constant campaigning for human
rights, although some others have gone far
beyond liberalism, becoming impatient of dis
senting opinion and devoted to absolutism But
the Anslo-Saxons gave the Western World the
Magma Charta and the British Common Law.
the basis of our own law, and the people
who abolished slavery in the United States
were almost exclusively AngloSaxons and
Celts. anticipate your saying that Anglo
Saxons on the other hand, established such
slavery and fought to preserve it and yield
the point but return to the fact that we de-
clded that slavery was wrong and corrected
our error and atoned for it in great suffering
distinctly superior to others. Does anybody
want to match?
Suppose 1t were agreed that the fctioneers
mix up their delivery and admit the Latins, |
Slavs and SO forth to membership in the cult
OF heroes. Would it then be agreed, also, that
due proportion of equally vicious charac-
ters be identified with all the other strains
that make up the citizenship of the United
States? Knowing what do know about our
nSVchO10pv 7 foil fbo auth
fishers would be damned with enormous
clamor' as fomenters OF hatred, guilty of
deliberate attempt to set neighbor against
neighbor and flood the cutters with the gore
OF lnnocents. But doesn't this evince a bigotry
against the Anglo-Saxon and don't we, by our
indifference to current and past practice in |
fiction, prove our patience and a rather su.
perior generosity?
There have been, of late, in New York, two
stage plays in which Negroes come off with
all the honors of character and virtue and
the whites, Anglo-Saxons, too, are portrayed
as vicious lot, on total score. dislike the |
theme of miscegenation but can't quarrel with
the premises, realizing that such things could
be. But, neither in all my reading nor all
the plays l have seen has any Negro been
represented as low-down thieving, generally
criminal no-good although am sure all rea-
sonable Negroes would agree that there are
such. White Anglo-Saxons of much character.
however, are a stock type.
To our discredit the so-called Aryan Ger
man belongs to our tribe This is our shame,
although 1t can be said that the rest of the
Anglo-Saxon world pitched in to destroy the
monster. But, in Russia, when Kerensky and
the decent liberal Russians had deposed the
car and were trying to create a truly liberal
regime taking all the risk, Lenin and Trotsky
emerged from safe refuge to thwart him, de-
stroyed the intelligent good Russians in ghast-
ly massacres and famnes and established
dictatorship which, today, practices slavery
with millions of captives. Except in detail.
the record there matches that of Adolf Hitler
and you will search the record of all this in
vain for single Anglo-Saxon name
But this might lead to recriminations and
must be stopped. I only wanted to point out
that we do have very good record all things
considered, and only a fair share and not
monopoly of the villains of the human race
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