The Wilmington morning star., 1946-08-27
Fair Enough
BY WESTBROCX EGL

seen S6!ISlClS people CdlTJ Ol oO oaAAA
since the time the New Deal threatened to
build a fa~rm-to-market road in Pound Ridge
where we had no farms and Ernest Schelling,
who ran the village store, got most OF his
garden sass and eggs and all his meat and
caviar and cocktail onions from the whole
sale house in the city in a big truck that
used the main road.
The embattled who had done
wonders with all those sWay-backed shells
of ancient cottages and cleared away the
poison ivy and called their places mortgage
manor and dun huntin' and the elms or the
birches whipped themselves into a terrible
lather, apprehending that, with a good, smooth
road to that quiet refuge away from it all,
Saturdays and Sundays would be just plum
hell, with traffic tearing by and not all of it
tearing by either, but a lot of it turning in
with hearty %yoo-hoos and only a minute for
a quick hello and a few drinks and, maybe,
whatever was going for dinner and then a
few night-caps and a half-dozen more for the
road. Nothing ever came of the road and it
all seemed to be just a skirmish in a war
of nerves and I keep telling my frightened
Sudeten friends around Harrison and Rye that
they won't become displaced persons in any
Anschluss and to sleep well and forget about
the United Nations.
But they are out of control. They see those
pictures Of packs Of people in Europe, minor
tiles convicted Of racial guilt, limping and
pushing wheel-barrows and carrying the ba-
bies Town the roads to nowhere, and they
can't believe it can't happen here. They are
beginning to suspect that traitors among the
neighbors, persons who would like to sell out
big, antiquated, uneconomical heaps like the
old baronial pile at Hyde Park that Mr.. Ickes
so kindly took off the hands Of the heirs, are
secretly encoura ging the United Nations to
buy them out. 1t is, in a small way, similar
TO the situation in the Sudetenland First, when
the Germans there wanted Hitler in, and, to-
day, when the Czechs or Communists. or Who
ever runs the show, are running the Germans
out.
I say it is all a lot Of publicity which, in
the end, will show the world that in our
country the government can't do that to peo-
pie, even to accommodate a select group of
old-world politicians who were led to believe
that Mr.. Big and his political heirs could do
anything they pleased to the American citi-
ems, and that, in the long run the advertising
will increase the value Of their places. I say
these cosmopolitans made bad character for
the Uaited Nations when they looked the
whole place over and then picked a spot
right outside New York. This was a false
move in the first place, because New York
is closer to Europe politically than Ireland,
and, on top Of that, they selected a region
OF beautiful homes for themselves and lakes
and golf clubs and sites suitable for night
clubs. They had their nerve.
They had their nerve to try to come to
New York at all.
Why not Chicago or Pittsburgh or South
Dakota L all they want is a place where thew
can be together in a settlement Of their own,
with quick commune alton by wire and radio
and plane, and their purpose Is to attend to
serious business?
Why must they be 50 close to the BROOKLYN
Navy Yard and the war industrial areas of
New England end Union Square and COM
munlst headquarters and the night clubs and
theatres? Would the Russians let them come
that close? Our own people don't spend much
in night clubs and theatres and a mil
lion or so who work In New York have to
travel a lot farther than Harrison and rive
twice a day to earn the money to pay the
income taxes to pick up the tab for the lend
lease planes that Marshal Tito has been using
to shoot down American soldiers in Jugo-
slavla. Do they know how many of those
americans have never seen the inside of the
otork or Twenty-One or haven't seen Okla.
homa and think of communist heado,,arters
as a center Of treachery? Practically all of
them. VI
DO they know that most Of the American
MONIES they have the calm effrontery to trv
10 claim are not estates but dwellings that
were built or bought by the families that live
IN them, and the private property Of men who
1ousnt IN our wars to defend their homes and
women who sacrificed luxuries to have theno7
1hey do, we may be sure, and thew know
moreover, that the quarters TO which thew ,ra
Trying to help themselves, depending on the
United States to evict the owners, are far
oetter tnan anything that most Of them have
ever been accustomed to at home.
l know one place that would be ideal for
the United Nations if the idea is lust to set
ASIDE a patch where these people can segre.
gate themselves in comfort and with nlentv
OF space for libraries, files and nneetings
IL Is an old Army post in the Arizona desert
a rev miles from (he Mexican border. called
Fort Huachuca. It was a small cavalry nos4
originally but during this war it was en1.raad
enormously and it would be ideal for ths
United Nations, always assuming, of course
mat these people are not intent on a round
OF pleasure and a system Of intrigue with
foreign political pressure groups concentrate
IN New York and on espionage, which nv
be too much to assume. may
mere Is swimming and there are horses
ana there is hunting in the mountains for
wildcat, wild pig and mountain lions. and in
the desert there are birds and in Old Mexico
there is plenty Of hunting, too, and fishing
ooth deep-sea and fresh-water. There is At
least one big theatre and there may be more
and' anyway, could be, and il the personnel
show any sporting blood private enterprise
Will set up the traps for gambling as high
as a cats back and all kinds II jouncing To
the music of the bands by the kind perrois.