Headline

Fouling Our Free Air

Publication Date
Monday, September 1, 1941
Historical Event
Other Noteworthy Findings
This database includes 1,580 articles about this event
Tags
Gannett full page downloadable
Article Type
Editorial or Opinion Piece
Newspaper
The Montgomery Advertiser
Location
Montgomery, Alabama
Page Section and Number
4
Author/Byline
Richard Renneisen (Louisville Courier-Journal)
Article Text
We write this piece while there lies on our desk a stack of idiot maunderings which almost makes us ashamed we live in a free country. A friend of ours found the material on his front lawn the other morning,[sic] He didn't know whether it was intended that he should get it, or whether somebody had just dropped it accidentally. It is all isolationist guff, but though it does include Congressional Record type soundings-off, most of it is the revolting, lunatic-fringe anti-Jewish anti-British tripe one would expect to find in the most outlandish Hitler journals. The tricks it plays on the theory and practice of free speech and press beggar the imagination.
* * * *
In the stack there is a copy of the asinine eight-page handbill "Southern Progress," which has cropped up around here before. This Jewbaiting sheet which spells Jew with a small "g" claims to be the South's leading country life magazine. It is supposed to be published at Richmond, Va. We suppose Virginians, whose State seems to have most claim on being the "cradle of the Republic," have long ago put it in its proper cell. But it still is ranting its merry British - hating, Jew - hating way with a downright German Propaganda Office theory about the present war. The editorial "British Aggression Unties Europe" sounds as if it had been written by a 10-year-old boy with retarded intellect, who'd just smoked five muggles.
* * * *
The obstreperous Robert Edward Edmondson, of Stoddartsville, Penn., is represented in the stack with a couple of his handbills telling how "British-Jew War Propaganda Works to Involve U. S. in Europe." (These are old handbills. We hope Mr. Edmondson has prattled himself into a coma by now.) When these handbills were written the "William Allen White crowd" was trying to "Jew-Shanghai us into universal conscription to save the British-Jew government and American Jewry from their anti-national politicoeconomic subversions," according to Mr. Edmondson, who proudly claims all his "Jew-exposures are documented."
* * * *
There was quite a wave of this scurrilous brand of handbilling around here early in the war. Apparently it has not died out. One hesitates to insult the common mentality by inferring that such material could be taken seriously by any sizeable percentage of the citizenry. But it is bound to irritate the well-meaning recipient of this junk to see the rights of free speech and press being utilized by those who are mental blood-brothers of Nazi Jew-baiters and proponents of "racial democracy." It fouls the air of a dignified community.
History Unfolded Contributor
Christopher S.
Location of Research
Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Feedback