The Pittsburgh Press (July 31, 1941)
STIMSON, KNOX AND WHEELER
Deep in the American temperament is the spirit of fair play. The sporting thing is admired even by those smaller souls who themselves might try “a fast one.” All you need for proof is to go to a prizefight and see how the crowd reacts when somebody hits below the belt.
To play fair in athletics requires courage. But in the field of politics, to admit you have been unfair, to acknowledge a mistake, to apologize, calls for even a higher type of courage than the purely physical. The human impulse is to defend your mistake. That is especially true when you feel deeply, as in tense times like these.
So, more the credit to our Secretaries of War and Navy in two incidents having to do with Senator Burton K. Wheeler, number one thorn in the side of each.
Secretary Stimson, on further investigation and on second thought, apologizes for having charged to Wheeler subversive activity bordering on treason. Which apology Wheeler graciously acknowledges.
Secretary Knox learns that a subordinate has rebuffed Wheeler’s son, who was seeking to join the Navy, only because the young man was Wheeler’s sion. Knox personally and promptly calls on Wheeler to assure the Senator that the subordinate acted without authority.
We have a hunch that those two incidents will constitute a great contribution to that much-desired but elusive thing called national unity.
Without debating here the views of Stimson, Wheeler and Knox, each man, according to his views, is doing what he thinks is best for his country. But such has become the temper of the nation’s crisis that with many emotion has substituted itself for thinking, name-calling for logic, and the fellow who disagrees with you has become a super-so-and-so.
The episodes involving these three men in high places will, we hope, set an example for all of us. For cricket is still cricket – and the first in our list of freedoms is our right to our own opinions and to our expression of them.
The philosophy of Jesus Christ has been almost submerged in this war-torn globe. “Turning the other cheek” seems to have gone long ago out of vogue. Yet we can grasp at a straw of hope when we witness the practical Christianity involved in the incidents described.
We trust that the ultra-hot heads on both sides will not label the Knox-Stimson-Wheeler affair with that awful term “appeasement.” For it isn’t that. It’s just decency in action – a rare sight in a wicked world.