"Hifalutin Talk"

"Senator Walter F. George of Georgia was the other speaker." This fact was noted at the bottom of a long column of the New York Times last week. And who could the speaker be, when one of the ablest Senators from the South was merely the other? The speaker was the head of the English Department of Vanderbilt University --Dr. Edwin Mims by name. He is the author of a book* which raised a controversy. In his speech last week before the Southern Society in Manhattan, he reiterated his side of that controversy. It is now time, he said, to cease talking about Southern chivalry, hospitality, traditions. . . . The South has used the Civil War to explain too many things.

"If you ask me whether I am a Southerner, my reply must be--one kind but not all kinds. The solidarity of the South is no longer a source of pride, but of humiliation to many of its most devoted men.

"There is a South that finds expression in the crude and blatant utterances of men like Cole Blease and Vardaman, and another that finds expression in the statemanship of men like Carter Glass and Oscar Underwood. There is a South that practices and justifies lynching and another South that believes it is unjustifiable under any and all circumstances. . . .

"These are facts that cannot be gotten around by hifalutin talk about the beauty of Southern women and the chivalry of Southern men," said the professor of English.

Next day, Senator George of Georgia did get into the papers because he, a Democrat, said in Washington that Southern textile industries and farmers want a protective tariff.

* THE ADVANCING SOUTH--Edwin Mims-- Doubleday, Page & Co. (1926).