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What the learned professor probably intended to in'er was that because Chesapeake Bay stretches between the Eastern Shore and Baltimore, the peninsula counties] must be automatically isolated from such culture, refinement and spirituality as must emi-nate from Baltimore. His views take into consideration no contract of the Eastern Shore with Wilmington, Philadelphia and other cities, where some spark of the desired spirituality may still exist.
In keeping with the same attitude manifested by The Sunpapers, the Chicago Tribune and Clown Prince Professor Mitchell gives scant consideration to the fact that the lynching was very widely and aggressively condemned by thousands of Eastern Shore citizens. He also joins in the condemnation of the entire Eastern Shore for an act committed in one community of it.
Whether the shore has suffered from the removal of many of its ablest young men is purely an academic question which even the learned professor endowed with his wide knowledge of political economy might well pause before answering. For those able sons who have departed to other climes to shed their lustre, the Eastern Shore country has at least the intellectual capacity to entertain a very proud and loyal affection.
Dr. Mitchell unearthed the names of just two citizens who made a conscientious effort to prevent the lynch. ing. But he nobly withholds the information as to their identity, probably for fear intellectually damned and spiritually depraved Eastern Shoremen might stew them in oil.
The City of Salisbury is sullenly dismissed as a community which "has given proof of its lack of civic morality." And throughout the entire report runs the insinuative accusation that Eastern Shore churches have failed miserably in instilling the feeblest tendrils of spirituality in a people bounded on the west by the Chesapeake Bay and on the East by the Devil and his Legions.
Whether the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America plans to extend its missionary activities into the 'backward Eastern Shore country to reclaim its mentally starved natives from utter spirtual depravity, may be the newest outburst to revive dying embers, when the- current rejuvenation shows signs of expiration.
In the meantime denizens of the Eastern Shore country, wallowing in their shame; completely shorn of the last vestige of spirituality and devoid of either culture or intellect, continue to manifest complete willingness to attend to their own business and solve their own destinies in their own way.
Dr. Mitchell's very complete spiritual, intellectual and civic annihilation of the Eastern Shore, as the result of a 72-hour investigation, naturally leads to the conclusion that, if given as much as a week in the peninsula country, the learned professor might conjure up a picture of each "Eastern Shoremen with at least a few scalps hanging at his belt, and the love of God and the brotherhood of man unknown in a land barren of spirituality, morality or intellect.
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