The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 10, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: "The Hired Man" in the editorial column discusses the shortage of farm labor, lost to the armed forces and higher paying city jobs, such as carpentry and welding, at a time when the government was encouraging doubling of farm production. Meanwhile, the previous year's crops lay rotting in the fields.
"Pacific Quislings" speaks of the Japanese third of Hawaii's population being ripe for the picking as Fifth Columnists, should the Japanese return and seek to invade the islands. Interestingly, it points out that stories had come from Oahu to the effect that during the attack, Japanese in Hawaii had set up mirrors in tree tops near anti-aircraft emplacements to act as markers for Japanese bombers.
In the Philippines, the same piece informs, former secretary to President Manuel Quezon, Jorge Vargas--sounding in name, at least, a little like the character from "A Touch of Evil", though in character sounding more as the corrupt police chief--had been appointed by the Japanese invaders of Manila as el nuevo Presidente. (We don't know the Tagalog for the phrase.) The Japanese, as the Nazis had before them, were rewarding those who had actively assisted their efforts in taking the capital. So, the piece concludes, the same could very well occur in Hawaii, the price to be paid for the importation of cheap Japanese labor for decades to populate the sugar plantations.
Paul Mallon writes of the likelihood of American troops being sent to Eire rather than to England, as the latter already was bursting at the seams with 3,000,000 soldiers, the former greatly in need of defenders, and suspicious, as always, of the King's men.
Dorothy Thompson tells of the need to become conscious of limiting consumption of goods made scarce directly by the war, as well as those, indirectly, the result of requisitioning for war production. She suggests that even soap could become a luxury because of the shortage produced by the attack on the Philippines. The parenthetical editorial note, however, points out that the key ingredient for making lather from soap, coconut oil, is the only thing obtained from the Philippines. Whatever the case, it portended a good deal of discomfort for society at large. Imagine going three and a half years without lather--even if we assume that somewhere in there they found some substitute with which to suds up.
Popolo d'Italia, we are informed, tells the Italian people that China is about to fall to Japan. Whether that was meant to imply only a new pattern of dinnerware for the Empress, we don't know. But, plainly Chiang Kai-Shek's armies were doing quite a bit better than the implication lent them by this report, as the Herblock cartoon also suggests, since the Japanese had concentrated their troops in the south.
The front page tells of the fall to the Japanese now of Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaya, second only in importance to Singapore on the Malay Peninsula, as British troops evacuated their positions and fell back further south to defend that latter keystone of the region from capture. In the Philippines, fighting was still in hiatus for the most part, as the Japanese continued to bring up fresh troops for a renewed assault on Luzon, now apparently including Mindanao to the south, as troops were also being landed there.
Things were going so badly in Russia for Hitler that rumors had surfaced that revolt by the people of Berlin was imminent, as indicated by claims that SS machine guns had been ordered placed on hotel roofs through the city--even if the German press had quickly eschewed such rumor as calumny spread by Anglo-American propaganda.
The reports also indicate that General von Brauschitsch, prior to his resignation as commander of Hitler's armies in Russia, had urged Hitler to allow him to fall back to the Berezina River, 400 miles west of Moscow, for the winter; Hitler told him to forge on toward the capital. Thus, disaster had stricken the Nazi armies for the first time during the war and these reports were now giving daily heart to the Allies, especially the neophyte Americans, while, the reports to the contrary by the German press notwithstanding, surely dampening the spirits of the German population.
The front page also mentions that North Carolina Senator Josiah Bailey's son had lost his effort, as reported in mid-December, to be exempted from the draft by virtue of his few days of employment with the FBI in some "indispensable" capacity, as previously claimed on his behalf by Director Hoover. We opine that he was likely better off as a private in the Army than someone indispensable to Mr. Hoover.
In sports, we have reported that Appalachian State College beat the Boston Celtics in basketball 57 to 54, a real scoring fest, incidentally, for the time, as you will note from the average scores being in the mid thirties, the result of a jump ball after every basket, before the alternating possession rule came into play. Thus, all a team really needed in those times to dominate the game was a tall and broad enough center to control the jump circle. In any event, we would venture to say that, despite the domination within the state by the Big Four teams since the war, it is without a doubt the only time a North Carolina college team ever beat the Celtics. File it with your North Carolina basketball lore--a factum of which we had never heard before, ourselves.
High man for the club, by the way, was Belus Smawley who had a whopping 269 points the season before and had managed fully 50 points in four games during the current one, obviously a prolific scorer non pareil. The Apps had also managed to beat Hanes Hosiery of Winston-Salem, no small feat either, no doubt.
Incidentally, for those unfamiliar with the term "Big Five" as applied to North Carolina basketball, the fifth team in those Southern Conference days, before the A.C.C., was Davidson.
And, we hope you cast your bets on our prophecy of Monday, a prophecy which remarkably came true. Joe Louis did knock out Buddy Baer after 2:56 of the first round, leaving the $30 top ticket holders with a short wedding cake. At least they got to see and hear Wendell Willkie for free. So that was something. It could have been Alf Landon, after all. If you had the foresight and faith to place your bets accordingly, based on our expert line, remember to donate the bulk of your winnings to national defense. We need your help in this fight.
Finally, another of our good friends, Waverley Gar Beauregardeen V, dropped by the Tower today, it being a lazy Saturday. As we know him to be a most lovely reader of prose and poetry, with a wonderful accent just dripping of magnolia blossoms with a dash of the stick of soft pine needle beds in the arbor shade of the sunny days of deep summertime wonder slipping through the drip, we invited him also to read for you the section of Tom Wolfe's Of Time and the River, the one which Spooky from somewhere in England read for you the other day. Waverley is a native of a small border town between Alabama and Georgia, though which state to which he properly lays claims, he has never made known to us. Regardless, he is a scion of the older families down there. The Beauregardeens trace their lineage back 343 generations to the Red Kings of Ireland. So, all of the Beauregardeens have a proper pedigree and are included upon the rolls of most respectable social ledgers down there as a persona grata, people who grace all the parlors along that border region regularly during the sociable period of each day. Waverley occasionally goes hunting for alligators in the cypress swamps of the Gulf Coast region and the remoter sections of the Louisiana Bayou. Last year, he caught five, three of which were striped and two, solid. He had to wrestle, he tells us, those alligators with all of his natural strength and tenacity into submission, and so succeeded. Now, he has on his mantle five beautiful mounted alligator heads, three of which with mouths open and the other two, closed, all made up for him by the Beauregardeen Taxidermists of Birmingham, (no relation), plus fourteen pairs of alligator shoes, tanned perfectly to his delight by a tanner named Banner Tanner in Atlanta. So, here is Waverley's soliloquy. It is of a slower meter and trajection than Spooky's, and so therefore slightly longer, a few minutes longer, actually. As before, if you don't care to hear Waverley's rather rotundral phrasing, you can turn it off. It neither offends us nor Waverley.
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.