The Charlotte News

Monday, January 12, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

In a different manner and time, we suggest that Mr. Ali was likewise a hero in his own right, as his effort to maintain his conscientious objection to the draft, based on religious grounds, was not only, we think, as did the Supreme Court, sincere, but also heroic as that resistance, along with that of many others, probably saved a great number of young American lives. Had it not been for that sort of peaceful, legal behavior on the home front, America would likely have persisted in Vietnam for another two or five or ten years--and perhaps wound up, as did the Soviet Union by staying so long in Afghanistan with the handwriting on the wall.

But we stress again, Vietnam bore no resemblance to World War II, except that our involvement essentially began in earnest in the Pacific with the occupation by the Japanese of French Indochina at the invitation and acquiescence of Vichy, ultimately as demanded by the Nazis to appease the Japanese so that their agents of sleaze, the Emperor and Premier, those two little fitches of the dogs that bit us, could try to come over and do as they please. Thus, the domino theory, the belief in 1958 that Vietnam was the strategic keystone to Southeast Asia all over again, the launching pad for aggression in the Pacific by the Soviets and Chinese Communists, all understandable, but in the nuclear age, probably outmoded. Yet to contest the mode as to whether it was in or out, one had to practice nuclear brinkmanship, potentially flushing the world into the centrifugal maelstrom.

Also in sports, we feel compelled to congratulate the Wake Forest Demon Deacons on their performance in basketball last night in Winston-Salem in beating the tar out of the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina, taking victory 92 to 89, and today finding themselves in the highest ranking, at number 2, which they have held in some many, many, many years, certainly since 1962, though perhaps not even then. So congratulations. But--we'll be seeing you again, and when our men are shooting a little better than 25% in the second half, hopefully. So enjoy it while you might.

We suppose that if the Appalachian State Teachers College can beat the Boston Celtics by three points in 1942, then so, too, may the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest beat the indomitable Tar Heels by three--once.

We have warned our boys about these Sunday get-togethers in which, beginning last week, they seem to fall apart. Then they had an excuse: we slept through the game. We did not get to see yesterday's contest, but we did not fall asleep this time, and thus listened on the radio to our favorite announcer provide the play-by-play, until, that is, our team seemed somehow to be unable to locate the position of the basket, at which point, while we continued to listen, we would consider it more of a play-by than a play-by-play.

Thus, we shall reiterate: one is bad, two is worse, but you fellows do not want to know what might happen should you try this a third time. Better get out on the hardwoods, now, and shoot some baskets. We apologize, incidentally, if those push-ups last week threw off your shooting arms. We do understand how that happens. But you may thank us later, come March. So, now, go out and each of you shoot 1,500 shots at the basket by Wednesday night. Of those you must make 1,000, or suffer the consequences. And it is getting cold outside. Nevertheless, should you fail in your task, after about the 40th lap later in the week, you will feel much warmer.

Elsewhere in sports, we note where Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy had placed Red Rolfe on the sick list. Well, you can say that again, and that while the Russians were whipping up on the Nazis pretty well. That must've been why they called him the Tailgunner.

And we have no idea what that headline is all about regarding the ladies' bowling league. Maybe we don't want to know. Perhaps, they had some different nomenclature back then.

Also, if it isn't too late, be sure and not to miss this week's wrestling bill, the Cowboys now going head to head, and Ed (Strangler) White, former Rose Bowl and pro football player, now obviously stepping up in the world, taking on Abe Yourist, "the Jewish matman". We missed the results of last Monday night, but we are sure that, as always, it was something to behold.

The front page picture suggests why burlap, in shortage as the Philippines were consumed by the enemy, was so very valuable to the military.

The bad news continued in the Pacific: the Japanese landed off Borneo at Tarakan and at Menado in Celebes in the Dutch Netherlands, taking both positions, a step closer to control of the oil to be obtained out of N.E.I., 3% of the world's supply, doubling that which the Axis presently controlled. Dutch and American pilots sought to defend the rest of Borneo and Celebes. In Malaya, as reported Saturday, Kuala Lumpur, the capital, fell to the Japanese and further incursions south against the British defenses had drawn the enemy forces within 150 miles of Singapore, 70 miles closer than during the previous week of fighting, leaving two-thirds of the peninsula--key to taking the Burma Road, supply route to China, as well as the rubber supplies of Malaya, itself--now in Japanese hands.

Oil was becoming more of a concern for the Axis, as the report from Libya indicates. That is not surprising, given the figures which Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau had relayed to the President on December 6, suggesting that Germany had, depending on consumption, about a three to six-month supply remaining, that being eaten up more quickly now by the unexpected fierceness of the Russian winter offensive. The Volkswagens were running out of fuel.

In Russia, the Soviet continued to push the Nazi back from Moscow, now coming within 80 miles of Smolensk, winter headquarters for der Fuehrer, as an important railhead was re-captured at Tikhonova Pustya, and had broken the new Nazi defensive line at Bryansk and Vyazma, considered crucial by der Fuehrer. It begins to look as if der Fuehrer will have to pick up stakes and have another one of his many nervous breakdowns and head back to Berlin or Berchtesgaden to spend time consulting with his German shepherd, from whom, it is said, by most credible historians, he was now receiving the bulk of his military advice and command strategy. Yet, of course, we wouldn't have had it any other way.

Meanwhile, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox stated to the Mayors that the Navy would not soon engage significantly with the Japanese Navy, that the principal focus of the Navy remained in the Atlantic, insuring the safe convoy of aid to Britain. This policy was in keeping with the belief of Admiral Nimitz that the Fleet at Hawaii should not enter into significant fighting until it had sufficient ships, including those to be repaired after the attack on Pearl Harbor, to meet and exceed the strength of the Japanese. In hindsight, it was a policy with foresight; there was no point in spiteful, premature heroics when potentially it might lead only to further losses of men and ships, harming both morale and materiel, prolonging the war.

One thing was now clear to everyone: those suggestions during the fall in the press, including The News, that the war would last no more than five or six weeks, were as underestimating of the strength of the Japanese Navy and air force as was Hitler's foolhardy estimates of the Russian capability after the significant problems its armies had suffered, surprisingly, against the supposedly feckless Finnish in December, 1939 through March, 1940. As Stalin would learn, Hitler would learn, America would learn--never underestimate the enemy, especially when it is fighting in territory with which it is more familiar than thou, and most especially when that territory is its home turf.

Sun Tzu says: What sometimes serves as a rule in sports does not necessarily follow in battle with guns and men, where the very lives and habitats of the families of those men are at issue.

Speaking of which, reports out of China indicated that the Chinese had pushed the Japanese back to a position which threatened the Lunghai Railroad, an important supply route for the Japanese army, south of the Yellow River. And the badly battered Japanese troops of the 100,000-man force at Changsha continued its retreat in bloodied tatters, continuing to lose men as it went.

In Eire, the informal efforts of the British and American governments to induce the neutral stance of the government to relax, to permit Allied air and naval bases there, were met by Prime Minister de Valera with sympathetic but discouraging reception, indicating that to lose its neutrality would be divisive of the population.

In domestic news, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a statute in Taylor v. Georgia, 315 US 25, which made it criminal to contract to deliver services for an advanced fee and then not perform the service. The Court held this statute to constitute, effectively, peonage, violative of the post-Civil War 13th Amendment, banning "involuntary servitude", i.e. slavery.

On the editorial page, "Dark Futurama" briefly speaks of the prediction at the 1939 New York World's Fair that the highways of the future would support speeds of between 80 and 100 m.p.h. We have never quite obtained that legally, but we have come close. It is a curious resignation to global warming and the destruction of the planet that, during the Reagan years, the lowered speed limits to 55 m.p.h. of the Nixon years, initially instituted in order to conserve fuel in the wake of the 1973 OPEC crisis, were released and the old 65 m.p.h. limit restored, now of course, in many stretches of interstate being as high as 75, also in place in Texas and other places west before the lowering of the limit by Nixon. While there are few things Mr. Nixon did with which we find ready agreement, at least beyond a couple of his Supreme Court appointments, (which turned out to be self-assailing), this particular one was certainly beneficial to the environment, even if its intent was merely aimed at conserving scarce gasoline. But in the profligate days of "Morning in America", we blithely went along back to the futurama, into the realm of the rather stupid notion of unlimited consumption of natural, non-replenishable resources. One day, not too many years hence, with the gasahogs going down the highway as they do lickety-split, "Dark Futurama" shall portend, should we not find a suitable electric vehicle and other alternative fuels to produce the electricity soon, something far more sinister than either merely an increased accident rate because of worn tires, failure of parts for which there are no replacements, and the combustible mix on the roads and byways of bicycles, wagons, horses and cars, as things suggested themselves in early 1942, but will instead suggest a darkening of the planet itself, displaced agricultural belts, flooded coastal plains and cities, including a large segment of southern Manhattan, increasing hurricanes, increasing payments for disaster relief from the Treasury to rebuild after those hurricanes, etc., etc. But on nevertheless they go in their gasahog vehicles--down the road, carrying us all with them on their suicide mission--just as the idiotic Italians and the idiotic Japanese bomber pilots did in World War II in attacking United States and British ships.

Paul Mallon mentions that the projected production target for 1942 of 185,000 new planes for the air corps would conceivably run into shortfall for the shortage of aluminum, unless a proposed plastic substitute could be developed. (This idea had been around for three years, as Cash had written of it January 24, 1939. It never did get off the ground.) He also discusses the shortfall in the 20,000,000 new laborers needed to carry out defense production increase as proposed by the President, increasing 1941 output by about ten times by the end of 1943. But, after the draft, there were only about 6,000,000 men, optimistically including three-fourths of the 4,000,000 unemployed, with whom to fulfill this commitment. This deficiency left it to women, those boys still in school and in the Civilian Conservation Corps, retired persons, and subsistence farmers to fill the void.

The short piece from The New Yorker quotes from War and Peace re the parallelism to be drawn from Napoleon's retreat and the Battle of Borodino in the winter of 1812-13, and that of the present situation of the Nazi retreat before the Russian counter-offensive. Napoleon retreated along the old Smolensk road also, and his armies were sliced to pieces.

And, we thought we would impart that we had occasion today to greet, to our great surprise, as we wandered past the steaming and hissing train station downtown here in Charlotte, yet another of our old friends, Frankly Dontno Roseyfelt. Frankly, who we hadn't seen in sometime, is a native of the Hudson Valley up in the green lustrous, smoked-in arboreal slumberous splendor of that expansive and poignant Yankee land--where we ourselves once trammeled many years ago, and then, boarding our coach, rode all the way from there down to Alexandria, Virginia, without stopping, (sometimes probably going over 55 but our coach was small and gas-conserving), all in one afternoon, into a cool and hospitable evening sunset and on to the bright twinkling dusk, into the starry and misty nighttime, there to deboard, in Alexandria, for some splendid victuals, consisting of hamburgers, french fries and a chocolate milkshake.

We were struck then by the sudden change of rhythm, rapidity, and rotundity of the sound of the inhabitants, just across the River from the Rotunda, startlingly different, yet also strangely alike those sounds which we had left behind in the great North, that beautiful verdant expanse of the Hudson Valley of Roosevelt, Vanderbilt, and D. Knickerbocker.

Well, Frankly was most cheery, as he always is--except this day, he punctuated his smile with an occasional stark, grey, foreboding air, coming, he said, upon inquiry for this apparent contemplative countenance, from the events which had beset our great country in the previous five weeks since December 7. He said, however, that he is quite ready to fight the dogs of war, and that, though he hated war, he would not give up, even should it take his very life from him, until the masters of tyranny and fascism had been once and for all and totally defeated upon the land and across the wide expanse of the world.

We asked Frankly then whether he had the time to step over here to the Tower and do some reading for us from old Thomas Wolfe. And he said, "Of course, I would be delighted. I really haven't time, but I think I shall rather enjoy a bit of respite from my trip north on this old dusty train, a welcome change in my day, and so will oblige this favor of which you ask."

We were thus very gladdened by his hospitable and kindly assumption of this task, and so, with a tip of our brown fedora in his direction, escorted him to our offices here where he then read for us the timeless strains and verses to Of Time and the River, the same thereof which we previously were able, through commandeering the services (based solely, we assure, on peonage) of our good friends Spooky and Waverley, to have read for you during the previous days here of this long and desolately stark winter remission of spring's blissfully blossoming buds.

Frankly, you may note, has a cadence curiously resemblant to that of our great President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But they are of no relation, so far as we are aware. It is instead so because of this: Frankly is a great admirer of our President and listens regularly to his speeches and fireside chats on the radio, and so it is not surprising that the basic roll and softly sweeping air of his voice comes to resemble in pattern and rhythm that of our great President. But do not become confused. Frankly and the President are two different people entirely. You may doubt and say, "Why that surely is the President." No, and no again. You need not doubt your deceived ears. It is only our good friend, Frankly.

Frankly, though educated at one of the prominent Eastern schools up there, though he modestly refuses to identify which one, leaving us guessing as to whether it might have been Harvard or Yale or Princeton, or one of the other prominent schools up that way, has chosen to ride the trains around the country, collecting various bits of memorabilia for the sake of imparting to us what he calls "The History of the Modern West", a thesis on which he is working, and has been now working for several decades--not yet, he says, ready at all for publication; but eventually, eventually, should he ever complete its toilsomely and torturously lengthy volumes, perhaps he might offer it up. He pauses here to apologize for over-prolixity on his subject, but smiles broadly to say that it is a vast, expansive subject, and so entitled to that great and nearly infinite explication and also due ever therefore careful and thorough editing for complete erudition to be imparted to the reader, to insure, to the extent imaginable and possible, dedicated accuracy. For without accuracy, there can be no considered thought on any given topic of factual dispute, of which there always is within the realm of ordinary discourse, as well as unusual and profound discourse, the type we most enjoy, that is when we are not engaged in the other.

So, without further delay, as we are sure you would like to hear his reading, we present to you Frankly's version of the Wolfe passage. As before, should you wish not to have this bit of Yankee intonation reach your unencumbered ears, wherever and in whatever section of the great country you may be, or, indeed, in whatever other land you may reside, you may avoid it and avoid it, if you wish, like the plague. But you will, no doubt, not then harvest the lovely air of the Hudson Valley which pervades perfume-like through the tender and optimistic syllables of this interpretation of this bit of versification by Thomas Wolfe, the grand master of American, truly American, wonder and delightful evocation of the landscape of this lonely island of plenty, thousands of miles away from the old homes of the lands of its migrating and transient people, the great continents of yore which once provided them their habitation--Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, perhaps Australia, and the sub-continent of India now and again, the old places from which we all came, save for our Native aboriginals who tended the land for the many centuries before the great numbers of us migrated to these merciful shores in search simply, when boiled to its essence, of dignity and the pursuit of happiness, and of those four freedoms of which our President spoke so eloquently last year about this time.

Framed Edition

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