The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 15, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

The condition in Malaya was reported worsening, reaching the critical stage of the battle for Singapore with all except one-fifth of Malaya now in Japanese hands, the Japanese now being within 100 miles of the crucial British last stand on the Peninsula. Rangoon in neighboring Burma now braced for the potential of a simultaneous attack when the rush on Singapore came.

In the Philippines, General MacArthur's American-Filipino force continued to hold the line at Corregidor and Bataan, amid reports of Japanese firing squads executing resistance members for providing MacArthur with current enemy positions in the northern areas of Luzon and around Manila.

An American submarine had sunk a 17,000-ton Yawata-class Japanese maru, though whether it was one of those which had been converted to an aircraft carrier was not clear, nor was the precise location of its sinking, as the Navy regularly kept such matters now secret for several weeks to avoid disclosure to the Japanese of locations of sub and ship patrols.

Sixty miles off Montauk Point on Long Island, a Panamanian tanker, the Norness, had been sunk by a German submarine firing three torpedoes into it, costing two men their lives, suggesting new concerted U-boat activity to bring pressure on merchant shipping headed for the United States, the first time a ship had been sunk so close to the East coast of the United States, just as the Japanese had been seeking to do off the West coast since Pearl Harbor--even if thus far with little success, save the report of the one lumber barge which suffered damage and the loss of one man somewhere a few miles off of Long Beach. Without much hope of effecting any full-scale attack on either coast, obviously such isolated Axis coastal attacks were more for the purpose of inflicting psychological warfare, inhibiting foreign ships from desiring to operate in U.S. coastal waters, than any grand strategy greatly to impact shipping lanes directly. This attack joined one of the previous day off Nova Scotia, theretofore the closest to U.S. shores of any German U-boat attack thus far in the war.

In Russia, the Russian shock troops were fighting 100,000 Nazis at Mozhaisk, 57 miles west of Moscow in what was described as one of the most decisive battles yet to be fought in the Russo-German war.

And more survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor tell their stories to the press from a San Francisco military hospital.

Meanwhile, in Washington, House Un-American Activities Committee Chairman Martin Dies of Texas had uncovered a dastardly plot to inculcate Japanese culture in Japanese children attending schools in Southern California. Such stories as "My Brother Enlisted in the Army" and "Submarines", describing a sneak attack on enemy shipping, appeared in these dastardly books which the children, potential Fifth Columnists, were commanded to read by their tyrannical elementary school teachers. Can you imagine? A whole cadre of little Japanese children were being taught about yellow submarines. It is good to see that Martin, as usual, was right on the job, sticking it to the clandestine enemy where it hurts. Of course, Nazi agents had managed to operate under Martin's nose in New York City and New Jersey with complete impunity from 1939 until they were busted by the FBI in mid-1941 while Martin chased down the notorious Reds. But never mind that. Now that the Reds were our allies, Martin and his HUAC pals had discovered a definite new menace on the march, Japanese children being educated in American schools to Japanese militarism. Let us now leave that topic so that Martin may perform his unsavory duties. Someone has to do it, after all. We would have to remark parenthetically, however, that he did not seem thorough enough. After all, Columbus was an Italian and we were fighting Italy, and so Martin should have insured the sanctity of patriotism among schoolchildren in American schools by insisting that all mention of this reprobate be removed from the public schools since it obviously encouraged imperialistic motives, improperly promoted Italian culture, and thus might have led them to join the Italian Fifth Column in the country.

On the editorial page, Paul Mallon reports that General Rommel managed to escape the British trap in Libya with two armored divisions intact. The maneuver was accomplished through the vicissitudes of weather, for once working in favor of the Nazi, desert sandstorms, as well as Rommel's bringing up reinforcements through Tripoli to encounter the British and run interference while he beat his retreat. Additionally, pencil mines triggered to explode when lifted from a desk in abandoned field headquarters buildings, and other such wily devices of the Fox, delayed the British in pursuing the columns. Rommel would live to fight another day--against Patton, every ___-______ day until the little Nazi ____________ and his panzer divisions were defeated.

"Marching Songs" speaks of the inherent benefit to morale in the armed forces of a glee club and so praises the coming of the Yale chorister to Fort Bragg to lead the chorus. Somehow that, plus the little item from Hendersonville titled "Life Goes On", lead us to conclude the day by saying Obla-Di.