The Charlotte News

Wednesday, January 28, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: While headlines screamed of more success by American Flying Fortresses in the Macassar Strait, and claims of between 25,000 and 30,000 Japanese dead in the five days of fighting there, a small piece on the front page remarks of the four executed in France by the Nazis before firing squads, Free French taking their commands from De Gaulle, indicative of the fact that by no means all Frenchmen had aligned themselves with Vichy or sold out to the Nazis along with their leadership.

The Japanese chargé d'affaires in Bolivia threatened an Axis blockade of the country should it follow through with its announced intention to sever diplomatic relations with the Axis per the plan being discussed at the Pan American Conference in Rio.

U-boats continued to wreak damage off the East Coast of the United States, now having sunk 14 ships in 16 days, one of the latest including a passenger liner headed from Bermuda to an undesignated port city along the coast with 450 passengers and crew aboard, 371 of whom were missing.

The editorial page reports that sugar hoarding, based on unfounded fears of a shortage from the loss of Philippine imports, had in fact produced a shortage causing sugar to be added to the February list of rationed commodities, also therefore subjecting the hoarders to a $5,000 fine and five years in the Federal pen. Five years for hoarding sugar would surely teach the little old ladies of the Ladies' Auxiliary a thing or two. Let 'em feel the full brunt of the law, these sugar-hoarding hellions.

A re-printed piece from the Raleigh News & Observer comments on Tom Jimison's report in his series on the mental facility at Morganton that the already low-paid workers, some receiving no more than $5 per week, had been coerced by the superintendent, on implied pain of loss of their jobs, to contribute "voluntarily" ten percent of their income to the state's Democratic Party, that in a one-party state since Reconstruction. There are benefits to a vibrant two party system, to check this sort of corruption.

The superintendent, while admitting the general truth of the report, laid off responsibility for the bulletin board solicitation on the head bookkeeper who had received the request from Raleigh. No doubt, had the bookkeeper been questioned, he or she would have laid it off on the groundskeeper, who would have laid it off on the privy attendants, who would have suggested finally that one of the inmates came up with the whole idea and that it was deplorable and shocking, just shocking. No more such jinglespur high jinks and Lubberland cock-a-whooping would be tolerated from any of these wayward wards of the State. The matter would be dealt with by reducing daily servings of the mess hall's chief delicacy, White Horse gravy, served in the traditional French style, le dejeuner à la fourchette, the fourchette being for le rat mort, lending a sort of mordicative under-taste to le cuisine d'art.

A piece on the page tells of the times when smoke nuisance in the cities was a tremendous hazard to health from coal-burning furnaces, especially those improperly fired and using improper fuels. The result was a high incidence of pneumonia, lowering of available ultra-violet light in winter months when sunlight is scarce anyway, tuberculosis, even a higher risk, as in mining towns, of forms of silicosis--all in all a nasty concomitant to staying warm in winter when coal was the primary heating fuel. Among the suggested alternative energy methods suggested these days is "clean-burning" coal. It is best to make sure that it will be that, and not of the old variety or enabling same to be burned as a cheaper alternative to the alternative fuel, once the furnaces are again made economically marketable. Lest, John Milton's statement in Paradise Lost come true: "The Plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge Boiles out from under ground, the mouth of Hell."

Paul Mallon mentions the release of the Roberts Commission report on Pearl Harbor, and appears tacitly to agree with our position that it was unfair to exert all blame on Admiral Kimmel and General Short when no one above them or below them predicted an air attack on Hawaii. He mentions the Ward's ignored depth-charging of a submarine, occurring about 70 to 90 minutes before the attack and reported to Kimmel about 45 minutes before the attack, as well as the ignored air defense warning intercept of the inbound planes at about the same time, confused with either planes on exercise from Admiral Halsey's inbound fleet or the 12 B-17's expected from California at 8:00. His conclusion is that the country was being taught a painful lesson by the seeming conspiracy of ignorance and misdirection: "Take nothing for granted in this war." That is sound advice for most any daily activity; it only requires a little thought to each task undertaken to avoid a disaster from inattention. Would that we all should regularly adhere to it. There is no reason to be at a job at all if thought is to be bypassed as a painful exercise, supplanted by day-dreamy eyed distraction.

Bearing the rule in mind, we are minded to indicate that the confluence of the front page article and editorial eulogizing the death of State Supreme Court Justice Heriot Clarkson with the discussion of both Raymond Clapper and Paul Mallon on the controversial farm parity bill, plus the mention in recent days by letters to the editor of the buttermilk skimming proposal before the City Council, all bring to mind the page of December 8, 1939.