The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 17, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that as the British Eighth Army reached Derna, 150 miles from Bengazi, in pursuit of Rommel's forces, the Allied invasion troops now sweeping into Tunisia were engaging the Germans for the first time in an attempt to cut off Bizerte and Tunis on the coast and do an end-around sweep from the south into Tripoli, with the intention there to intercept Rommel and cut his remaining forces to pieces in between the three converging Allied forces, two from the west, one along the coast, the other from the south, meeting Montgomery's forces from the east. And, of course, by taking away all of the Axis ports, Rommel's means of supply would evaporate in the desert heat and part of the effort of defeat would occur by simple attrition.

The other major news of the day was the proclamation on the home front by both Secretary of State Hull and Secretary of the Navy Knox that the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal occurring between Thursday and Sunday had been an unparalleled success in the war and, indeed, one of the greatest naval victories of all time for the Allies. Early damage estimates were that 23 Japanese ships had been sunk and another seven damaged with between 20,000 and 40,000 Japanese troops sunk along with the eight transport ships sent to the bottom. Admiral Nimitz joined the chorus in praise of the great victory which appeared virtually to seal the doom of the Japanese Navy and insure the security for the duration of Guadalcanal.

While the battle did go a long way in accomplishing both of those tasks, it was not quite the clear victory being portrayed. There was no reported loss by the Japanese of 20,000 to 40,000 troops sunk on the transports. The final official estimate of the Japanese killed in the battle placed the dead at about 1,900, compared to over 1,700 among the American Navy defenders. The latter grim statistic and the number of Allied losses of shipping therefore produced Allied losses ostensibly equal to the Japanese losses, though not mentioned yet in the press accounts. Doubtless, final official estimates of the Japanese dead were inaccurate and likely more died than estimated. But, probably not 20,000 to 40,000.

Again, as at the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, there was an early proclamation of victory for the benefit of the home press. The truth of the matter, however, was not so plain, the victory proclaimed being far less obvious. Guadalcanal was still far from secure; the Japanese Navy was still far from finished. Nevertheless, the end result would be the same, even if it would take nearly three more years to accomplish that which, by appearances of the headlines, appeared surely only months away--and not only in the Pacific, but in Europe as well.

Yet, spirits and morale had to be buoyed and maintained at home, and if the enemy was going to practice propaganda on a massive and continuously fantastic scale, then the Allies could not hope to win the war against such tactics by constantly bludgeoning the public with bad news of severe defeat while uncertain results in battle passed as the only good news.

The lead editorial takes up where the front page leaves off, praising the splendid and decisive victory in the Solomons, while cautioning that the headlines' optimism should not be taken as a talisman implying a short war ahead in either theater.

On the domestic front, the column snipes at Senator Bilbo of Mississippi for nearly single-handedly filibustering the anti-poll tax legislation, urging his fellow Democrats that the measure would, if passed, lead to the defeat of the Democratic Party in every national election for its resultant loss of the Solid South. And, of course, notwithstanding the editorial's reassurance at the time that the various state and local Democratic party machines would suffice to hold the Solid South together as a voting bloc for the Democrats regardless of passage of the poll tax ban, as such measures in the 1960's were promulgated yet again and then passed--an anti-poll tax constitutional amendment in 1962, along with the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, following on the added strength provided to enforcement of school desegregation, high and low, as ordered "with all deliberate speed" by the 1954 and 1955 Brown v. Board of Education decisions--, the Solid South was lost to the Democrats: Richard Nixon in 1968 saw a means with moderate talk, skipping lightly and fantastically over racial issues, save in coded language, to divide the country between those familiar states which we now term "Red" and "Blue", that which Nixon at the time described among the Reds as the "silent majority" of the country--those who hated the concept of "United" in the United States as much as he did.

By proposing legislation more akin to the spirit by which the Republican Party was piloted under Lincoln, the Democrats, ironically, lost their Southern base, favorable to farm and social legislation generally for the poor, but always opposed to anything which smacked of social equality for African-Americans. And the loss was not primarily to George Wallace's American Independent Party (AIP), at least not save in relatively small numbers, but rather to the "Party of Lincoln", the Republicans being piloted by Richard Nixon.

"And Sudden Life" hails the coming of the 35 mph speed limit as a saving grace accompanying the horrors otherwise of war, that the war was helping to save lives on the nation's highways by drastically forcing a reduction of the limit to conserve precious gas and rubber. The piece favors a post-war 45 mph speed limit to continue the salvation on the macadam.

Dwight Eisenhower, however, having been exposed to the German autobahn, brought with him into office in 1953 the concept, along with the space program, of the superhighway, for both quick travel and national defense, to get the country moving at even higher speeds than before the war, even if on a ribbon of concrete with controlled access and wide grassy valleys of death in the median stuck between broad multiple avenues moving in the same celerious direction, all to enable the wayward to correct their variant courses before becoming part of the statistics.

Welcome to the post-war age of the wily rabbit, the Road Runner speedy to give you the Alka-Seltzer headache number 101.

Then Nixon, to his credit, ordered a nationwide lowering of the limit in 1974 to 55 mph to conserve fuel during the OPEC crisis. And Ronald Reagan saw fit to let the states do as they wished again and jack the back back up in gas-guzzling rage during the eighties.

As Herblock's macabre cartoon of August 18, 1941 marked eerily in advance the convergence of the twain, it was and is all about speed, this concept of modernity. And, now we know that collectively we pay the price over time for all of that consumption of fossil fuels and emission of its exhaust product.

The unconscientious wise-cracker might say, based on the little squib from the Monroe Journal in the "Visitin' Round" section of the page, that all vehicles are unsafe at any speed: even a horse-drawn wagon being capable of causing a fall and serious injury, naysaying neighbor.

But, in response, we would reply to the woebegone wise-cracker that the wagon did not emit hydrofluorocarbons in its day, and so did not have the harshly consequent effect of melting Santa's cap away, threatening our very existence around the globe in the process as the bathtub slowly rises.

And, between yesterday and today, it is noteworthy that the pages mention three of the next four presidents, those who would occupy the White House for fully 21 of the ensuing 26 years. Yesterday's front page carried a piece on the commanding style of Dwight Eisenhower as well as his report of the move into Tunisia by the Allies; today's editorial by Paul Mallon mentions in separate contexts both Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, the latter as being silently critical of the Navy's performance efficiency to date in the Pacific.

It was not the first time that each of this trio had been mentioned in The News, but it was the first time that all three came together so closely proximal in time. It does not present one of the stranger coincidences we have run across from the print of the time when compared to the after-times; but it is nevertheless noteworthy. And so we note it.

Today's and tomorrow's newspaper in your town or village may contain the names of three or four of the next presidents for all you know, those who will seek to guide us for the next quarter century and beyond. Read carefully.

Framed Edition

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