The Charlotte News

Friday, November 6, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

A report out of Turkey had it that Hitler was busy siphoning off defending troops from Greece and transporting them to North Africa to aid Rommel's retreating forces before the fierce attack of the British Eighth Army. The same sources also reported that Hitler had urged the Japanese to launch its own second front offensive, either in South Africa or against Madagascar--which, it was announced, had just been handed in whole to the Allies finally by the vanquished Vichy French, having defended it piecemeal since May. The Japanese, the report continued, had refused for want of enough naval resources remaining after the depletion caused by the fighting in the Pacific.

So much for Hitler's hope of a double pincer, one sweeping down from the north out of the Caucasus, as Rommel would plunge from the west to take Alexandria and control of the Nile and Suez, while the Japanese would come from the south out of the Red Sea, with the combined forces thus able to conquer all the rich oil lands of the Middle East, thereby enabling control of the world by the Axis.

Instead, a pincer was being deployed against Rommel's forces by the Allies, with the British now working to encircle Rommel's retreat and annihilate the force, even before it was to be driven into Operation Torch, slated to begin from the west on Sunday, November 8 with the landings of troops at Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The British had moved fully 104 miles to Matruh from El Alamein in just two weeks since the offensive began October 23.

Meanwhile, Stalin, in a speech to the Russian people, urged patience for the opening of the second front, that it would occur, and that ideological differences between the democracies and Russia should not prevent cooperation for their mutual benefit against the Axis partners at this crucial juncture of history.

"Labor at Home" recounts the Citizens Emergency Committee's collection of testimonials on government employee inefficiency, examples being cited from participant-observer employees ranging from claims of being so inadequately occupied in productive labor as to while away office hours perusing movie magazines and writing letters to a boyfriend to witnessing a Naval officer spending a half hour teaching a secretary the difference between "effected" and "affected".

At least, we assume that it was a secretary. The quoted report actually refers to her as a "little girl". And, it does not place the words in either quotation marks or italics. So, we may misinterpret the entirety of that which was witnessed.

It may have been some little girl being taught the difference between effecting an affected remedy to her effects or affecting an effect for the purpose of appearing to work at her occupation when the effect of her affected behavior was ineffective in affecting positively the morale of her co-workers or effecting much in the way of effective results for the benefit of the Navy. On the other hand, her affective attributes may have been sought when her effective qualities had so waned as to be without either effect or affect in their effectiveness. In yet other words, she was being a poor actress around the office, unable properly to feign the appearance of work, as her co-workers, while maintaining actual lassitude, and thus would either have to shape her ship into proper straits or catch a wave with some other agency where she might affect things effectively.

On the other hand, the officer might simply have been instructing a secretary in the different uses of affect and effect--probably not a bad use of a half hour during a war. For the war might be lost under certain circumstances should, for instance, dictation, delivered to a theater in the thick of battle and thus interpreted quite literally in the heat of the moment, be taken down, in lieu of its proper orthography, thusly: "Please proceed to affect your orders without delay per our discussion of the previous plan and put in place affective controls designed to produce maximum affect." The result might well be then to create a ruse for the enemy designed to elicit their emotions, such as proceeding to put on a musical in which the soldiers pose as various strutting and strafing Ethel Mermans, whereas, instead, an unmitigated attack on the regiment was supposed to be effected by the directive.

Or, the whole thing may have been brought on by some pouty little girl, instructed by an unsound syndicate, affecting the out-stick of her plastic lip for the great effect amid great affectations.

Herblock, we glean, must have read "Pigs Is Pigs" in The News--or, perhaps, after all, given Leon Henderson's decision to ration coffee to one pound per person per five weeks, it was a national phenomenon.

"On the Wane" describes the intolerance with which courts were receiving claims of conscientious objection, one having just provided a stiff sentence of three years and a fine to a lawyer who had proclaimed the status.