At this point, we assume, David Garrick, the Younger, and Edmund Kean, the Elder, delivered each their piece from on and below the balcony out of Romeo and Juliet.

And then someone must have said:

Replenished, the British Eighth Army was now reported to have pushed the Nazis out of El Agheila to a position 90 miles west, with retreat still continuing toward Tripoli, 400 miles away.

A large British ship carrying 688 civilian passengers and some 1,800 Italian prisoners was reported sunk by U-boats off West Africa. Apparently, all of the civilian passengers and about 350 of the Italian prisoners were saved.

Hitler named Anton Mussert the new Fuehrer of the Netherlands. The native Dutchman was charged with the responsibility of indoctrinating the stubborn Dutch with Nazism. Germany also announced that Marshal Petain was easing into a cooperative arrangement with the Nazis, and was reported to be raising a new French army to assist in the Nazi defenses of the country against the Allies.

On the editorial page, a piece culled from The Netherlands News describes in close detail the nature of the guerilla fighting and sabotage activity of the Dutch in the East Indies, away from the madding crowd of the theaters in Papua New Guinea and the southern Solomons.

Samuel Grafton urges greater assurances by the Allies to the people of Europe that the Darlans of the war would not become the leaders of the people in the post-war era, thus creating a climate where, once the Nazis were removed and the Fascists eliminated from power, a new breed of former collaborator might nevertheless fill power vacuums to create substantially the same totalitarian climate again.

“End Sweep” provides a review of recent activity by the Eighth Army against Rommel. It predicts that the end in North Africa would be weeks away. It would still be nearly five months away. But the final result would be as the piece forecasts, the final defeat in North Africa for Rommel.

Returning a moment to the front page, from Des Moines came the story of the AWOL WAAC from Fort Worth, billing herself as Amber d'George of Hollywood while stripping off post in Des Moines, and likely in other French cities as well--until the MP's caught up with her on the runways. She received a one-way return ticket to ride back to Dallas and some stripped WAAC clothes to wear for the day trip, after a general discharge from the WAAC's.

As if that weren't enough wacky excitement for one day on a Monday, not so mundane, in this wacky world of 1942, the highly elucidative story came from the foothills of Morganton re the former Sheriff of the county of which Morganton is the seat, Burke, facing a preliminary hearing to determine whether he must stand in the box before twelve good and true for alleged malfeasance, cooperation with the bootleg and gambling rackets, in the midst of which alleged cooperation, turned up dead a former Deputy, after having arranged, packing the while for his own security, told he to his wife, a meeting with the Sheriff to discuss the dirty laundry of his careering office--the tête–à–tête presumably being predicated on the former Deputy's need to wage a method by which he might occasion a route of escape from charges against him alleging bootleg moonshine, on which true bill he was scheduled to appear before a Federal magistrate in Hickory next day. He never returned from the moonlit meeting about a mile down the road. The new ex-Deputy was also implicated in the Sheriff's "checkered regime" in office.

And, we did not neglect to note the report of the man-eating tiger on Saturday, then killed by the bear when the tiger invaded his cage in rage, having been chased into it by Mr. Fleet. It is not a pleasant story, and so we shall not seek to make it so, or elevate it to afford some symbolic prediction on the war. That would require the tiger to be of Berlin in any event.

Framed Edition

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