Site Ed. Note: Come to think of it, our first statement yesterday, that Marlowe was dead as a doornail, is probably every whit as valid as the assertion that Marley’s doornail rung of dead wood. But, since, it having been Christmas yesterday, we were mainly asleep when we wrote that Marlowe was thusly dead, we backtracked and changed it properly to embrace only Marley. But was Marley, in fact, maybe even to Dickens, Marlowe?--not Philip, Kit. And thus, if so, that would, upon logical extension of our syllogism, cause Marlowe to be equivalent to Darlan.

The front page reports from the Burmese-Indian border, regarding the Allied offensive in the area begun a few days earlier, that a Japanese effort to recapture the lost Chin Hills, 110 miles northeast of Akyab, had failed.

Whether it has anything to do with Shangri-La, we do not know.

Not pausing at all to find out what had actually taken place, the Allied command undertook the swift execution of the still unnamed assassin of Admiral Darlan, 22-year old Fernand de la Chapelle. Reports the previous day that de la Chapelle was an Axis sympathizer now changed to speculation regarding motive and affiliation, if any. The German press meanwhile crowed that the British and Americans had resorted to murder of Darlan in order to resolve their internal disputes over his former appointment as leader of the French forces in North and West Africa. General De Gaulle, critic of Darlan’s award by General Eisenhower of that leadership in November, remained silent on his former adversary’s death.

Speculation also greeted reports that the Allies under Lt.-General K.A.N. Anderson had breached the Nazi lines at Tebourba and Djedeida to penetrate to within twelve miles of Tunis. If true, the news would have been a solid indicator that an open-field run only remained to take Tunis and probably, thereby, clear the continent of the last contingent of the Axis defenders within a short time thereafter. But, since the fall of Tebourba especially seemed unlikely and since no confirmation had been received from Allied headquarters, the report hastened to add that such optimism might be quite unwarranted.

In the longest raid thus far of the war from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, Flying Fortresses had flown a roundtrip of 1,120 miles and successfully delivered bombs on Rabaul, key Japanese port on New Britain Island, northeast of the Papuan Peninsula of New Guinea. The raid was thought to be signal of longer penetrating raids to come into Japanese territory.

The photograph on the front page of Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Commander Bruce McCandless greeting his family at Christmas after returning home to Long Beach, California, hero of the San Francisco in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on November 12-13, may provide a name which rings familiar to readers of a later generation. His son, shown also, at age five, in the picture, became an astronaut in 1966 during the Apollo program and subsequently flew two Shuttle missions, in 1984 and 1990. The father eventually served on the San Francisco until 1944 and then became captain of the destroyer Gregory, in which capacity he was awarded the Silver Star for service under attack during the Battle of Okinawa in April, 1945. He survived the war and eventually passed away in 1968.

On the editorial page, "Traitors" takes a hard stand against the defendants in the Anaconda Wire & Cable case brought by the Government for alleged fraud of the manufacturer in the production of copper cable sold to the Navy for communications, crucial for wireless ship to shore colloquy enabling accurate aiming of guns against enemy batteries. The editorial expresses the hope for passage of a bill, pending before the Congress, to make such defense-industry related fraud subject to the death penalty as the equivalent of treason. Of course, legally, because it had nothing directly to do with either engaging in combat against the United States or providing aid and comfort to its enemy, such fraud, as potentially debilitating as it was to the war effort, could not be charged as treason. Nevertheless, the editorial finds it tantamount to the same thing.

Dorothy Thompson writes of the cognitive dissonance between Christianity and Western civilization, founded as it is on principles of Force concomitant of preservation of nationalism and capitalism, antithetical to the enunciated goals of Christianity, to abide in faith and to bring about the fellowship of man throughout the world without respect to wealth, class, or national ties.

In Russia, she points out, the church was outlawed; in Germany, it was sought by force to be amalgamated into the Reich as a pseudo-theological voice, in promotion of the demigods Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, and Himmler, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Ms. Thompson expresses disappointment that the church as an institution had failed to advocate action against Nazi Germany, even while, in the case of the Catholic Church, favoring action against the Communists--especially true during the Spanish Civil War because of the killing of priests and burning of Catholic churches by some contingent among the Loyalists. She finds the latter action incongruous with the fact that the keystone ideal espoused by Communism, egalitarianism, was compatible with the Christian concept--even if Communism’s subordination of the individual to the State is incompatible with Christianity.

She favors a role of the Christian Church in bringing about an international ethos, governing all of world society by its primary tenets. It appears to be not a dissimilar message to that on which Pope Benedict spoke in the summer of 2006.

We do not interpret Ms. Thompson as posturing for anything resembling theocracy, as she was too fiercely independent in her thinking to favor any such rigid conceptualization of the state. She instead appears to advocate an increased centrality to the role of the Church, one which would serve to instill basic Christian principles of fair play and recognition of human rights and dignity across the world stage, both as to the individual and the collectivity, the rights of the individual never being sacrificed to satisfy collective or corporate interests.

Or, do we read too much into her statement?

There is also the more succinct summation of the thesis which she propounds in the piece, one to be gleaned, perhaps, from that which we once read on a quite edifying sign at a football game which took place in 1971. The sign said: "There is no power in a limping Deacon." (The expression was actually a truncated, colloquial version of that sentence. And we admit to having had a role in hanging it off the edge near the awnings on the field house where the club was in those days, even if we did not, ourselves, dream up the elucidatory homily. But that's another story, all about the Force climbing up the holler.)

Tonight, a member of the team representing the same school, for which we hung that particular sign, managed, with less than two minutes to go in a game in Charlotte, to jump offside, just as the opposing team, one point in arrears at the time, was about to have its kicker attempt a personal record field goal of 47 yards in distance. The resulting penalty of five yards provided the opposition a first down, enabling, a few plays subsequent, a field goal to be attempted, with less than one minute to go, from only 33 yards. It was, of course, successful. Our team therefore lost by two points. And so we reiterate: "There is no power in a limping Deacon." We hope that whoever jumped off side will remember that wellspring of wisdom and carry it on with them throughout next season's offerings on the field.

Whether, incidentally, the person who thought up the sentiment from 1971 had anything about Herr Doktor Goebbels in mind, we don’t know.

What is more embracing of our attention, however, at the present moment, is how it is that a robe, in French, is related to a deacon. Or, do we misinterpret something, perhaps demonically so?

We have, incidentally, been to Deadwood once, as we believe we once before mentioned.

Anyway, Happy Second Day of Christmas. What does that bring? Two dormice chirping?

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