Site Ed. Note: We have a correction to make in a misprint from the Christmas Eve message of President Roosevelt--which we actually saw on Christmas Day when we re-printed it. But, as we said, being mostly asleep that day, we could not, for the dickens of us, figure out what it was that the word was supposed to be. So we left it as ‘twas.

Bouncing back to-day in our habiliments, however, as a pair of big red rubber chaussures à hauts talons, a la bras, we have now gone back and re-read the entire sentence in context and have thus figured out, via our intellexicography, what it was that the word was supposed to be. Actually, on this one, we feel a little stupid, as it turned out quite obvious. We should have recognized it, even in our somnambulatory state. It is:

We apologize for the error. Two years ago, having waited too long to buy a turkey at the store and the Chinese restaurant being the only hostelry available to us, we got Chinese take-out for Christmas dinner. Perhaps, it was just then, three days ago, catching up with us. It must have been. In any event, the error was carried over from another site’s mistranscription. At least, we assume it was a mistranscription. But, it seems to us that these people could at least read what they are fixing to copy down and re-print. Ye know?

On the front page, A. P. reporter John Hightower echoes the question posed by the American air corps commanders: What has happened to the Japanese air force? He ventures, in explanation of the query: "For more than a month it has been conspicuously impotent in the communiques from Pacific war theaters, both in numbers and in fighting ability." He offers that the reason for the depletion in strength, pregnant with the advice of winnowing numbers of airmen qualified to fly, was that the air force was spread too thin over a vast area of territory, its talons gripping urgently to ward off the unwanted Burmese border offensive intrusion from the Allies as well to bolster their own penetrative thrust into Yunnan Province in China, all the while trying to make headway in the Solomons to regain Guadalcanal and, while dreaming of sticking a submarine into one of the ports off California's coastal batteries, protect their airbase at Munda, now being repeatedly battered by the Allied bombers. It was a querulous display, but, as we have before mentioned of the Japanese militarists, in light of their widespread display of military might, wethinks they dusted protect too much.

Another piece tells, belatedly, of a Christmas Eve sea cruise on a ghost ship, probably the Marlowe, or maybe the Marley, positively up Fourth Street, searching for yellow submarines in the alley-back cat magic. Two days yet before Boxing Day, the kitty-cat was not yet on the prowl and thus refrained from biting at the bait so that the butterfly might pink its shears and suddenly sting as in Shangri-La. Despite the mystery ship’s late steamings, however, it could encounter naught but a coaled empty stocking for Christmas Eve--except perhaps their hearing from out the blind the faint, wavering sounds of Tokyo radio, emanating maybe off Christmas Island, playing Hawaiian music, or perhaps the funereal march from Mahler’s Titanic struggle with the ghost, perchance to lull them into the predator’s clause, playing hooky.

Which ship was it on which the sailors sailed on the sea cruise? (No fair peeking, lest you want some coal in your sock next year.)

General Montgomery had chased Rommel's rearguard into the region of Wadi Bei el Chebir, forty miles further west now of Sirte, where he was on Saturday. Thought was that he might make a stand at Misurata, the last chance, in its narrows between marsh and hills of desert winter, to ring the bells of Our Lady, to make any stand at all before Tripoli.

Of the coming of the sailors and soldiers of the Allies to Dakar and its beneficent impact on the populace, reviving it from its attack of encephalitis, was the subject of a third piece. All the youth now were lively, ready to get on and saddle up on one horse, the piece says, after riding awhile on one horse in two or three or even four different directions. There was apparent a new sort of swing in the steps of the youthful exuberants, with the coming of the Allies to Dakar. They had experienced quite enough hardship and wanted now to ride that horse, streaking through the streets proudly.

But, we do have to wonder at a point, about those charcoal-burning automobiles. When the glow worm lights her spark, and a deeper shade of purple is then descending into the heart of the cylinder heads, would that truly bring the hum of the housing bee and become thus the fill-ender or would, quickly, the engine simply go dead?

Secretary of Agriculture Wickard announced that canned goods would be rationed starting in February while grocers protested the early announcement as encouraging of hoarders. The average consumed goods of cans would be reduced from the previous four-year average of 46 lbs. to 33. (Hoarders could probably squeeze a couple to get 33-1/3. You know, 33 lbs. of canned yams and peaches just wouldn't be enough in a year's time to satisfy any growing boy. And any milk-faced li'l custerd who thinks otherwise can can-can on outta here with his sugar down at the empty filling station where no tires are to be had, resultant of the radials in the Pacific, for poor Mrs. Pilamocases and Mrs. Hungdie. Herblock understands how it goes.)

As to the soldier who was injured in West Africa when he fell from the giraffe's neck, as indicated in the little preview part of the page, we would think that next time he would instead seek a ride only upon the nick of a dead giraffe, such as the one euthanized in Cleveland consequent of the August circus fire. For, it is safer to ride the nick in time of August sapience than to nick the time away when the giraffe is a tall one.

This day in history, unannounced obviously to anyone outside a closed circle, President Roosevelt provided the fateful approval, as Commander-in-Chief, for the Manhattan Project.

Twenty-one years and one day later, the Roosevelt Hotel caught fire in Jacksonville, Florida, killing twenty-two people.

Attributed to a smoldering cigarette in the ballroom, the fire occurred a month and a day after the game which enabled the winner to receive the bid to the bowl game occurring the afternoon before, December 28. That prior game of November 28 had been postponed by five days until Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday of that November. As a result, it occurred exactly 21 years after the Cocoanut Grove fire.

On the editorial page, Raymond Clapper says that if he were Congress, he would go out and shoot Santa Claus.

Shoot Santa Claus?

Somebody ought to watch that man. That presents a clear and present danger of encouraging violence against Santa Claus, aiding and abetting a felony. Just awful.

They need stick him in the calaboose or the joint, one.

"Great Deeds" praises the effort of the community for fulfilling, in record amount, The News Empty Stocking Fund, filled fuller than during any previous time in its twenty-odd year run. Despite all the scares and tortures in that time, even the absence of the trade of the strand from the silkworm's winterlude for the iron-scraped goat to make enemy guns, the stockings' still runs, as surely as Byron's Drake floats by the stern wood penter's feud, tapping timbre repeats for resin, which in time becomes amber pane, torn of Pliny-gods' tears, yet a retreat from Tamburlaine and the frozen postal dozen, forlorn those twenty-odd years.

"War Pause" again cautions against either excessive optimism over the initial success, or undue frustration at continued laggard operations, in North Africa, suggests, accurately, that spring might still find the Axis fighting in Tunisia. It reminds that the one and a quarter million Americans deployed overseas by this juncture were yet to form any major offensive, but were, as a result of the inroads produced, now better positioned to mount such offensives in the near future.

Mr. Trent MacKinnon, in his letter to the editor on the ongoing study of the North Carolina criminal justice system, appears to have been familiar with that life ethos: "There is no power in a limping Deacon."

So, a cheery Fourth Day of Christmas to you. What does that one bring? Four church mice perching in the flue's ring off the Norway doorway?

So said Fontella Bass, anyway, in "Renascence of a Nation".