The Charlotte News

Wednesday, December 30, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that photographs recently snapped of Der Fuehrer addressing his little Nazi enclave on November 8, to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, betrayed the little corporal as having grown, alas, corpulent, in a sickly sort of way, replete with double Chin. In his case, the irreversible Deadly Sin had its physical manifestations.

Perhaps Herr Hitler took Vice-President Wallace's recommendation quite too literally and figured that if a quart of milk per day was good for health, a gallon or two might be that much better. Since, we have heard, it is a sedative, Der Fuehrer perhaps then simply fell asleep at the switch at the crossroads he envisioned for us all, in Ragnarok.

Notwithstanding the letter to the editor from Mr. Goodin from Friday, U. S. soldiers were shown, in a survey conducted by the Office of War Information, not to be heavy drinkers. Camp commanders generally voiced the opinion that there was greater sobriety among soldiers than in the Great War, attributing the phenomenon to the on-base availability of beer with 3.2% alcohol content, whereas no alcohol was allowed on base during World War I. Generally, the report concluded, the present barrack-room was the best behaved during wartime of any previous army in the country's history.

Terrible and The Owl, in Chicago, were downcast after being arrested by the G-Men. They got caught napping and had a rude awakening with megaphones blasting in their ears. "Wake up, Touhy, Banghart! Vacation’s over. This is the screws talkin'. Time to go back to the joint!"

They had been flying too high--on the milk.

In Russia, the Soviet army was reported to have captured from the Nazis Kotelnikovski, vital rail link from Stalingrad to Rostov, while Col.-Gen. Vatutin was leading his troops against another destination, presumably Millerovo, the target for the previous ten days, to cut off the other primary rail link to the north connecting Rostov to Voronezh and Moscow. The fall of Kotelnikovski took away a vital supply link to the German forces staging the siege at Stalingrad, 113 miles northeast of the fallen supply depot. Russian forces were moving steadily southwest toward Zimovniki, 42 miles away, the next population center on the rail line.

General MacArthur, the day before, had borrowed a leaf from the handbook of Joshua Chamberlain in his stalwart defense of Little Round Top during the second day of the Battle at Gettysburg, in employing the technique of "refusing the line", a swinging door maneuver, to clear out the remaining stubborn Japanese clinging to positions around the Buna airstrip on the Papuan Peninsula in New Guinea. Indications were that the maneuver was successful in forcing the Japanese into a penned position along the coast, stuck between surrender, death, and swimming to Truk or New Britain.

Sir Neville Henderson, Britain's Ambassador to Germany during the Munich crisis, leading to the fateful “Peace for Our Time” pact of September 30, 1938, died in his sleep in Britain at age 60. No cause was mentioned. He predicted accurately in February, 1941 that Hitler would finally "scuttle himself".

Of course, Cash had predicted likewise on September 1, 1939 and had called the Munich Pact rubbish no later than its ink was dry.

In any event, with Leon Henderson having announced his resignation the previous week from his position as head of the Office of Price Administration and Neville Henderson having succumbed to death by presumably natural causes, it would appear that Pablo Fanques's fair was fast at work somewhere among them, deep down in the earth‘s hidden crevasses.

We have, incidentally, clipped for you the William L. White series of articles on the Pacific theater, abstracts from his book They Were Expendable, anent the American soldiers, fighting under Douglas MacArthur, left to fend off the vastly outnumbering Japanese forces from December 7 through the fall of Bataan April 9 and Corregidor May 7. The series will begin on Monday, as stated in the preview part of the page. (You will get the funny paper section again in the bargain. Don't expect too much comment on that though; it drives us a little wacky to read it and try to put all those little pictures together.)

New York syndicated columnist Alice Hughes, according to another preview, which we won’t provide, suggested to the uptight masses that they have a yoga party. You go. We’re already upside down enough.

On the editorial page, "Rebirth" celebrates the new élan vital breathed into a previously moribund France, with the joinder of the French to the Allies in both Dakar and in French Somaliland during the previous week. The French in North Africa were now fighting bravely alongside the Allies again, fighting as Poilus, defeating the Boche as they did so. Even the death of Admiral Darlan, the piece says, demonstrated the intolerance of collaborators within the cadre of the Fighting French.

"Prayer Day" announces the coming New Year's Day collective prayer, to be led by the President, a prayer offered for victory in the war.

We could, of course, in hindsight, be cynical and say, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition". But, we could also be pretty much either dead or in concentration camps or forced to wear little Swastikas around and raise our arms in salute to our Nazi lordlings several times each day.

So, Prayer Day may have had its point at this crucial junction in history.

"Paper War" condemns the bureaucratic roller mill which required redundant approval for every last regulated act in the country, citing the "irresponsible" rumor that the paperwork necessary to be filled out in triplicate, whenever an employer wanted to raise his employees' wages, received, in the chain of command, its final approval from Fala.

If, to dispute the notion of the rumor's apocryphal nature, anyone has an approved document with a dog's pawprint next to the Seal of the United States from the period 1942 through April 12, 1945, we would venture that it is probably worth a fortune--provided, of course, you could establish complete and uninterrupted provenance back to the author. Whether the FBI kept pawprint records, however, in those days, remains a little doggo.

Raymond Clapper reminds the taxpayer that you cannot spare nickels--or dimes--when a war needs to be won. He cites the necessity of obtaining, at any price sought, mica from India for radio equipment, diamonds from South Africa for boring bits, and rubber from Brazil and Haiti, all to supplant supplies formerly provided from the Pacific territory now held by the Japanese.

Samuel Grafton counsels clarity for the Allies, similar to that employed by the Russians. He puzzles rhetorically over the successful defense of Stalingrad against the crushing press of the Wehrmacht during the fall. He answers his own query with the evident facts that the Russians had utilized a simple but effective strategy characterized foremost by clarity: the cutting off of the bridges over the Volga to the rear of the city, despoiling at its bridgehead all conception of retreat, instilling in its stead, in stark weathered relief, an immutable but simple dilemma, fight or die; the willingness to bomb their own defensive positions to obtain destruction, in close proximity, of the advance lines of the enemy; defensive warfare by day and offensive warfare by night, utilizing snipers to deplete enemy positions behind the sandbags and within the buildings of the enemy-controlled sectors of the city.

Mr. F. W. Ward writes sensibly in answer to Mr. Goodin's Christmas Day letter which denounced the Demon Rum as a sweeping pandemic of worldwide alcoholism. Mr. Ward urges instead support of the troops in a fight for their lives and the lifeblood of the democracies of the world.

The OWI report, referenced on the front page, allays all fears with advocacy for 3.2 beer.

As to the second snippet in the "Visitin' Around" section, we note that in "Nosferatu", the 1922 German version, a bad mistake was made when someone cut their finger slicing bread, thus baiting the vampire. So, we hope that Miss Harrison locked her windows and doors that night in Poplar College (good thing it wasn't one of those Transylvania items) and maintained beside her bedstead a hammer and wooden stake, or at least a crucifix to hold before the gleaming, bloodthirsty eyes of Nosferatu.

To Hetty Green: Good Riddance.

"The Payoff" bemoans the problems besetting the City Sanitary Department under the guidance of Superintendent John Barbee, troublesome from the time of his original appointment to the position. But out of the morass, fueled by rumors of licentious conduct in the trash department, came, said the piece, a salubrious lesson, arguing against delegation of power by the City Council to a superintendent of a specified department.

All of which brings us to wish to you a Merry Sixth Day of Christmas: Six ganders golden, sitting atop the post-holiday trash by the curb emboldened, all smashed and broken, awaiting morning pick-up.

Ye Fala?

Salt water. It good for glass.

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