The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 17, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page discloses that General MacArthur had been forced by the President to leave the Philippines for his own preservation and remove his command to Melbourne. He left reluctantly, at first vowing instead to quit his command and rank and join the Filipino forces as a common foot soldier. Over the course of the previous three weeks he was talked into it for the very reason that the front page editorial asserts, to preserve his much needed command skills against the enemy and to prevent the Japanese from utilizing his capture for propaganda. He would return, later in the war.
His successor, General Jonathan Wainwright, would soon be forced to surrender on Bataan and begin the long forced death march to the north.
On the domestic front, the AFL and CIO agreed for the duration of the war to submit to collective bargaining, mediation or War Labor Board resolution of wage disputes and abandon strikes as a means to achieve higher wages.
On the editorial page, "Snakes in Eire" uses the occasion of St. Patrick's Day to urge Prime Minister De Valera of Ireland to abandon neutrality and allow the British and Americans to use bases there against the Nazis.
"A Handful" provides a reminder of how to interpret front page news coming from the Axis nations: for alleged captures, use a divisor variable from 8, as typically employed by Germany, down to the 4 typifying Japan; by equal factors, multiply the claimed limit of losses.
Just what "Study Success" counsels, we couldn't tell you. It appears frustration with the war effort had so begun to wear on the nerves of columnists that they were beginning to get fuzzy-headed and advocate by implication totalitarian tactics of the type rated successful in Russia by the piece. Whether it was, strictly speaking, those tactics, or whether it was a combination of a fierce winter to which the Russians were more accustomed than their unwanted house guests plus the fact that the war was in their own backyards, or an amalgam thereof, is difficult to descry. But more likely, it was the latter combination than the dispiriting totalitarian tactics which, after all, were employed by equal or greater measures to and by the Nazis and Nazi generals the Russians were fighting.
Whatever the case, those sorts of tactics were obviously not ones which could be or should have been followed by either Britain or the United States in order to win the war. Such a war won thusly would not have been worth winning, the result, the same for victor as loser, totalitarian habits being hard to attenuate once allowed to a privileged few over the acquiescing masses.
Indeed, it is probable that the curtailment of freedoms in the country as constrained by the war and the attempt, by those with the consequent privilege of authority within the thusly transformed authoritarian mode of society, to continue those strictures into the 1950's, was that which led to the need for expansive re-democratization of society in the latter 1950's and especially into the 1960's, a re-democratization which inspired both the civil rights movement and the youth movement or anti-war movement, each receiving their impetus from the other, each receiving their inspiration from Gandhi's satyagraha in India.
In passing, we should note that Gandhi eventually abandoned the notion of passive resistance and instead conceptualized satyagraha as spiritual force or a force of soul--that is, we take it, a moral imperative, a moral force, that intangible advantage which adherence to democratic principles, though slower and more painstakingly achieved over time, has over the roughneck methods of Stalin and Hitler and other totalitarian regimes described in "Study Success". We might in fact study such success, but only to know what not to do to achieve any real success which is the least bit lasting through time.
Paul Mallon writes of the coming German offensive, probably a month away from beginning, as the thaw in Russia takes away the harsh winter which had been such a friend to the native population. Mr. Mallon indicates that it is hard to know the Russian chances as their armies do not allow reporters along for the ride, but that the one intangible on their side was the primary psychological factor, dispelling the previous notion of the resistless Hun warrior under Hitler, dashed forever by the fierce winter counter-offensive of the Russians in play since early December, primarily the work of Marshal Semeon Timoshenko. Yet, the same was said of the Russian Army itself after its prolonged fight against the under-equipped and undermanned Finnish in late 1939, early 1940. So, the tale was not yet told. It would continue with siege and fighting for yet another two and a half years.
The piece from Time recounts tactics from the guerilla's manual. It sounds as much like a juvenile's bag of Halloween tricks run amok as preparation for a Hun or Japanese invasion force. Wire across the road good to trip motorcycles?--Steve McQueen, take two.
Framed Edition
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