The Charlotte News

Wednesday, May 20, 1942

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page tells of the clearing of Senator Walsh of Massachusetts of charges of having frequented a "house of degradation" wherein soldiers and sailors were plied for information about defense of the country.

Gas rationing, affecting thus far only seventeen Eastern states, was set to be extended in June to Oregon and Washington, and consideration was being given to applying the plan nationwide in order to conserve rubber.

Meanwhile, Congress was taking a pass on rationing with its X-card unlimited allotment, to take care of constituent needs back home. Raymond Clapper on the editorial page lets Congress have it on this point, demonstrating that sharp press criticism of the Congress as a whole body, even in the thick of the largest war in which America has ever participated, is certainly not novel or the creation only of post-war pens.

Stuart Rabb offers a by-lined piece on Congress’s dutiful hearing of Senator Harry F. Byrd’s parade of statistics on annual government expenditures per department for chauffeur-driven transportation, with a view to offering rationalization for the Congress continuing on the X-ration: if the executive branch was spending so profligately for transportaion, then Congress should have the right to have as much gas as it needed to tend its transportation needs.

"Our Preceptors" in the editorial column echoes the sentiment of the Clapper column while treating the subject more lightly, finding a fit moral among Aesop’s fables in the errantly walking crab which needed guidance and found none.

The Crab and Its Mother

A CRAB said to her son, "Why do you walk so one-sided, my child? It is far more becoming to go straight forward."

The young Crab replied: "Quite true, dear Mother; and if you will show me the straight way, I will promise to walk in it."

The Mother tried in vain, and submitted without remonstrance to the reproof of her child.

Example is more powerful than precept.

The front page reports that the Allied Air Command, now combining the RAF with American pilots, some of whom had been flying with the RAF prior to direct U.S. involvement in the war, announced that expansion of air raids over Germany and France was in the offing, with the goal of being able to send a thousand planes per night.

Another letter to the editor arrives on Mr. Derr’s "to hell with the U.S.A." comment in regard to the Union County Democrats banning African-Americans from membership with the goal of denying their right to vote. This one suggests that Mr. Derr should be in Germany where the letter writer predicts he would quickly go the way of the Jews.

This sort of notion is problematic. It is to say: "I am a solid patriot. All the way U.S.A. To hell with anyone who merely expresses difference with me or my country. My country, right or wrong. Anyone who disagrees in time of war is a traitor and should go to their death at the hands of the enemy. That’ll teach them." This sort of person posits himself or herself as embodying the country, that to criticize the country is to criticize the individual citizen of it, ignoring the while the most fundamental tenet of this country, freedom of speech, (again a topic of Paul Mallon’s column this date). That, we think, is the essence of the feeling conveyed by such expressions and it is wrong-headed. It is proper to disagree with the sentiment expressed by Mr. Derr. But it is not proper in so doing to ignore entirely the point of his own argument, merely focusing on the one sentiment expressed, and then excoriate him for its expression. It is curious to note that no one thus far, other than Mr. Derr, had written a letter simply condemning the Union County, S.C. Democrats for what they did, the most unpatriotic thing imaginable, to deny citizens of the United States the right to participate in the political process as they please. Who’s the traitor? Who’s the patriot?

A judge in Wichita decided, the editorial page tells us, to utilize a creative punishment for speeders, loss of one tire per ticket. Guess the really unlucky ones would wind up having to move, maybe, to Sparks, Nevada. In any event, the city would be well supplied.

Anyway, they didn’t know it yet, but even with their gas-guzzling behemoths of the day, there were ways to get around more economically and in a more environmentally friendly manner than by using gasoline. It is good to see someone trying now to make a difference. The auto manufacturers and oil companies have had since 1970 to mull it over and have come up with precious little. We drove a spiffy little roadster during the 1970's which got 30 mpg, still not bad mileage even today, 36 years after we bought it. That is an absurdity in itself. And we are obviously running out of time on the planet, as the polar cap continues to melt apace.

World War II, as Henry Wallace said in 1942, was the war to continue the People’s Revolution of the age. Shall we begin to honor that notion and thereby truly honor the dead who sacrificed their lives in that and the other wars to maintain freedom and democracy, rather than merely using their sacrifice as launching pads for more profligate living and destruction of the world for which they died fighting to preserve? The war of the Four Horsemen was not one so that we might have more horsepower under the hood at the reins of the carbon burner. Yet, from one viewpoint, it could certainly be viewed precisely that way by its ultimate results thus far.

It is a continuum, this history of mankind, not merely points on a spectrum or stories written down somewhere. And every revolution of the earth brings forth new inhabitant events to that continuum, some resultant from man, some resultant from nature, beyond the immediate control of man. We have a choice as to how each such inhabitant event caused by each of us will either instruct or debilitate that continuum.

After receiving from FDR the day before the Congressional Medal of Honor, now Brigadier General James Doolittle continued to insist to reporters that the origin of the airplanes he led in the raid on Japan was, as the President had said in April, Shangri-La. He stated all planes and crewmen landed safely and refused to comment on the report that one crew had landed in Russia and been interned. The report was true. And two full crews had been captured or killed in the ditching of the aircraft in China, two having died in the crash and the remaining eight captured. But Doolittle was not lying; he did not want to compromise the safety of the captured prisoners by exposing the fact to the press, enabling thereby the Japanese potentially to use them for propaganda purposes.

As we mentioned previously, through no fault of Doolittle, his own crew was saved by John Birch, the young missionary working in China who, after, on Doolittle’s recommendation, he went to work for the O.S.S. and then was killed by Chinese Communists in an incident in China shortly after the end of the war, had the unfortunate fate posthumously befall his memory and name of being adopted by the infamous reactionary organization. While Mr. Birch was a vehement anti-Communist, he should never be confused with the activities of his namesake society which had nothing at all to do with him personally.

III.

No thought of peace, no thought of rest,
Assuaged the storm in Roderick's breast.
With sheathed broadsword in his hand,
Abrupt he paced the islet strand,
And eyed the rising sun, and laid
His hand on his impatient blade.
Beneath a rock, his vassals' care
Was prompt the ritual to prepare,
With deep and deathful meaning fraught;
For such Antiquity had taught
Was preface meet, ere yet abroad
The Cross of Fire should take its road.
The shrinking band stood oft aghast
At the impatient glance he cast;--
Such glance the mountain eagle threw,
As, from the cliffs of
Benvenue,
She spread her dark sails on the wind,
And, high in middle heaven reclined,
With her broad shadow on the lake,
Silenced the warblers of the brake.

IV.

A heap of withered boughs was piled,
Of juniper and rowan wild,
Mingled with shivers from the oak,
Rent by the lightning's recent stroke.
Brian the Hermit by it stood,
Barefooted, in his frock and hood.
His grizzled beard and matted hair
Obscured a visage of despair;
His naked arms and legs, seamed o'er,
The scars of frantic penance bore.
That monk, of savage form and face
The impending danger of his race
Had drawn from deepest solitude
Far in Benharrow's bosom rude.
Not his the mien of Christian priest,
But Druid's, from the grave released
Whose hardened heart and eye might brook
On human sacrifice to look;
And much, 't was said, of heathen lore
Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er.
The hallowed creed gave only worse
And deadlier emphasis of curse.
No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer
His cave the pilgrim shunned with care,
The eager huntsman knew his bound
And in mid chase called off his hound;'
Or if, in lonely glen or strath,
The desert-dweller met his path
He prayed, and signed the cross between,
While terror took devotion's mien.
 
...Before the dead man's bier he stood,
Held forth the Cross besmeared with blood;
'The muster-place is Lanrick mead;
Speed forth the signal! clansmen, speed!'

XVIII.

Angus, the heir of Duncan's line,
Sprung forth and seized the fatal sign.
In haste the stripling to his side
His father's dirk and broadsword tied;
But when he saw his mother's eye
Watch him in speechless agony,
Back to her opened arms he flew
Pressed on her lips a fond adieu,--
'Alas' she sobbed,--'and yet be gone,
And speed thee forth, like Duncan's son!'
One look he cast upon the bier,
Dashed from his eye the gathering tear,
Breathed deep to clear his laboring breast,
And tossed aloft his bonnet crest,
Then, like the high-bred colt when, freed,
First he essays his fire and speed,
He vanished, and o'er moor and moss
Sped forward with the Fiery Cross.
Suspended was the widow's tear
While yet his footsteps she could hear;
And when she marked the henchman's eye
Wet with unwonted sympathy,
'Kinsman,' she said, 'his race is run
That should have sped thine errand on.
The oak teas fallen?--the sapling bough
Is all Duncraggan's shelter now
Yet trust I well, his duty done,
The orphan's God will guard my son.—
And you, in many a danger true
At Duncan's hest your blades that drew,
To arms, and guard that orphan's head!
Let babes and women wail the dead.'
Then weapon-clang and martial call
Resounded through the funeral hall,
While from the walls the attendant band
Snatched sword and targe with hurried hand;
And short and flitting energy
Glanced from the mourner's sunken eye,
As if the sounds to warrior dear
Might rouse her Duncan from his bier.
But faded soon that borrowed force;
Grief claimed his right, and tears their course.

XIX.

Benledi saw the Cross of Fire,
It glanced like lightning up Strath-Ire.
O'er dale and hill the summons flew,
Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew;
The tear that gathered in his eye
He deft the mountain-breeze to dry;
Until, where Teith's young waters roll
Betwixt him and a wooded knoll
That graced the sable strath with green,
The chapel of Saint Bride was seen.

Here’s a true story. When we were very young, we used to build scale model automobiles. The first one we ever built, in January, 1960, was a 1960 Lincoln Continental which we had received for our birthday that year. We had already received, since the 1957 model year, four successive Fords, already assembled and painted for us. But this 1960 Lincoln was the first one we had to assemble.

We did a fair job of it, but for the wheels. We had thought that the outer half of the wheel was supposed to be glued to the inner half and then the wheel cover glued on top of that sandwich, as with a real car. It came out looking a bit awkward, with the wheel covers protruding a quarter-inch out from the tire, as if a big weight were attached to each wheel. Didn’t look right and we were very displeased with the result as a whole because of it.

Then, we got our second yet-to-be-assembled model the following fall, a 1961 Ford convertible. We encountered the same problem with the wheels though, repeating the mistake, thinking to ourselves as we did so, while we watched "The Naked City", that surely the same problem of protruding heavy-laden looking wheels would occur, but not understanding quite how to avoid the result and still proceed safely down the road. For without the outer half of the wheel hub, the wheels surely would come right off.

On our third one, a 1961 Thunderbird, we discovered that if we left the outer half of the wheel rim off completely and simply glued the wheel cover directly onto the inner half, the car would look fine, even if, in the real world, that would pose a bit of a problem for the driver, unless they were wire wheels, that is.

A few months later, we even managed, with significant effort, to pull apart the glued together wheels which we had improperly meshed together on the Ford and Lincoln, even prying off the wheel cover from the outer half of the wheel, an operation quite unmercifully resistant to our fingers, one requiring enormous patience to make the extraction. But, when we were done, they both looked snappy, just like the ones on the road of that day.

Over the next four years, we built about 200 of these scale model automobiles, and became progressively better at it. We never repeated the mistake of the heavy wheels again.

Eventually, though, we tired of the redundancy of the task, and then started instead using our shekels to buy records. They go ‘round and ‘round, monotonously so, but each one sounds different, at least mostly so, from each of the others. Cars all sound more or less the same, at least when powered by internal combustion engines, even if they may look a little different from one another.

And if you knew what was under the hoods of each of them, you would see that, in reality, they are pretty much all the same, nothing particularly mystical about it. You won't miss the v-roooom of the internal combustion engine. Not really.

As we said a couple of years or so ago, if you should, record the sound and pump it through your speakers. Indeed, a good sound man could even rig a computerized volume and speed control on your pedal, and you could vary not only the pitch of the engine, but have all the engine sounds you want, including a throaty Ferrari, including a tremulous guitar, in your natural gas/electric car which runs as long as you want without recharging by virtue of its regenerative engine which, in cycle, after 80 miles or so on electricity, replenishes its batteries via its generator while running on natural gas the while until the recharge is complete.

If a 1959 Lincoln Continental, at 2.5 tons and 19 feet of heavy steel, can get over 50 mpg, as they say that old tin can can, most automobiles running on this form of technology, built on post-1960's standards of lighter weight, could probably achieve twice that, at least.

The question, of course, as always, is cost, and enabling enough of a market for new widgetry such that the cost may be reduced by volume. But as we also suggested a couple of years or so ago, in 1982, had someone come to you and stated that by 1989, not only would the Cold War be ending, but that the vinyl phonograph record would be largely obsolete and off the store shelves completely, you would have laughed and said, especially as to the latter notion, that such a sayer of sooth was nuts. The record manufacturers, indeed, might have wanted to string up that person for threatening their business.

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