The Charlotte News

Monday, May 4, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Returning for a moment to Saturdays's editorial, "Reverse Twist", referencing the short story by O'Henry, we thought we would refer you back also to a piece on Earl Browder's original conviction and sentencing, appearing January 23, 1940, the ultimate subject of that Saturday editorial, distinguishing the conservative younger generation of UNC undergraduates from the radical left, the socialismos, of the University old guard, including Frank Graham, plumping for Browder's pardon.

Amid the continuing war news on the front page, comes the curious story of the kidnaping in New York City by two New Jersey men of a chemist who claimed to have a particularly good formula for synthetic rubber. (Wethinks he dubbed it "flubber".)

It seems that the two men posed as coppers, and, like, ye know, held the guy at gunpoint so’s he’d turn over the formula, telling him he was under arrest, maybe for withholding valuable information from the government, like, or something—and don’t try no rough stuff, pal. We got ye covered heya wid dis plenty o’ canned heat we got heya.

Then, when they got him to their awaiting car, they gave him a good conk on the head. But, Mr. Sklar, the chemist, was in no mood to see the journey’s end, or to have compromised his valuable formula which he later swore through the fog to police was on him when, unceremoniously, he was grabbed off the street under pretense of martial mien by the two desperadoes, and so somehow escaped the moving automobile and then summoned the attention of the police with his screams for help.

The police promptly nabbed the suspects before they could high-tail it across the bridge.

Mr. Sklar, however, reported that the formula for the rubber was missing from his person.

Probably some I. G. Farben operation going on deya, a bunch o’ Krauts paying the local boys to make a hit on the chemist for the synthetic rubber recipe.

Standard Oil of New Jersey, after all, had already given them the rest of the patents on synthetic rubber, as reported in late March.

The editorial column starts out with a story on which we have already made comment, the 50% higher Navy casualties thus far in the war compared with the first months of World War I, the editorial pointing out grimly, however, that the deaths at sea were already higher than for the whole 19 months of American involvement in the earlier war, and that, moreover, the number of prisoners estimated to have been taken at Bataan far exceeded the 4,500 American prisoners during all of World War I. The overall number of prisoners on Bataan would be double that originally estimated as 35,000.

The second editorial also deals with a story which we previously mentioned, the 700 brave of Bayboro who ventured into the woods in search of the three paratroopers whom two local boys claimed to have seen alight from the sky invasively into their territory.

Best not mess with Bayboro, says the editorial to the Axis, as these stalwarts of the NC coastal plain sported shotguns during their foray. It concludes, similarly to the way we did, that the putatively officious interloping invaders might have been just a Marine contingent from Lejeune on maneuvers. But the Brigadier General from Fort Bragg had said that it was probably nothing, and so it was probably something.

And former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, settling back into some newspaper work after his nearly nine years as Ambassador to Mexico, writes a piece in Raleigh, says another editorial, vociferously declaiming the policy that Army nurses, commissioned officers all, were prohibited from dating non-comms. It stinks and is bunk, he says.

Yeah, you tell ‘em, Jo. What’s a guy gonna do?