The Charlotte News

Thursday, May 7, 1942

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Incidentally, further research has determined that the Sandhill Citizen, providing that little piece, "Lady and a Fox", on December 27, 1938, is located in Aberdeen, N.C., near the better known Pinehurst, and reportedly was the first newspaper for which former New York Times reporter and columnist Tom Wicker worked. Mr. Wicker, a native of nearby Hamlet, which also provided the world with John Coltrane, was one of our favorites of the old commentariat appearing weekly on "David Brinkley's Journal" a few years ago.

For the second straight night, reports the front page, the RAF bombed Stuttgart, the principal target being Bosch, the supplier of electrical parts for the planes, tanks, and transport vehicles of the Reich’s defense.

A small Nicaraguan merchant vessel was ripped in half by a U-boat. As if that weren’t bad enough, the survivors reported that for their cargo of exploding bananas, being barely able to walk on the decks afterward. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the fourteen survivors who made away in a lifeboat only had three cigarettes to share among them. Hill and gully rider...

Undersecretary Robert Patterson of the War Department stated that the rubber shortage outside the necessary stockpile set aside for military use had become so acute that "Sunday trips, visits to Cousin Joe, and petting parties" must end. The first two, we might imagine, were fairly dispensable to the public, but when it gets to the point where rubber is so deficient that one can’t even have a petting party, goodness, what’s the world coming to? Guess those folks would just have to be content, in lieu thereof, with staying at home and reading The Jungle Book.

On the editorial page, there is the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to Herblock, specifically for a cartoon, appearing in The News March 11, 1941, reprinted on today's page. The omitted caption accompanying the original panel stated simply, "British Plane".

The Wave, by the way, also makes a cameo appearance on that page, among the letters to the editor. (Well, well, well, he'll make you...)

"War Blight" indicates North Carolina cotton mills’ willingness to turn to bagism, provided they were given the opportunity to bid on government contracts to that end.

"Union Manifesto", ostensibly about the Union County Democratic Party’s decision to continue to bar African-Americans from membership in the party, in an effort to bar them from voting in the State of South Carolina, broadened its symbol to include the nation, where Northern Democrats exploited the African-American vote and Southern Democrats too often sought to ban it completely.

Of course, the piece does not point out that the African-American fared no better under the Republican banner. Indeed, should he have been permitted to vote in the Republican primary, he would not only have not received any hope of achieving economic and political equality, but would have received for his vote a paternalistic pat on the head and return to Rochesterville to shine the rich industrialist’s shoes at wages inferior to that provided under the Democrats. That is so because the white worker did little better under the Republicans of the day. The Republicans’ idea of equality was to have everyone except the favored few, dirt poor. It still is.

Paul Mallon indicates that a reliable source had informed him that the Soviets, shrewdly and in deliberate self-interest, had, prior to Pearl Harbor, assured Japan that they would not attack Japan or permit the U.S. to use Vladivostok for the purpose should Japan attack the United States. In return, Japan reportedly had promised to continue to honor its mutal non-aggression pact with Russia and not attack at Vladivostok. Mr. Mallon suggests this strategy of mutally assured non-destruction to have been only wise on the part of Stalin, and suggests it as a pattern for the United States, to consider its own interests first.

He does not suggest thereby that aid to Russia should be curtailed, recognizing that the Russian front against Germany had to be maintained at all costs, lest the whole of Europe, England, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, would be at Hitler’s beck. Indeed, a primary reason for the Stalin assurances to Japan, which, no doubt, were given, was to avoid having to divert men and supplies to the Pacific theater, thus diluting the available strength to exert against Germany in the west. With the vast distances between fronts and the lack of ease of mobility within Russia’s frontiers, Stalin did not want a two-front war.

Nor, in fact, did the United States want Stalin to have to wage a two-front war. The war in the Pacific was a naval and air war; Russia’s strength at the time lay in tenacious ground fighting, not in naval or air strength. What the Soviets could have readily loaned to the matter at the time in the Pacific was negligible. Providing a staging ground for Allied planes and ships to operate from Vladivostok was certainly viable, but whether, on balance, its triggering, as it would have, retaliatory action by Japan, would have improved significantly the opportunity of the Allies to attack Japan sooner and with greater air and naval strength, perhaps even avoiding the necessity of use of the bomb in 1945, rests only in the realm of cold conjecture.

It is of doubtful significance: America could not defend the Philippines but for five months in 1942, so far from home. What difference then would there have been at Vladivostok? The likelihood is that it would have been just another Japanese conquest or at least a diversionary bloodbath for Russian troops sorely needed against Hitler.

Nor does it suggest that Stalin had any advance warning on the precise nature of the attack at Pearl Harbor. Throughout the fall of 1941, everyone, including the press, understood the likelihood of an attack by the Japanese; it was just a matter of when and where and in what form the attack would take place.

VI.
Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:


VII.
I saw or dreamed of such,--but let them go--
They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams;
And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so;
I could replace them if I would: still teems
My mind with many a form which aptly seems
Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
Let these too go--for waking reason deems
Such overweening phantasies unsound,

And other voices speak, and other sights surround.


VIII.
I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with--ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
The inviolate island of the sage and free,

And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,


IX.
Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it--if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,--
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar.


X.
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honoured by the nations--let it be--
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me--
'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.'
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted,--they have torn me, and I bleed:

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

--from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth, by Lord Byron

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