The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 2, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page today tells of the apparent final approach toward Alexandria by Rommel, as El Alamein appeared ready to fall into the hands of the Nazis. It was the last stand by the British under its new commander, General Claude J. E. Auchinleck. He chose to make it in the last of the turf available in a forty-mile wide corridor between the Mediterranean and the Qatarra Depression, the latter supplying protection to the British left flank. A few miles beyond El Alamein, the Depression ended and the desert opened up, permitting flanking maneuvers from the south. Things appeared dark for the Allies now in North Africa for the first time.
A censure vote was held in Commons to determine whether Churchill still had the confidence of the government. It was, despite, or perhaps because of, his candid admission that matters appeared nearly disastrous in Egypt, overwhelmingly in Churchill's favor, 475 to 25, with 115 abstentions.
With Sevastopol about to topple in the Crimea, the Nazis for the first time appeared to be on the threshold of control of the entire Mediterranean and the Black Sea, with the rich oil and timber deposits of the Caucasus soon to be at their command, followed by the oil fields of Iran and Iraq. An isolated Turkey stood little chance but to become a Nazi satrapy, to permit use of its territory for crossing to the Middle East.
As the piece by De Witt MacKenzie instructs, the entire fate of the world therefore might well depend now on the outcome of this desert battle 65 miles west of Alexandria in a forty-mile wide stretch of sand.
Another piece reports on the eight spies who came to American shores by submarine, with intent to establish a major spy network within the country. They were to be tried before a military tribunal; the death penalty would be sought. The apparent swift and certain justice awaiting the eight was just as the editorial of Monday in The News, "Shooting Time", had counseled was the fit and proper, eye for eye.
On the editorial page, Dorothy Thompson agrees that the firing squad is the only way to abate Nazi spying.
"Glad Farewell" sums the fateful month of June, having started with the heartening news of overwhelming victory over the Japanese at Midway, now ending unkindly in the gloomy shadow of potential defeat in Egypt and the loss of Sevastopol in Russia, thus harbinging loss of the war itself, or at least defeats which would, as Paul Mallon predicts, lengthen the war by a couple of years.
The piece from The New Yorker advises against a too yellow cuisine, exhorts the diner to variegation on the plate. But what about a cheese and yellow pepper submarine? Or is it for take-out too late?
And, to top it all, from Beck Creek comes an item announcing there the presence of a black rabbit dog with a crooked hind leg--which must have been exceptionally crooked, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Moreover, it had a three-toed foot to boot.
Bad news, as they say, comes in three's.
Framed Edition
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