The Charlotte News

Tuesday, July 7, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The editorial page tells of Myrtle the stubborn mule, who refused to give up the ghost, having been with the Army during the Pershing punitive expedition seeking Pancho Villa in 1916 at age five.

"The Correct Answer" tells the story of the U-boat crew brought to a small North Carolina coastal town by the Coast Guard. While being inspected in line, the captain hauled off and hit one of the Guardsmen upside the head, whereupon another Guardsman, fearing imminent mutiny, promptly shot the recalcitrant. The editorial considers it appropriate punishment, again showing the turn of heart and mind increasingly now extant in this time of war: shoot first and ask questions later.

Was it correct under the circumstances or was it further evidence that the world was allowing the likes of the little coward of Berlin, the little Empress of Tokyo, gradually to slip it down the gangplank, to the edge of the chasm of madness?

A mule to be shot was saved by a compassionate colonel in Arizona; yet, in North Carolina, a U-boat captain, a human being, even if not much of one, was summarily executed for slapping a Coast Guardsman in the head.

Unprovoked justice? Provoked madness?

"Big Sandman" reports of British Eighth Army Commander, General Auchinleck, and his last stand in that forty-mile stretch of sand at El Alamein, between the Devil of the Qatarra Depression and the Deep Blue Sea of the Mediterranean.

"Cover-Up" complains of the apparent blackout of news reports from the Aleutians, the condition of which appeared now to the home front worse than that which was being reported, the four sunk destroyers at Kiska and Agattu presenting indicators of larger concentrations of Japanese forces than previously intimated by military information officers to the press.

The apparent cover-up, however, was not in this theater, which was not such a hot spot as it turned out, certainly not one with heavy Japanese troop concentration; the cover-up, if that is what it properly may be called, rather had occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea and MacArthur's erroneous information of an overwhelming victory being disseminated in its wake.

But, in so doing, did MacArthur and his erroneous information provide the necessary impetus for esprit de corps, if you will, to carry the day at Midway a month later, even if deluding the public in the process for the duration of that month.

Of what do we speak? This esprit de corps? Attend a basketball game sometime where the home team is the overwhelming underdog to a pre-determined superior opponent, and you will understand the vibration, that palpable vibration of esprit de corps, which the Nazis, the Fascists, and the little Empress's retinue could not possibly ever understand--for when the mind is brainwashed into compliance, enforced into compliance on penalty of death or dishonor, the motivational complex at work is not that of esprit de corps but rather mere robotic obedience to Will. There is a profound difference. Will wears off in due course, turns to drunkenness and finally mutiny, the sense of anomie, a failure of normative behavior, giving way to anarchy and death, that death is the inevitable result of the folly in which that Will to triumph is unremittingly engaged to the end, that there is no end but sweet death; esprit de corps, by contrast, is born of the eternal bond of faith.

Eventually, the Allies would figure that out all over again. For the nonce, however, anger, seeing red, brutality for brutality, was the order of the day in the United States in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor--understandably so, just as it was for some time after September 11, 2001. But, there comes a time when emotion must step aside and rational thinking must intervene lest the entire war be lost by becoming that which was being fought.

Nothing, no event, no day, changes time forever. That is just hype to keep you watching to sell you more cornflakes. Forget about it.

If World War II did not change time forever, if the American Civil War did not change time forever, then nothing will save the end of time itself. Certainly not the knocking down of a couple of buildings by 19 punks with razor blades for pitiful weapons. Forget about it.

The culled piece from Nation's Business narrates the tale of Breezy Wynn, Knoxville businessman who suddenly became a barracks bag manufacturer overnight and made a huge success of the matter, providing record manufacture to the Army of their much needed barracks bags.

Everybody's talkin' 'bout baggism.

Paul Mallon gives much deserved praise to the stalwart Russian defenders of Sevastopol, who in defeat nevertheless took with them their fair share of Germans to the great hereafter in a stand reminiscent of MacArthur's Philippine forces on Bataan and Corregidor, of that of the bewitched Wake Island Devil's Brigade of leathernecks in December--no retreat, no surrender. The mindset was becoming infectious among the United Nations, esprit de corps.

The front page today provides figures on the dead and wounded during the war in China at the end of its fifth year. Competing figures were offered: the Japanese claimed five million Chinese dead, wounded, or missing, with 2.3 million of those claimed as dead, against 111,111 Japanese killed; the Chinese claimed a million Japanese had been killed with 1.5 million wounded and 30,000 taken prisoner in the fourteen major engagements of the war and over ten thousand skirmishes. It was also estimated by the Chinese that the Japanese had 900,000 men presently fighting in China with a thousand planes available with which to wage the fight.

The eventual official estimates of military dead from combat, as adopted by General Marshall after the war, were 2.2 million Chinese for the full eight-year war, and 1.5 million Japanese in all theaters of operation. Thus, apparently the truth of the figures released by each side at this point was questionable, the truth lying somewhere in between the extremes thus offered. The numbers, as with the dead in Russia, become blindingly abstract after awhile. In both of those ugly theaters, China and Russia, the blood ran as rivers on all four sides of the stream, the Yangtze, the Don, the Dneiper, the Volga, all overflowing with blood as nowhere else before war's end.

Another piece tells of American planes comprising one-fourth of the RAF's foreign operations and 13% of those in the United Kingdom. But only two percent, primarily Americans, of the pilots involved thus far in RAF operations abroad were from the Allies outside the British dominions, 7% within the U.K.

On the Russian front, it was reported by the German High Command that the Nazis had captured Voronezh, key midway point between Moscow and Rostov on the crucial rail supply line to the south sought to be captured by the Nazis. The capture had not been confirmed by the Russian Tass news agency.

It was also reported by the German High Command that Rzhev, 120 miles to the west of Moscow and closest point to Moscow presently threatened by the Nazis, had fallen after being tenaciously held by the Russians during the winter counter-offensive.

Another piece announces a Federal crackdown on the American Bund, headquartered in New Jersey. Fifty-seven of its highest ranking officers were the object of the charges, involving primarily failing to register for the draft and conspiracy to counsel other Bund members to resist the draft.

Fritz Kuhn, former head of the outfit, was already in prison. Subsequent chief Kuku, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, had been recently arrested in Mexico and extradited to the U.S. to answer to an indictment under both the Selective Service Act for failing to register for the draft and, in Connecticut, pursuant to the 1917 Espionage Act, based presumably on conspiracy to counsel others to resist.

The assistant attorney general assigned to the case was quoted as saying the object was to wipe out the Bund.

Was it fair and appropriate to target the Bund leadership?--no matter how dishonorable and unpatriotic their motives or despicable the organization's constituency, one which W. J. Cash once called "cattle". A war for the very survival of world democracy was being waged daily abroad the world against totalitarian forces arranged in conflict with the democracies and with forces deployed in active combat as with no other time in the history of the world, before or since.

But was it not at that time that the Constitution was standing its supreme test in the history of the Republic?--at least, as with no other time since the Civil War, when open sedition and rebellion in the South fell squarely within the contemplation of the exercise of extraordinary emergency powers granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, insofar as that section grants exception to the general prohibition of suspension of habeas corpus when either open rebellion or invasion is afoot.

Neither could be claimed, however, in the present instance, at least insofar as the Bund was concerned. The eight recently captured Nazi agents who had gained entry to the United States via U-boat present a different issue, as to whether that constituted invasion, and thus whether the curtailment of their rights by presentation of charges against them before a military tribunal, as opposed to an ordinarily constituted Article III Federal district court, was not therefore authorized under the exception of Article I, Section 9.

As to the Bund, the issue becomes selective enforcement. Was the Government unfairly targeting Bund members and not others guilty of the same offense, failing deliberately to register for the draft? There were cases of ordinary citizens so refusing to register which were being duly prosecuted and so the answer to the question is probably in the negative.

We simply raise the issue.

The second major question arising out of these facts is whether Kunze had been in Mexico a year earlier when Cash died at the Reforma Hotel. A whole host of questions then arise from it. Was he involved with the Nazi spy network in Mexico? That network remained extant at least until February, 1942 when 242 arrested spies were deported to Germany. Does his presence there in 1942, albeit as an American citizen, imply continuing Nazi spy activity conducted from within Mexico? Recall that in May 1942, Mexico, having had two tankers in rapid succession sent to the bottom of the Gulf by Nazi U-boats, had declared war on the Axis.

In Egypt, Rommel's line was reported now to be bent like a fish hook, the southern end of the line at El Alamein having pulled back in the face of the British counter-offensive. (Whether it was a Cartier fish hook, as in "Lifeboat", we don't know.)

Another story tells of future 1960 Republican vice-presidential candidate and future Ambassador to South Vietnam under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Senator and Major Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., having led an American tank battalion in a confrontation with Rommel's tanks in Libya on June 12, just a day before the surprise attack on Tobruk. The Americans were successful in knocking out nine Nazi tanks before being forced to abandon their tanks at Tobruk and retreat to Cairo where the crews joined the British effort now defending El Alamein.

Senator Lodge, of course, was defeated in his 1952 race for the Senate by Congressman John F. Kennedy.

By sheer coincidence, while in the supermarket the other night, we ran across a movie of which we had never heard before, "Sahara", made in 1943, starring Humphrey Bogart as an American sergeant, tank commander, who was fighting with the British in June, 1942 at the fall of Tobruk. We purchased the movie and watched it just two nights ago, again by pure serendipity.

The story traces the crew's receipt of orders to retreat south to Cairo to defend El Alamein, and their various struggles and encounters in the torturous journey across the Libyan desert in search of water. Dan Duryea and a young Lloyd Bridges are also in the film, (though no ripe young tomatoes or cabbages appear in this one, as in "Casablanca", so don't expect romance, kid).

While nowhere is Senator Lodge mentioned in the movie, it is thus plain that the incident it relates was based on the tank battalion he commanded. (The President had recently ordered all Senators and Congressmen serving in the military to return to Congressional duty, and so, as the piece points out, Senator Lodge was back at his post in the Senate, having served his country heroically in the Libyan desert.)

Well, we mention it. It is another of those curious things we run across from time to time here, perfectly dovetailing the accounts contained within the pages of The News, as if scripted somewhere in the mystical ether beyond our perception.

Last night, we saw a report that a book is soon to be published which has it that an American widow and her brother-in-law had an affair, one other than merely of friendship, at a time shortly after the widow lost her husband to gunfire in her presence, in her arms. We won't dignify this trashy book further. She served her country honorably, both before and after she became a widow in the worst way imaginable. Her brother-in-law gave his life for his country at a time when he could have served honorably and comfortably in the Senate rather than risk speaking out on what he believed was an unjust war in Southeast Asia as well as the injustice obtaining every day within America, the poverty, the inequitable distribution of wealth, the deprivation of basic civil liberties to some. That is their legacy, each of them. It is also quite unfair to their living relatives to set such reckless and tempestuous rumors afire, rumors which have absolutely nothing to back them up but reckless hearsay and subjective impressions.

Here is a picture we found, replete with all kinds of implications, should one wish to make them. But, in all likelihood, it is simply a man who cherished doggies, who had a way of taking him back to his childhood--just as we recall him in one of his few visibly human moments after obtaining the White House in 1969 that following Christmas playing on the floor with his red Irish setter.

The point being that you can parade still pictures, even moving pictures, before boobs and make all kinds of absurd conclusions from them which do not have anything to do with the reality behind them. A picture in some instances may, indeed, communicate a thousand words. In other instances, it may be just a picture, a snapshot in time, saying little more than what is superficially present in the instant, a moment of affection, nothing more, nothing less.

Here are photos of former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., snapped separately on November 22, 1963, upon being informed of the tragic news of the assassination of President Kennedy. What do they mean?

Another piece on the front page tells of the appointment of American Major-General Carl Spaatz as the new commander of American air operations in Europe. The piece points out that he held a record, established in 1929, for longest continuous flight time, 150 hours flying in circles around Los Angeles in "The Question Mark". Whether he flew with the Mysterians is not told.

Anyway, it don't come easy, those beau coups of blues. The Porter said that. Or, maybe it was the Man in Black.