The Charlotte News

Monday, August 17, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports of the conclusion of a four-day conference between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow--notable as a rather remarkable chance taken by the Prime Minister for its requiring that he fly through the war zone in a B-24 Liberator, even if likely accomplished by the North Sea route, steering somewhere south from the vicinity of Murmansk, not, obviously, by direct flight over Germany and Poland, at least we assume so.

Or, was the B-24 too high-flying a bird for the anti-aircraft fire and the guns of the Messerschmitts and Stukas to find in their sights?

Was it invisible to the naked eye, made so by the special infrared light kept onboard?

Anyway, in the words of Mr. Churchill, "any child in the street" understood that about which the conference pertained and so we won’t condescend to your intelligence regarding its pertinence. But, we do have to ask rhetorically whether, at least initially, Comrade Stalin had on his mind something of the notion, "I will not play any more," unless, at least, he was guaranteed the opening of a second front nearer to his venue of fighting than the Solomons.

Regardless, he was, no doubt, now promised one, that second front opening, and so was quelled any talk of unilateral surrender, which would have broken the pact of the United Nations not to perform any separate peace with the Axis. Whether that reported contemplation had in fact been considered is not confirmed. Whatever the case, Russia fought on bravely, largely alone and isolated from Allied aid.

The Maikop oil fields in the Caucasus, reported as captured by the Nazis August 9, had been nevertheless thoroughly destroyed by the Russians in their retreat, the Russians now protecting the oil fields at Grozny further south in the region.

Meanwhile, Clark Gable, distraught after the loss of his wife in January in a tragic airplane crash in Nevada, reported to duty, unheralded, in Miami as an Army private, at the time actually beginning Officer Candidate School in the Army Air Corps. He graduated and was assigned to duty making a film about combat in the air forces bombing German and French targets out of England and Northern Ireland, "Combat America", a film with his own narration which he eventually completed in 1944. (Incidentally, we don’t know how "Gus" got in there. We thought he had been shoved overboard by the Nazi rower and left to be consumed by the sharks. But, maybe, he was picked up after all by some fisherman just out to frustrate the little Nazi’s plan at sea. (No offense meant to the cinéma vérité skills of Walter Slezak.))

To Mr. Gable’s credit, unlike most Hollywood "heroes" of the day who, by the studios’ insistence, never got much beyond making Hollywood propaganda films in their "combat roles" as "soldiers" in the armed forces--somehow a future President zaps our mind--, Mr. Gable, a mere 41 at the time, actually flew on combat missions, narrowly escaping death in one episode in which the plane caught flak. He was eventually promoted to the rank of major, received the Distinguished Flying Cross, and took a voluntary discharge in the summer of 1944, only after he received no further assignment in the aftermath of D-Day, largely through the pressure of his studio to assign him to less risky duty. He then went about the process of completing the editing of the film he had been amassing during his tour of duty.

The dress rehearsal rag was just about ready in the desert of Egypt to afford the sandy way to the actual performance, we are informed, as the American pilots were now ready to occupy their roles right alongside the experienced RAF bombardiers to let Rommel have it.

And a Canadian Naval Reserve officer, imprisoned after the fall of Hong Kong in December, tells of the gross mistreatment and that, even far worse, of others by his captors, the Japanese. Emaciated to the point of near non-existence, he saw no choice but to risk sure death in escape, and managed it. He will report more on his harrowing experiences tomorrow.

And a little preview tells us of a report by syndicated columnist Dorothy Dix issuing the hope that the war might ultimately result in getting her fellow women out of pants. It would so be for awhile—but, oh, only for awhile.

Scarlett had a tendency to live on, nearly interminably it would seem, in the consciousness of the culture, as did Rhett.

The editorial page finds Raymond Clapper urging production of weapons for the long-haul he foresees the war being, not one by any stretch of the imagination to be won and done in 1942.

Though he would not live to see the production and deployment of the ultimate weapon, its secret production, for good or ill, the weapon which would finally be necessary to end the killing in the Pacific, an ultimate weapon which ironically would bring about and insure the world peace for the most part for the decades ensuing, was in process of beginning in the New Mexican desert.

What the world might have become without its deathly basilisk stare, instilling with its stony gaze fear into the most courageous of mere mortals, conscience into the most scoundrelous of those who thought themselves among the immortals, no one may say.

A pharmacist writes eloquently of the problems voiced over the glass versus paper cup controversy of a few weeks earlier. Among other suggestions, he votes for recycling bottles via their recorded issuance and charged deposit redeemable upon their return. He had been in the drug occupation around the soda jerkers for forty years, he tells us, and ought to have known whereof he spoke. The practice, he perpends, would have the triple beneficent attribute of avoiding those broken bottlenecks on the road, insuring against undue dents in the provisioning of glass and paper, while curing the necessity of choice between a glass for the Coke or a paper cup for the Pepsi by allowing for the returnable bottle for ROC Cola, dusted properly and sanitized after being brought down the dirty road in filth from nowhere by the nasty Chevy delivery truck, or, clean as a hound’s tooth, brought to by the Ford.

He counsels the conspicuously displayed or advertised slogan: "BUY IT IN BOTTLES--IT’S SANITARY".

Well, we most certainly agree. Just look at those people sometime slavering their lips all over those glasses and those slime-ridden paper cups which are served at picnics and probably other gatherings unmentionable, likely first poured full of saliva by slaverers at the factory where they are produced before reaching with apparent innocent salubrious appearance your own certainly sanitary lips and tongue, deceptive as it may well be.

Be sure and thank the gentleman pharmacist, therefore, whenever you drink from a well-sterilized recyclable plastic or glass bottle, or, should we say, in former parlance in the parley, your oil-flask.

Dorothy Thompson tackles those strange symbols around Mitchel Field on Long Island, the arrows allegedly pointing out air bases and other defense facilities and the tail of the number "9", (or "6", should you be flying upside down), putatively pointing to an air base--possibly, we divine, the air base from which she says she was given privy to view at length, four months afore the public got their first gander, the photos of those purported symbols meant to guide enemy bombers to target, that being the base at Langley Field in Virginia, near Washington. (We think that the "number 6", when played forward, actually said, "Turn us off to color film, Nixon." But that’s classified and so do not try it.)

In any event, Ms. Thompson bemoans the fact of the release of these photos to the general public with the clean bill of health given them by the Army, scrubbing the supposed symbols of the taint of any but accidental production, removing from them any hint of enemy connivance in facilitating by them the finding of fields in New York on which to drop eggs or eggmen.

Ms. Thompson’s cognitive dissonance over the episode appears to derive from the fact that the story was planted in the press by a former Hollywood press agent, Major Lynn Farnol--or, as she prints it, "’Major’ Lynn Farnol--for his having been originally of that Brown Derby ilk, promoting his properties, and so carrying the notion right into the armed forces, protecting the reputation of the Air Corps rather than the country’s welfare by providing a hot story to the Pavlovian press, always salivating insatiably for some more hot salami from Schwab’s, served probably with a paper cup, though we were not "there" to know, and certainly not so as to be ascribed indubitable "knowledge" of the fact.

Well, that all said, you may read the rather entertaining editorial column of Mr. Davis today for yourself, especially stressing his prescience exhibited in "Any Day Now" (which, we believe, later on became a song). Not that we have anyone in particular in mind as the subject matter to fill the stead of the otherwise, and not so, apocryphal names this editorial provided. Nor do we mean, of course, to lay it to the Republican Party as being particularly and solely deserving of the charge of dish soap selling. For, of course, they are one hundred percent pure, those in the chambers, that is. (Whether it relates in any way to Idaho, where it snows quite often in winter, or Nebraska, where it is likewise sometimes in winter, we could not say; for mum is the word.)

"No Taboo" gets a little testy with Mrs. Roosevelt’s somewhat agitated response to reporters’ questions regarding the likelihood and immediacy of inception of establishment of a second front. Says the editorial, the people have a right to be anxious to establish the thing in order to get the bigger thing behind them. Mrs. Roosevelt had suggested that the desire was for proper preparation such that the lessons of Dunkerque would not have to be fatally repeated.

The whole thing, however, we suggest, may well have been the result of a misunderstanding of the questioners’ intent in asking about the second front. Instead, it might have been the case that these were merely fashion reporters asking, essentially, the First Lady whether she intended soon to make a new fashion statement to the nation. But, we don’t know, for we were not there for that one either.

In any event, First Ladies, too, have the right to lose their tempers, and that includes former First Ladies as well, including former First Ladies who sometimes channel former First Ladies.

That was, again, should you have missed it the first time, incidentally, Langley Field in Virginia where Ms. Thompson first saw the photographs of the number "9" formed by sacks of grain (or perhaps, as it were, Orient pearl), (or perhaps, as it were, a "6"), back in April, 1942, released to the public via newspaper dots in August, 1942.

We shall endeavor to discover some actual, on-the-scene photographs of these heiroglyphs--" ۩" "≥" "≤" "▲" "▼" "₲₳₱" "☻" "☼" "₦" "☺☻" "♂ ♀ ♥" "►◄AΩ" "©©®"--, and the "9", to purvey to you in the future. We understand that John Cameron Cameron was on the scene at the time and will be providing a downdated report to us from the upstream.

Well, without further ado, here they are, once again, ladies and gentlemen, right here on our stage--quiet down, now--back for yet another visit to America, singing their latest in a series of whopping chart toppers, "I Was the Otter in U-Her's Humpty-Dumpty Sealed Eraser-Head", and, the simultaneous release, "Aloha, Ahola"--the Pribilofs.

Yes, well, thank you, that was terrific. But, this could be their last appearance. We'll let that be.

And, now, we shall have played for you the Star Dangled Spanner, to close the concert beneath the full moon's harmony and understanding of Zarathustra, displaying or, as it were, betraying, to your eyes Mare Serenitatis, nearby Sinus Asperitatis.

By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than Man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes; spin our eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters would out-spin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.

Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd:
How many fall as sudden, not as safe!
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home.
Of human ills the last extreme beware,
Beware, Lorenzo! a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that delib'rate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled.
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of Man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.

--from Night Thoughts (of Nine Nights), by Edward Young, 1642

Quickly, now, Higgins, nine times nine?

Or, should we say, Tobacco Planter on Tobacco Road? Huh? Howzabout it, Higgins?

Ourselves, we'd rather be a Sparrow than a Quayle.

Boo.

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