The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 18, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The most interesting item to strike us on the front page this date is the news from Sweden of the prospect of another early European winter, indicative of good tidings for the Russians once again and, by equal drifts, of harsh forebodings for Hitler and his wearying troops fighting toward Stalingrad and deeper into the Caucasus, where they could and would become quite trapped by the winter.

But the madman of Berlin once again took no heed of the weather man or of history and the ill fate which had awaited his predecessor and model for the grimly sadistic crimson valley into which he now had led irretrievably his people. Even the previous year’s lesson, fresh in the mind to any sane person, had somehow been pushed completely out of the awareness of Herr Hitler's Wolf cries' Lair.

The editorial column begins with a summary of the news to date on the twelve days of fighting thus far in the Solomons. Being unduly reliant on government reports, it is incorrect in its rosy assessment of the fighting, not being informed of the terrible loss on August 9 at Savo Island. The reports were uniformly telling the story only of great naval and air success, which the landings themselves had been. But the public was therefore led into a belief which would soon have icy water thrust over it with the fierce engagements about to begin to hit the press, telling a much different story. The Japanese were nowhere close to being ousted from the Solomons, would indeed continue to occupy Bougainville to the north for the remainder of the war; moreover, the struggle to maintain the toeholds acquired in the southern Solomons, on Guadalcanal, with its magnificent and nearly complete airfield built by the Japanese, and on Tulagi, with its harbor facilities, would become a bloody fight for yet another five and a half months.

"B’tt’r Up!" finds Burke Davis relying on his immediately previous stint as sports editor for the newspaper, delivering up some rumination regarding the necessity of surname abbreviation for the Major League Boys of Summer in order to fit them within the allotted typeface space for boxscores--Joltin’ Joe—hey, hey, hey--became "D’M’gio" while one of his two brothers, Dom, also a power hitter who could steal the bases with the best of them, was translated into "Di’gio" or "DiMag".

It gives us to wonder, for later history, why it wasn’t the reverse. But, that’s another story.

You would have to admit, whatever you may have thought of her, that she did pack some mighty large and finely tuned bombshells. In fact, they could have called her the Bronx Bomber instead of Joe Louis.

Anyway, we won’t even begin to try to figure out who those others were at the end of the piece. Mr. Davis, himself, packed a very vivid imagination, we are quickly discovering.

Or, perhaps it was just his readers over time.

Or, perhaps it was something in Charlotte’s drinking water.

She had a very good press agent, obviously, too. That helped, regardless of the bombshells, even in 1950. Lots of the girls had them and, nevertheless, never got beyond Schwab’s counter, at least, not too far beyond it.

Dorothy Thompson talks about C.O.I., founded July 11, 1941, the office of propaganda. She was concerned as to what the United States was broadcasting to the Axis countries over its propaganda shortwave system and found it disconcerting that no one seemed to know outside the director of C.O.I., whose identity no one seemed to know. It had been of course "Wild Bill" Donovan, but he had on June 13 been transferred to new duties as the first Director of the O.S.S. on E Street, just off the Potomac, the first government organization devoted strictly to intelligence gathering as well as analysis, and formation and transmission of counter-intelligence, the latter having been the sole function of C.O.I.

The Office of War Information supplanted C.O.I. in June and, as was well known, Elmer Davis, former CBS radio announcer, was its head. So, what Ms. Thompson, apparently, did not understand was that there was no longer any C.O.I. C.O.I was now morphed and reorganized to become the broader O.S.S. with some of the propaganda functions of C.O.I. left to the more benign O.W.I.

On the other hand, was Ms. Thompson now playing the part of journalist-mole for O.W.I.? Was she giving false information by rhetorically addressing questions to which she knew the answers herself?

Well, Langley says, "Number 9," Higgins.

Or, maybe we misread the sigint. It may have been "88", as in an Olde Mobile.

Well, she really did have nice bombshells on the front, the Olds, that is, didn’t she?

We’ll let you figure out Paul Mallon and Ray Clapper for yourself.

We are suddenly, for some reason, in the mood for some good seafood, so we are going to cut this short.

The "Visitin’ Around" duet seem best to be summed by the time-worn expression: "My mommy said not to put beans in my ears."

Beans, better have some beans.

Beans.

Speaking of which, we read that Alias was picked up recently for loitering in a neighborhood somewhere, when a neighbor called in anent some stranger loitering in her neighborhood. Alias, naturally, had no id. He lost it in the Flood.

Well, the copper, who was probably blowin’ in the wind, or at the kettle, or purple glass onions maybe, had never heard of Alias, it seemed, being a mite too young to be forever because he was so much older then, and so Alias had to be brought to his entourage for id. Whereupon, they provided him voucher for id. And he was undetained.

The point, however, and the reason we mention it, is that, under our Fourth Amendment, on the books for awhile now, and which applies everywhere in the country, even in that neighborhood, without probable cause, sir, to believe that a crime has been or is about to be committed by an individual, requiring something more than mere suspicion, you have absolutely no right to stop, detain, or ask Alias or anyone else in this country of ours for id. You best undergo some more intensive training, sir.

We suggest that the copper Chief there start with lessons in Alias’s musical catalogue. Then, progress to the reading of a Supreme Court case out of Berkeley, California, long about 1983, we think it was. Name escapes us. Look under "Alias".

Also, we suggest, take the beans out of your ears. Listen to what you’re missing.

No offense, sir.

And, perhaps, go here.

Now, for some of that seafood.

Hey, hey, hey.

Incidentally, we apologize for the fuzzy print again on the editorial page. We had to retreat to that one for the better version having had too much of its left side excised in the expedition back from the Kilimanjaros. That fuzzy print, by the way, in the lower left and upper right of "B'tt'r Up!", in case it is too fuzzy, says "S'livans, F'klins, and K'n'dys".

Oh, one more thing: burn after reading. But don't tell anyone that you read it. Eyes Only. Hush-hush and on the Q.T.

Wood or wire?