The Charlotte News

Friday, August 7, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Not on the front page today, as was typical of delayed news from the Allied battle fronts in the Pacific, was the story that the Allies, for the first time in the Pacific war, had undertaken a major offensive operation, dubbed "Watchtower", to secure Tulagi and Guadalcanal from Japanese occupation. An invasion began on these two points twenty miles apart in the Solomons at 6:00 a.m. About 18,000 Marines landed at Guadalcanal, in a dense, humid, malarial ridden swampy environment--not unlike eastern North Carolina where most of these Marines had done their training in and around Parris Island. The landings on Guadalcanal and air assault on Tulagi were accomplished largely without resistance.

The object of the raids was to gain a foothold at the southern end of the Solomons, to enable protection of the supply route to Australia, otherwise in danger of being cut off by the air and shipping facilities being built by the Japanese, affording safe harbor in the Solomons for bombing and torpedo missions against inbound supply ships and transport planes from Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States.

The struggle for Guadalcanal, while unopposed initially, would turn out to be a long and bloody affair, lasting six months, until early February, 1943, when the island and its immediate area were secured, and throughout the remainder of the war in terms of the Japanese threat to the entire Solomon Islands chain, especially the area to the north at Bouganville. But, the initial landings on Guadalcanal provided yet another turning point, joining the surprise Doolittle raid over Tokyo and Yokohama on April 18 causing loss of face to the Japanese at home, the matching of the might of the Japanese Navy for the first time in the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, and the utter defeat in early June of the Japanese Navy at Midway, costing it the bulk of its carrier fleet, the sine qua non for distant bombing operations, its only effective weapon against the U.S. Navy. Now, Guadalcanal would become the first concerted offensive effort of the war by the Allies. Henceforth, the Japanese would be largely forced to the defensive, losing the ground by inches and yards strewn with corpses dying in close combat which it had gained by miles through the relatively impersonal means of dropped bombs and fired torpedoes during the period of December through early May, when finally Corregidor fell and with it the last foothold of the Allies in the Philippines and the Pacific north of Australia.

But that, along with the taking of Burma, formed also the last major offensive drive accomplished by the Japanese, after the occupation of French Indochina marking the start of the southern Asiatic aggression in late July, 1941, then in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, in rapid succession, the taking of Thailand, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Guam, Malaya, its capital and port Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and finally Burma.

All of this territory, plus the Mandates Japan had been awarded from Germany in the aftermath of World War I, formed a comprehensive region from which resources could both be had and withheld from Britain and the United States, as well as protected and supplied to and fro via the outlying islands.

But, the trick was to hold onto the acquired territory, and in order to do that, the Australian stronghold to which MacArthur had been forced so reluctantly to retreat to build his forces and train his troops, had to be somehow cut off from the supply lanes from the United States. That required a major building campaign of air fields and harbor facilities within the Solomons, northeast of Australia, acting as guardian or predator, depending on who controlled them.

Shipping supplies to Australia in 1942 took several months. Thus, the main avenue of immediate supply of both troops and materiel had to be via air. The range of these large airplanes necessary to transport the troops and materiel was limited at this time. Thus, the great effort was now at work, as reported on the front page, to build mammoth seventy-ton transport planes, dubbed "flying boats", capable of carrying 400 or more troops or an equivalent load of equipment.

On the front page, Max Stephan, convicted of treason and sentenced to hang in 98 days, (someone's miscount of "68" notwithstanding), is quoted as having bet all the tea in China that he would not keep the appointment in Samarra with the executioner. Despite being the first person in the United States convicted of treason since 1794, Herr Stephan won the bet. Whether he got all the tea in China as the booty, we don't know.

His neck would have been a heavy price to pay for wining and dining and providing money and transportation to the Nazi pilot, Peter Krug. He did not actually provide aid, in the usual sense, for Krug's escape--that is to say, whisking him underground to a place of safe haven out of the country. Instead, according to the indictment, he provided "aid and comfort", applying the most literal meaning of that term, consisting: "in his receiving and treating with Krug, in his furnishing hospitality and entertainment to Krug, in his furnishing to and obtaining for Krug money, necessities of life and personal effects, in his harboring Krug, in his concealing the identity of Krug, in his giving false information to citizens of the United States and others with the intent to conceal the identity of Krug, in his arranging for and providing transportation of Krug in and about Detroit, Michigan, and means of transportation for Krug from Detroit, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois, and in his failure to report to proper public and military officials the presence in the United States of Krug; and that [Stephan], when so adhering to and giving aid and comfort to Krug, well knew all of the facts stated in the indictment."

In February, 1943 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, based primarily on its finding that there was sufficient evidence to convict of treason and that therefore the trial court did not err in not granting a directed verdict to the defendant. (A directed verdict is appropriate only when there is no fact issue for the jury to determine, given the status of the evidence at the close of the prosecution's case; that, as a matter of law, therefore, at least one element of the crime charged has no substantial evidence to support it, such that it would be legal and constitutional error, denying due process to the accused, for the jury to render a finding of guilt; consequently, the case may be decided in favor of the accused strictly as a matter of law by the judge.)

Well, we may not like the little Nazi, Krug, or his help meet, Stephan--but, put yourself in their shoes, as an expatriated American living in Germany in 1938: An American is imprisoned at the behest of the Nazis in, say, the Sudetenland. He escapes into Germany. Someone you know calls and tells you that the American needs assistance. You have the means to help. Do you help, risking your neck, or do you give him up to the Gestapo?

No doubt, this entered the thinking of the President when he commuted the Federal District Court's sentence to life imprisonment.

Moreover, with all of the history which had transpired since the last treason conviction in 1794, including the Civil War and the assassinations of three Presidents, it seemed more than a bit anomalous to single out a Detroit restaurateur on such a charge for this relatively innocuous conduct to become the first in 148 years so convicted of the only capital crime named in the Constitution and the worst offense against the United States.

Things had clearly gone too far, the editorial stance of The News, consistent with its recently increasing advocacy of eye for eye justice toward the Nazis, notwithstanding, as once again stated in "Round Won" in the editorial column.

The two witnesses whom the Government produced to prove part of its case of overt acts of treason were Krug, himself, and the friend of Stephan, Mrs. Bertelmann, who first received Krug after his having crossed from Ontario into Detroit by rowboat. Mrs. Bertelmann then called Stephan for help in taking Krug off her hands.

Stephan's worst crime may have been in his choice of "friends". To save their own precious necks, they sang like canaries in the noonday sun.

After all, the Government wouldn't have looked too good seeking the death penalty or even life in prison for a woman. And Krug's duty, as with any prisoner of war, was to escape. To have executed him merely for escaping would have operated to give the Nazis excuse to execute American POW's who attempted or accomplished escape. Thus, to turn these relatively more harmful two witnesses to support of the prosecution's case was, while troubling in the abstract, the only avenue by which, politically, the Government could achieve at least one execution from the lot of them and maintain practicalities.

In any event, the Court of Appeals found that sufficient evidence was provided by at least two witnesses to support at least some of the overt acts alleged to form "aid and comfort to the enemy", and that the charge itself was sufficient to support the charge of treason, such that the directed verdict was properly denied by the court.

For Article III, Section 3 states: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." It also provides that proof of treason requires the testimony of at least two witnesses. The operable statute at the time defining treason reiterated the constitutional definition, adding the qualification defining the potential offending class, "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States", that is, a citizen, by birth or naturalization. As a naturalized citizen, Stephan had taken a specific oath to uphold the Constitution and thus qualified as a member of the potentially offending class defined under the statute.

Krug, a foreign soldier of war, obviously did not so qualify and could not be tried for treason. As long as he maintained his uniform, he qualified, under the rationale adopted by the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Quirin, as a "lawful belligerent", to be treated as a prisoner of war. Once he shed his uniform, he could be deemed a spy or saboteur, an "unlawful belligerent" in violation of the laws of war, and thus subject to trial in a military tribunal for crimes against the "laws of war".

The Supreme Court denied Stephan review.

So, for a little wining and dining, transportation, and help to his fellow former countryman, his neck was in danger of being stretched within a mere 98 days of sentence.

Whether, once he won the bet on his neck not being stretched, he thought of opening a chain of Chinese restaurants to dispose of all that tea and good fortune, we also don't know.

On the editorial page, Dorothy Thompson notes of two reports, one from Berlin, the other from Hungary, within hours of each other, asking for aid in the capture of arsonists setting fires, to apartments in Berlin, to grain fields in Hungary. She posits that the arsonists were not trained saboteurs, as the military objective in Berlin was not present, nor trade unionists, as the immediate object of the arson was too small and insignificant; instead, she concludes by a process of elimination, they were the people themselves, revolting against Nazi oppression.

Some of our latter-day adherents to a Nazi-Fascist philosophy in this country, who wish to manipulate others and dictate to them the terms of their "freedom", acting as private enclaves of "revolutionists", have gone a long way toward turning that accompanying sketch and quote from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" on its head, that is to say making the "Revolt" that of the oppressed Nazi-Fascist in America today, couching instead the goosestepper as the ugly American who dares to stand up for the Constitution and the equality and freedom it promises and assures on no more qualification than that one is a citizen, not necessarily a "good citizen", but just a citizen of the United States. We suppose the credo of this crowd is some homespun maxim, such as, "What's good for the goosestepper is good for the gander." Being a sometimes clever little Nazi-Fascist, however, does not make the Nazi-Fascist any the less stupid in the abstract.

Hey, you who made and participated in "Brother's War", take heed.

"Quote, Misquote" tends to confirm our belief that The News was merely using ironic psychology much of the time in its column when it suggested on occasion that segregation was as a societal plague, to be avoided, while consistently coupling such expressions of horrors with the notion that, nevertheless, the South, of all places, would have the gumption to accept and approach the inevitability of the matter with good will.

Breaking this tradition of irony, the piece this time plainly sets forth its opinion in contraposition to that of Gene Talmadge: The News favored the integratioin of Southern universities and colleges, recognized it as a twentieth century reality which was going to be, one way or the other, either by voluntary compliance or by court orders accompanied by violence.

The sad truth was, of course, that through the 1950's and early 1960's, Cash's closing paragraphs of The Mind of the South would prove all too prophetic, as the better lights, the better attributes of the average Southerner, would not prevail; instead, the violence, the tendency to violence and a hair-trigger temper which stood opposing those better qualities, often coexisting in the same person, would prevail in the streets in stubborn resistance to the twentieth century and stubborn adherence to antebellum ways which, for the bulk of them, never inhered in reality in the first place.

Niggers would, nevertheless, eventually take their place right alongside redneck white-trash honkies in the classroom.

And, not surprisingly, these niggers and honkies would more usually than not get along. So would the Japs and Chinks and Spics for the most part, too. Even the Kikes and Wops, you know, the Hebes and Greaseballs.

Smoke on your pipe and put that in.

"One, Please" comments again on Czar Petrillo's attempt to lock up the music with one-tme plays for radiator dues. You could play it once, but then the radio station had to break it.

A bunch of stupid redneck honkies, professing to be "Christian", in the South in 1966, decided to take Caesar at his literal word, and burn records because one member of a popular musical group declared that they were more popular than Jesus. In truth, their religion was not that of Christ but that of Caesar. Eventually, the same insane mindset shot dead on the streets of New York the member of the group who had made the offending statement, fourteen years later.