Site Ed. Note: Aside from bombing raids on Sousse and Tunis in the northern sector of Tunisia, all was quiet in the fighting there, reports the front page.

Heavy fighting continued in and around Kharkov as the Nazis moved closer to recapturing it, to occur Tuesday. The Red Army continued its thrust westward from newly recaptured Vyazma.

The report of Marshal Petain being near death from a stroke at age 86 was, as it turned out, premature. He would live until 1951, to suffer his proper post-war disgrace for selling out France to the Nazis in 1940 to save his own precious hide.

Again, a piece speculates on the reported madness of Hitler and his possible death or removal from power by the generals and placement in an asylum.

But, Germany itself was an asylum; Hitler, as we have indicated, had long since died and also gone insane all at the same time.

So, what was there about which to speculate?

--I can’t be sure. We wouldn't wish to make a premature diagnosis of a mail-order sort, as it would violate the traditions of the practice of psychiatry, you see. And so, I shall say that starting a war on paranoid delusions, old chap, and killing Jews by the wholesale, and such and such as all that, while certainly indicative of dissociative, anti-social behavior, still could not, traditionally, be assessed as mental illness, necessarily. For, what is mental illness? If Germany thinks him, within their gestalt, sane, then he must be considered so by that standard. Shouldn't he?

--What's that?

--Oh, bloody hell, of course. Some common street killer of the scruffy variety, why sure, that human trash are quite anti-social and absolutely insane, albeit not in a legal sense. But, let us talk again of Hitler whom, indeed, is quite an interesting specimen of humanity and really not such a bad chap when boiled down. Before the war, he pleased many a royal personage, did he not?

J. P. Morgan died. You can't take with you, nor may you buy off death.

On the editorial page, Raymond Clapper suggests that Ambassador Standley might be called home from his post in Russia after precipitating the criticism of the previous week with his remarks that the Russian people were not being told the truth regarding the amount of U. S. Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union. In the Admiral's stead, he recommends such stalwart industrialists as the Russians tended to like, former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, Wendell Willkie, or General Patrick Hurley, each of whom had been received and treated well during their time in the country, the latter two having made recent goodwill visits during the previous year.

Mr. Clapper asserts that Britain is on better terms with Russia than America, despite enmity between Churchill and Stalin personally, because Britain had been taught by Churchill to accept Russia as a practical ally, without ideological overtones or respect for its system of government. Indeed, among the paraphrasing set out by Mr. Clapper attributed to Churchill from latter June, 1941, is left out the Prime Minister's most memorable statement made in Commons: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would be willing to put in a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

America, suggests Mr. Clapper, was in need of the same spirit, to take the steam out of those so stupid and pro-Nazi as to find an unholy alliance in alliance with Russia for its suggestion of ideological alignment with Communism.

Samuel Grafton, also focusing on Soviet-U.S. relations and the remarks of Admiral Standley, opines it of little moment in determining amicability between the two countries whether the Ambassador were to “coo as a dove” or growl adjectively and mercilessly at the Russians as a bear. What was of concern was when and whether a second front would be opened on the Continent. Only that would resolve the dilemma of weakening Russo-American relations.

"Open Treason" recommends harsh treatment of anyone who would in fact betray the country in time of world war by fulfilling the threat not to pay taxes, a threat said by a tax collector in Cleveland the previous day to have been uttered by "thousands" of workers in that city.

"A New Life" praises the three-week visit of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, begun February 17, just ended, finds that she had done mighty service in engendering a new opinion of China and its populace in the American people. Special notice was paid by the columnist to the fact that Madame Chiang was so well received at Wellesley that the college relaxed its traditional ban against its women students wearing slacks, allowing Madame Chiang her traditional Chinese habit. The piece then wonders, however, whether that break with tradition would be in the future one cherished or despised.

Of course, much talk had been made already during the war on the changing fashion among American women, eschewing dresses in favor of more practical wear with the onset of the war, the volunteering of women to the armed services and going to work in war factories to replace men drafted or volunteering for the service. So, Madame Chiang was not so much a trend-setter in this regard as a trend-follower.

Perhaps a great deal of Madame Chiang's problem in understanding how democracy actually works in practice, that one does not kill one's political opponents, was that, from her time as a Georgian, she conceived herself to be an American Southerner--some of whom, historically, the more moneyed the more likely, often fail to understand the underpinnings of a democracy and how the concept of equality of rights and opportunity are not merely hollow phrases to spout in a debating society but must either flourish in fact, not by anyone's permission but by the Constitution itself, or the democracy wilt into revolution and chaos, much as did Chinese society under the militaristic rule of the Chiangs.

"J. P. Morgan" chronicles the life of the financier without tears or incivility.

You can't take it with you, nor pay your way out of death.

Query whether, after the age of the "little man" as the piece terms it, from the Depression on through the war and afterward, the coming of the great American middles class in the 1950's through early 1970's, with the beginning of the OPEC Crisis in 1973 and onward into the double-digit inflation and interest rates of the late seventies through the eighties, as deregulation in that period allowed graft and corruption to thrive in commerce to levels unheard of since the days prior to the New Deal, the meltdown of the savings and loan associations in 1990, the current mortgage crisis of the last festering five years and more, we have not as a society let in the door a period of new robber baronry like no other since the 1920’s--leading precisely to the financial collapse finally noticed by our astute governing body in Washington only too late in the fall of 2008, costing then the taxpayers the better part of a trillion dollars to try to restore.

Whose restoration? The new robber barons? The fraud committing mortgage companies who bleed good people of their homes and futures in order to vacation from their terribly demanding paper-shuffling jobs and large houses and fine cars on their pleasure cruise, as the rest of us remain lucky to be able to afford a spin around the block to buy groceries?

We still wonder.

The letter writer's probably apt, if somewhat convoluted, analogy between the process of dissolving oil in water by adding an emulsifier first to the water in the form of gum and then slowly dropping in the oil to form an homogenous mixture and the process of sending money to North Africa to try to mix small amounts of democracy with Vichy Fascism, causes us to wonder whether the mixture might form an ersatz petroleum sufficient to crank an automobile.

As the quote of the day was inadvertently excised when the page was plucked from the machine, we instead offer the following:

LUCE

[Within] What a coil is there, Dromio? who are those
at the gate?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Let my master in, Luce.

LUCE

[Within] Faith, no; he comes too late;
And so tell your master.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

O Lord, I must laugh!
Have at you with a proverb--Shall I set in my staff?

LUCE

[Within] Have at you with another; that's--When?
can you tell?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] If thy name be call'd Luce--Luce, thou hast
answered him well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Do you hear, you minion? you'll let us in, I hope?

LUCE

[Within] I thought to have asked you.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] And you said no.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

So, come, help: well struck! there was blow for blow.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Thou baggage, let me in.

LUCE

[Within] Can you tell for whose sake?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Master, knock the door hard.

LUCE

[Within] Let him knock till it ache.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

You'll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down.

LUCE

[Within] What needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town?

ADRIANA

[Within] Who is that at the door that keeps all
this noise?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] By my troth, your town is troubled with
unruly boys.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Are you there, wife? you might have come before.

ADRIANA

[Within] Your wife, sir knave! go get you from the door.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

If you went in pain, master, this 'knave' would go sore.

ANGELO

Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome: we would
fain have either.

BALTHAZAR

In debating which was best, we shall part with neither.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome hither.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

You would say so, master, if your garments were thin.
Your cake there is warm within; you stand here in the cold:
It would make a man mad as a buck, to be so bought and sold.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Go fetch me something: I'll break ope the gate.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] Break any breaking here, and I'll break your
knave's pate.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind,
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] It seems thou want'st breaking: out upon
thee, hind!

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

Here's too much 'out upon thee!' I pray thee,
let me in.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

[Within] Ay, when fowls have no feathers and fish have no fin.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Well, I'll break in: go borrow me a crow.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS

A crow without feather? Master, mean you so?
For a fish without a fin, there's a fowl without a feather;
If a crow help us in, sirrah, we'll pluck a crow together.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.

BALTHAZAR

Have patience, sir; O, let it not be so!
Herein you war against your reputation
And draw within the compass of suspect
The unviolated honour of your wife.
Once this,--your long experience of her wisdom,
Her sober virtue, years and modesty,
Plead on her part some cause to you unknown:
And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse
Why at this time the doors are made against you.
Be ruled by me: depart in patience,
And let us to the Tiger all to dinner,
And about evening come yourself alone
To know the reason of this strange restraint.
If by strong hand you offer to break in
Now in the stirring passage of the day,
A vulgar comment will be made of it,
And that supposed by the common rout
Against your yet ungalled estimation
That may with foul intrusion enter in
And dwell upon your grave when you are dead;
For slander lives upon succession,
For ever housed where it gets possession.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

You have prevailed: I will depart in quiet,
And, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry.
I know a wench of excellent discourse,
Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle:
There will we dine. This woman that I mean,
My wife--but, I protest, without desert--
Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal:
To her will we to dinner.

To Angelo:

Get you home
And fetch the chain; by this I know 'tis made:
Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine;
For there's the house: that chain will I bestow--
Be it for nothing but to spite my wife--
Upon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste.
Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me,
I'll knock elsewhere, to see if they'll disdain me.

ANGELO

I'll meet you at that place some hour hence.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS

Do so. This jest shall cost me some expense.

--from The Comedy of Errors, Act III, Scene 1, William Shakespeare, circa 1593

Not reported this date and the following day, the Krakow Ghetto was liquidated with the Jews walled therein deemed fit for work transported to concentration camps by the Ghetto's Gothic commandant. The remaining 2,000 not able to work were summarily machine-gunned.

Among the Ghetto's survivors was nine year old Roman Polanski.

Framed Edition

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