The Charlotte News

Thursday, October 16, 1941

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Chapter 2" complains of the potential benefit to the isolationists and Nazis of the perceived inconsistency between reports initially disseminated by the President and Navy on the Greer incident and that which had just come out over a month later from the Navy, the first having claimed that the U-boat which attacked the Greer had fired first without provocation, the subsequent report having clarified that the Greer spotted the U-boat via sonar from a report of a British reconnaissance plane, followed it for a distance as hound to fox, and only then was attacked, released depth charges in response, to which the U-boat responded with another torpedo, whereupon the Greer released more depth charges.

Candidly, we see no substantial variation: the Greer was merely following the U-boat in international waters, protecting the convoy from attack when the sub fired its first torpedo. What is the difference in that and an unprovoked attack?

If you saw a known burglar in your neighborhood crawling through the sewer, his modus operandi for entry to the neighborhood, and you were part of the vigilante committee, followed the burglar--or, for that matter, a plumber--via your special ground-penetrating radar device as he crawled along through the sewer, and then the burglar suddenly raised up through a manhole cover, fired his bazooka at you and re-submerged, whereupon you went to the manhole cover and dropped a hand grenade which you happened to have on your person down into the sewer, who fired first?

This was war against the Nazis. It seems a bit picayunish to be overly parsing the matter with such print-picking. Perhaps, indeed, the Administration released the slightly varying reports to stimulate some controversy to heighten awareness of the attack in the hope of getting more of the public aware of the acute danger, stimulating Congress to act by issuing a declaration of war. Whatever the case, that did not occur.

Again, we ask: who was to blame?

The letter to the editor of Methodist Bishop James Cannon, responding to the brief editorial of September 2, "Missionary", which took him to task for his statement associating, as if struck fulgurously from resistless preordination by Auld Hornie, the soldiers' truck with the vice of alcohol and, according to the Bishop, the concordant and necessarily consequent flagging of the ladies of the rainy days and evenings, the editorial tersely concluding that the Bishop had, as was his habit, a uniformly low opinion of the nation's young men.

The Bishop rejoindered to this 98-word editorial, exclusive of the quote, with virtually his whole column-length self-defense, extolling the virtues of young men generally while condemning the demon rum as the source of all such illicit vice as he mentions. He indicates that the reporter who took down the quote, Pete McKnight, another friend of Cash--one who used to live with Cash in the Frederick prior to Cash's marriage, and who reported that often on Saturday nights he would go to Cash's room to find his Garrard turntable tone arm flicking mercilessly to the inner groove, having perhaps succumbed to the ear-pounding pressure after playing in competition for the swing-ladies across the hall the theme from "Apocalypse, Now!", that is the "Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner, one of the Volksmeisters of his day--had misquoted the Bishop, albeit, the Bishop assures, inadvertently, by inserting a critical "when" before the "half-lit-up", that being indicative, he says, of the soldiers' dram-induced inarticulation--or, anyway, that they had unwittingly acquired from the moonshiner a good dose of the rads from the bar of radium the moonshiner used in the lead radiator in which he boiled his sorghum-slicked concoction for the masses and molasses kept away in such dry places as Mecklenburg of the time from any other ready reserve as found in the wet counties at the state-controlled ABC store preserves.

For, it is our experience in observation that most such wayward partakers of the intoxicant vapors, and otherwise spirituous inebriants, could scarcely be said to be "half-lit-up". No. Either they are fully lit up, or, in a more stabular, even constabular, variety of conditions of kicking in the stall, quite darkened down--that being the inevitable scene, usually in black and white, where the glass drops from the involuntarily outstretched hand to the floor, as the camera pans down, initiating the viewer to the inner working demon passing through the veins of the thusly unconscious subject of its workings, spilling the substance all about in that fateful concluding flash by the sprockets at the end of the movie where the demonically-induced subject finds his or her final destiny by dint of the grasp from the frothy dog of the hair which bit them in the head.

Along the way, the Bishop comments that this fruity, irradiated, lead-laced concoction was unduly tempting to the boys in the throes of their demons, quoting now Secretary of War Henry Stimson, when "they are in the plastic period of life", that the demon attacked them in this "half-lit-up" state such that they inexorably and without aforethought were led to the House of the Rising Sun.

Or, perhaps, he meant to convey that being so half-lit-up in the night, the ladies of the evening could spot them down and take away their candy, as is wont to happen on Halloween for wayward little boys who venture too far from the route established by their parents' good teaching, to the houses of the unholy, those who take them in for ill sport and offer no candy, but rather only the demon rum, perhaps even laced into the candy.

Well, we should have to imagine that in so doing, however, a bit bootlessly and with undue prolixity in the bargain, perhaps the Bishop did not fully realize that he had condemned probably a good portion of the state's, if not the entire nation's, weekend co-ed population on the college campuses of the day to the status of your common street walking lady of the evening. What ho?

For, unless we miss our guess, judging by times later, your average hip-flask bearing fellow of the Saturday night fever was wont to abound even unto the latter times, and was often seen accompanied by one of these likewise half or whole lit-up beauties who we knew to be one of the aforementioned co-eds.

We think thus that the Bishop might have been equally cryptic, following the example of The News, and simply responded, after quoting the Secretary of War, something like:

We opine thusly because, in our observational experience, neither as partaker nor encourager of same, so as not to run afoul of the proscription against that taker of brains of Shakespearian dogma, (et tu, Brute?), we have found that those who follow with sufficient determined alacrity the Auld Hornie inducement to the demon rum such that they would find themselves half-lit-up would likely not be half-lit-down sufficiently in usual time to get through more than the very few words we have imparted above by way of suggestion in lieu of the Bishop's rather long-winded self-defense, which they would likely not, as the sleepy-eyed reader even, who might by analogy find subtle empathy with the dram-induced toper, be able to follow for very long.

So, we'll just close this off with six more words of wisdom:

Oh, we can't resist one more, the Alfa-Romeo's companion:

Two more, albeit a hyphenated phrase comprised of two stems, these from Moby Dick:

Here's to ye.

And welcome to the clinic. Do you see that sign?

That's right. It says that we serve up Charlie's favorite tuna salad on wheat toast every day of the week, and between your knees, if you'd like it that way.

And, you may also have it with a coffee roll.

Only if you want it that way though.

One other thing which comes to mind: Rather than picking so much on this fellow Joe the Plumber, or even his profligate proletarian brother, Joe Sixpack, why not concentrate on the real problem, that is Joe Blow? Oh, we know, Ms. Palin, that's a three-letter word, and naughty-naughty, but... Well, we'll stop while we're ahead. We've got to go out and see a new movie we've been meaning to catch, because, candidly, in the last eight years, we've been hard-put to catch it.

Got eggs?

By the way, we got around to looking at that score from October 8, 1960, twenty-three days before Halloween at O'Hare, some two months after that kid of the flying Mercury heels opened the car door to meet with his knee, over in Greensboro. It was 12 to 7. We haven't the play by play though, but we'll keep digging. The other score of the one on November 8 was 303 to 219 to 15, the latter being representative of those inconsolate souls in the Deep South who broke their pledge, to vote for Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia.