The Charlotte News
Wednesday, November 12, 1941
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: "It is hard to say what verdict history will write of our getting into war [with Japan] with so little to gain, so much to lose, where we have so little business, and on the very verge of another war in the Atlantic and beyond," says Hugh Johnson in his column today.
Well, we suppose for that, one should read Gordon Prange's books, among others, on the subject.
"Cartoon Idea" suggests, by analogical extension, given his designs made obvious on South America, that Hitler might, too, have designs on conquering the moon.
Well, perhaps, had he won the war and retained then Wernher von Braun in his stable of scientists out at Peenemunde, he might have ultimately done just that. And so doing, it would no doubt have become a missile base for threat to us all. Instead, it was to the victor the spoils, including the moon and its Sea of Tranquility.
Mr. Hitler, it would be assumed, could not have understood the significance of the question: Why does Rice play Texas? That any more than he understood why Poland or Czechoslovakia contested Germany's might.
Perhaps, as we pointed out last year, in conjunction with the Cuban missile crisis, it is, sometimes, merely to tie, as Finland wished, at least in the olden times when tie you might. Nowadays, they don't allow it; they've overtime, 25 yards to score. What a thrill that is. If tying is as kissing one's sister, then overtime is sort of as beating one's sister in arm wrestling.
Nor did Mr. Hitler have the payload of the Saturn rocket, with all its rings, at his command. Nah suh. Only Wagner. His hat was tossed over another wall entirely, with outer space having a vastly different concept in his vocabulary, consistent with the notion of lebensraum.
We chose to go to the moon in that decade and did, even if the watch on whose it ultimately was, was, shall we say, a bit abstracted from the race as a whole, both here and in Royal Albert Hall. Or, maybe better put, of a checkered fate.
But, as we said, when you marry the Hope Diamond, be careful how it's posted and whether on it there might be a lien. Else, the tape over which your carriage is supposed to jump might be trumped by the capstan roller's buttered field of iron lead slipping through the watery gate of time at Titanic rate.
Oh dear. There we go again.
The man in the moon came out too soon
To inquire the way to Norridge;
The man in the South, he burnt his mouth
With eating cold plum porridge.
There were two blind men went to see
Two cripples run a race,
The bull did fight the humblebee
And scratched him in the face.
One misty, moisty morning,
When cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to meet an old man clothed all in leather.
He began to compliment, and I began to grin,
How do you do, and how do you do?
And how do you do again?
___________
Some days we'll fuzz the Blue Goose,
And sail it to rolling off the cliff,
Both flat and sharp 'twas, a true luce,
As we were crawling on our shift sans any food,
And so it was yclept sith, "Doubt Pliny would,"
Meaning in commonspeak, Vesuvius many lud froze,
Those who were resting, those who were cresting,
Those who were due, and those who were late, rud bose:
All came together in one frosty bake, tur questing.
Lest it should happen to you, remember this:
That when the volcano erupts, a-limber yer vis,
Else be prepared to be relieved of your liss.
Mother of Pearl, mother of Cain,
Mother of Abel, mother of Seine,
You've just one mother when the east wind came.
Framed Edition
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