The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 25, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The page today passes Christmas as if a chore to get through--as it likely was. Ray Clapper tells movingly, though dispassionately, of the nuisance of blackouts in England, which had proceeded for four years on a regular basis, nightly since the start of the war. The condition, however, in England was decidedly better than had been the previous year when bombs fell.

Those of a generation who failed to understand some of the dark music coming from England a few years back, which in turn led to dark music on these shores, as the girls over here went wild for the darkness from over there, perhaps now may understand from whence it all came, that darkness, that is once you realize that this was the world into which were born those in England who by the 1960's were composing and playing that dark music. Dark it was. Black. When the crib is black, that's how the world then gets painted later on--black. And black is black.

Now, Hitler was resting in Berchtesgaden, sleeping off his long stupor of the "nervous breakdown"--more properly a psychotic reaction to his never-ending psychosis--occasioned from his Russian invasion, all the leaves being brown on a winter's day, which took only six weeks to accomplish in 96 tears and three more years in never-neverland to realize fully. For sometimes in winter it is best just to stop and read a little poetry and from it come to realize that continuing in such hell-drawn wagen tracks meant surely soon his Waterloo. But not Adolf. For him, being a man of wealth and taste, only Wagner was fit.

Mr. Mallon's prediction that it would be the generals who ultimately would hand him the pistol was mistaken. Cash had it right September 1, 1939. Mr. Mallon speaks entirely correctly, however, re the madness of the man. Anyone who continues to suggest this idiot as some kind of military "genius", as we still often hear from credible historians, at least credible on the tv, and that he was not insane, need stop and take a breath or two and do some more diligent research and find out also the definition of insanity. If Hitler was not insane, then there is no such thing and sanity is merely a relative term, too much the standardized approach to life in our time and that which led indeed to Hitler in the first instance. Insanity is not merely a misunderstood perception of the world or a state of mind. But we shall leave that exploration for more depth-sounding some other, more appropriate day.

The front page, and its continuation page, and this picture page, inform today, among other things, that a submarine was sunk off Long Beach near Los Angeles--Long Beach, near Santa Ana, where oil derricks steadily pump to the surface that precious viscid liquid so needful to Japan. (It's not a bad beach either, if you just ignore the oil derricks and think of them as castles in the sand. Take along a digital transfer of "Bolero" and blot them out.) Just what these submarines thought they were going to accomplish, however, by attacking a lumber barge, we cannot say. They couldn't carry oil back on a submarine; nor the lumber. And there is plenty of lumber around in the United States. Nor could they take over the United States with a sub or two, as one of their Admirals had proclaimed he would. Hope springs eternal, however, this was after all 1941, and the young Japanese aboard these craft must have had some plan in mind. Perhaps, after all, it was to come on shore and seize Paramount Studios, make their own propaganda films, distribute them in the name of the Empress, read some of her poetry perhaps with dramatic emphasis, and thereby convince the American public of their superior qualities of intellect and virtue.

Also, we have reported that Wake Island had fallen to the Japanese invaders after a third wave of planes hit the atoll, unknown then to the press as being the same pilots who beset Pearl Harbor 16 days earlier. The Japanese took fully 1,400 of the Marines there out of the 378 who had held the island determinedly for fifteen days, since December 8, when the first Japanese, those from the southern Task Force, had shelled it. That, indeed, was an amazing feat, one which outshot the giants at the game of brag, even the thousand or so out of the approximately 180 who held the Alamo to the bitter end against Santa Anna during those bloody eleven days in early 1836.

And, speaking of Cash, since it's coming on Christmas, we reproduce for you the illustration on the opening leaf of Cash's personal Bible, the one believed to be that which he took with him to Mexico, the one given him at Christmas, 1927 by his parents. Someone was kind enough to loan it to us. It is, we think, most apropos to this time being recounted from history.

We don't know for sure, incidentally, that Jesus actually looked as this image portrays. We weren't around then. Maybe you have more accurate information though. But since it is the artist's conception which counts, make of it what you will.

By the way, we would be remiss not to indicate that we once took a first-rate military history course under a relative of the painter of that portrait which adorns the front page today. That was 35 years ago, but thank you, Professor, for the kindly instruction. And don't blame him or any of the other of our exceptional history teachers through time for any of our errors; anything to the good was no doubt the result. We still remember some of it, sometimes.

Thank you and Merry Christmas. Say you read it in The News.

Hessians beware.

To all the rest, a good night.

Did he turn the water to wine? Imagine the water as wine. There you are. Just don't drink too much of it. Remember the parable of the oysters and the Japanese on the beach.

Also, wethinks the picture may be backwards from some of the earlier verses, but perhaps that's a matter of interpretation by the artist. Who knows?