Site Ed. Note: …But not a quip will fail to leaven even the quick as graphite might in heaven’s tallow shawl, cloaking the dark with light laugh pite in the costly after-path of souls’ ring enchantment call, enfolding the camped, pent of mind’s peal in scent-told sting, harvest of boasting; coast’s trings long through time have crooned, and pies the sunken dune longer yet; fly on strange bird, and sing all slunken loons to free fall let.

That little dashed appendage after the analogy made between sturdy Mecklenburgers and Cornwallis to that of Norwegians and Hitler, is, we bet, "--see red at being robbed", not "--see red at beting robbed", as printed. But, since the de’il bewitched it, by the leagues of mulberry frost, we print it as it was anyway, it being never certain what good might bet-met from the wood in erroratum here and there.

Anyway, swab those decks, you land lubbers. For we’re going to again and we may not hear land for years to come. ‘Ware to you--say your goodbyes now. There’s no mail where we’re goin’.

There she is, half the round. Our gal, the storm’s ahead. Fling yer catch ‘n’ hatch yer batches.

Feels just like the olde days, dun’t it?

For back a’ home, there’s no incumbent.

It's The Old Congressional Game In Different Form

All the little Congressmen who hope to ride into office again this Fall swinging onto FDR's coattails didn't hesitate yesterday to give the rebuke to their Hero by a no-confidence vote of 274 to 92. The one-sidedness of this action ought be taken to indicate that the President is washed up, exerts no more influence, is discredited with his own party.

Actually, it indicates no such thing, but merely that Congressmen have an insatiable appetite for pap, especially in election years, and that the veterans' lobby gets things done.

The business to be handled was the President's veto (for the third time) of a bill to give extra travel pay and subsistence allowance to volunteer officers and men who re-enlisted for Philippine service after the Insurrection had been put down and a peace treaty signed on April 11, 1899. The Government, you see, wanted to keep a force in the Philippines, and the claim now advanced, 41 years later, is that men were induced to re-enlist and remain in the islands on the strength of a promise to reimburse them as though they had returned to the United States between hitches.

In other words, somebody, of how much authority it is not disclosed, thought up the traditional gyp game which Congress sometimes plays when it votes its members travel pay to home and back between a regular session that ends on Thursday, say, and an extra session that begins the following day, though not a single solon quits Washington.

And so Congress re-passed over the President's veto a bill for which there is no excuse, certainly, but which is not without precedent.

This Kind Of Testimony Really Proves Nothing

For all we know, the Transport Workers Union and the United Radio, Electrical and Machine Workers Union (both CIO) may be as completely dominated by Communists as Mr. Thomas Humphrey O'Shea says they are. But we are still convinced that the word of a dispossessed and disgruntled labor leader is no proof of it.

If the Communists are plotting to use such unions to paralyze transportation in New York, the keystone of the commerce of the nation, and to sabotage transportation in Alaska in case of a war with Russia; if, under the cover of the unions, they are training "gun clubs" to aid in rebellion, the nation is certainly entitled to know it.

It may well be so. That the American Communists, like the American Nazis, are essentially traitors to the United States is plain, and they are undoubtedly adept at worming themselves into strategic positions. Moreover, the fate of Poland and Norway suggests that it is anything but wise to pooh-pooh this as mere fantasy.

But the way the Dies Committee goes about "proving" it is still as dangerous as the thing itself. There is ground to believe that these charges have basis, and it is a job for Mr. Hoover and his G-men--to dig up the facts as a basis of indictment for violation of already existing laws--not for irresponsible soreheads within the union itself.

This Man Bought It On The Most Solemn Assurances

In Pittsburgh a man named Hyman Vogel went out to buy a house. A salesman showed him a new one that suited his fancy well enough, priced at $12,000--a sum he was able and willing to pay. But he had some doubts about the site. The house was on a hillside, and the slope had been filled in to make the yard and the base level. How about the foundations?

They assured him that he could safely build a fifteen-story apartment house on that lot. But he was still not quite satisfied and asked the City inspection department to have a look at the place. The inspector reported that the foundations were quite safe. So he bought the house and moved in, with $3,000 worth of furniture.

Six months passed and the Spring rains came. Then things began to happen. First the backyard and the back porch slid off down the hill. Then the [indiscernible words], and the unfortunate Mr. Vogel hastily moved the family out. Next the house collapsed--on the furniture.

And Mr. Vogel was left holding the bag. The people that sold him the house clucked and said it was too bad.

It is an excellent example of the sort of thing which has got American business under suspicion in the last twenty years, and which enables the politicians to use it as whipping boy.

Site Ed. Note: Lohengrin or Mephistopheles? That was the question.

Allied Losses Yesterday Are Far From Decisive

The British confess that the Allied army had the worst of it in the fighting in Norway yesterday--a sensible thing to do in the long run, however much it depresses the British and French peoples and their friends for the moment. For it means that the people will be likely to trust the statements of the Allied Governments.

Nor is it to be assumed that the Allies have suffered any crushing defeat or that their chances of winning in the end are not still good. The British are quite probably telling the truth when they say that the troops pushed back yesterday were mere advance detachments, sent forward in the hope that it would be possible for other troops to join them before the Nazis struck. That bet proved to be wrong, but gambles must be taken in war, and some of them must inevitably be lost.

The Nazis were on Norwegian ground first, held the best positions. And undoubtedly were themselves taking a desperate gamble in exposing their flank and rear. It won.

The Nazis have Lillehammer, which dominates the approach to Oslo from the Gulbrandsdal. But taking Lillehammer and holding it for good are two very different things. The Nazis tacitly confessed as much yesterday when, after seizing Roros, they hastily fell back to Tolga, fifteen miles to the south, upon hearing that the Allies were advancing in force along the Gulbrandsdal.

Yesterday, the dispatches reported that the interest of military observers was concentrated upon the probability that the Germans, having taken Roros, would proceed rapidly to close up the gap to Trondheim, 70 miles from Roros, reinforce the Nazi garrison in that town, and establish lines for continual reinforcement and supply. Today, they report that such observers now think that the Allies are in position to block the advance to Trondheim for good.

If so, it should be merely a matter of time until the Allies seize Trondheim. Thus far the Allied armies have been hampered by a lack of equipment, particularly anti-aircraft guns, by the lack of soldiers trained to fight on such mountain terrain (whereas the Nazi soldiers include many Austrians, trained from babyhood to mountaineering), and above all by the lack of an airfield in Norway.

But the equipment lack seems to be in process of being remedied, especially in the anti-aircraft field. And today's reports have large numbers of French soldiers, made up of the redoubtable Foreign Legionnaires and men from the French Alps (as good mountaineers as there are) landing in Norway. And if Trondheim can be taken, the Allies will have one of the two best airfields in the country.

Moreover, as time goes on, the Allies should begin to have the overwhelming best of it in numbers and equipment. The Nazis are apparently reduced to depending mainly on airplanes as their mode of transportation. That is slow even for men--too slow if the Allies move in men with the slightest energy. Moreover, it is impossible to move in heavy artillery, tanks, and any quantity of supplies by plane. The Nazis have the Norwegian equipment, of course, and will attempt to live on the country. But the Allies should be able in short time to bring in equipment which will far outweigh the meager Norwegian loot. And the Norwegians are as thrifty souls as worthy Mecklenburgers when Cornwallis moved in and began eating off them--see red at beting robbed. Which simply means that the Nazis are likely to be increasingly hampered by guerrilla activity.

As for Narvik, the Nazis there seem to be about washed up--a fact of great importance, since possession of that territory puts the British in position to strike quickly to seize the Swedish iron mines if Hitler attempts to take Sweden, and so discourages such an attempt.

There are many "ifs" here, of course. Nevertheless, the case is far from being as discouraging as it might be.