The Charlotte News

Friday, January 23, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The editorial column begins with an admonition re the unusual strength displayed by 12-year old Douglas Jarnagan, able to dent The Old North State with a single slam of a champagne bottle. Obviously, sensitivities being tender, it took little to do in those days.

It then proceeds to tell, along with the abstracted article from Time, of Eleanor Roosevelt's refusal to cross a picket line under any circumstances, even when "Mussolini" Petrillo of the musicians' union was merely grandstanding to force Otto Preminger, known later himself as a tyrannical director of film by the 1950's, to hire four stagehands from the union to do nothing but listen to the two minutes of band music played on the phonograph in the wings, at $337.50 per week, for the play, "In Time to Come". In that, we suppose, there is to be found, in time to come, the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds.

Anyway, Mrs. Roosevelt refused, in adamantine bonds infrangible, to cross the queue, regardless of its motivation, whether idiotic or sincere.

Whatever the case, as little tyros, we used to confuse in our heads, for obvious reason, Otto Preminger with Yul Brynner. You'll pardon if they all looked alike to us. Being at once each dissimilar among them, we could easily discriminate between the autos and so kept all those quite straight. We hope we haven't crossed the line by revealing that.

"Podran No..." reveals that second prong of disputation by the Argentine booby, the one for which yesterday we frankly didn't, it being the fact that the Argentine wanted now, in addition to the more easily agreed change of "collective agreement" to "unanimous agreement" on breaking diplomatic relations with the Axis nations, to change the wording of "no podran continuar" to "podran no continuar". In the first instance, as it was, the declaration of unanimous, as opposed to collective, solidarity would have read that the signatory nations "can not continue" diplomatic relations with the sanguinary Axis; as proposed for amendment by the Argentine, it would instead have read "may not continue" said diplomatic relations, with the connotation attached in spanish to the effect, the nations may find it inadvisable to continue such relations, thus diluting to dangling spurions the whole purpose of the agreement and winding up therefore looking as silly as the Japanese riding into Burma on Thai elephants, (or elephantide for that matter), mimicking some Rudyard Kipling novel coaster, no doubt--that, or some old circus poster.

Whether these proposed changes were merely vox barbara or whether indicative of the vox populi in Argentina, we shall see directly, and to what end this dilemma resolved: simply to press on without stopping for concern with Argentina's recalcitrance over idiomatic phraseology, or further to seek dilution of resolve in the final version of the agreement, thereby making present of face to the Axis that which appears vacillating, fools inconsequential, ripe by the Axis for the picking, once, that is, struck the Axis from Dakar to obtain the Canaries, Cape Verdes, and Azores on the one side, while on the other, striking off the Pacific islands, Wake, Guam, and island chains, Solomons, Carolines, Marshals, and the Bismarck Archipelago consisting of New Britain and New Ireland, all either already or in process of being presently conquered by the Japanese, to form a pincer against each side of South America--just as from Burma, westward they would go, as seekers often seek, to form a pincer in combo with Hitler's U-boats sweeping eastward from the Mediterranean, once that is, the backwards sledding of the sleigh ride in the winter wonderland with which Hitler's massive armies were now in dead reckoning, contending in sufferance of losses by the slaughterhouse rule, somehow ceased and reversed its frozen gearbox in springtime, where Hitler's beaming moonshine always shone most sunnily in the Bavarian May pansies with his lovely date, Eva, at his side, wearing most fashionably a nice particoloured spring gown of chiffon and lace, and all sorts of frilly after-thoughts upon the lines.

Well, the train stopped then. And we deboarded.

Paul Mallon speaks of the Henry Wallace post-war plan for insuring mutual parity of prosperity among nations as a hedge against war. Mr. Mallon finds this suggestion only forecasting of a give-away without for it the means to pay, and thus absurd idealism on the part of Vice-President Wallace. Nevertheless, with creative thinking in play in the early 1960's, such a program would begin in the form of the Peace Corps, to train and educate the populations of underdeveloped nations for better productive capacity, bolstered further by loans to these nations of farm implements and machinery, the Alliance for Progress--extending the Good Neighbor Policy of the Roosevelt-Truman years, interceded by the Finger-Shaking Policy of the Eisenhower-Nixon years--enabling by limited handouts the seeds of growth toward independence and assurance of self-determined democracy: free from the empire bonds yoked upon it from without, harnessed without thought as to the humanity of other humans.

Show us anyone who thinks that they are completely self-made, and we shall show you someone who merely fails to appreciate the facts of life, when they were but babes, that as infants they were not only of the usually invalid grouping--whining and puling their guts out at every unfamiliar turn of events not to their liking, even if in the abstract to their good--, but likely of the most helpless sort, and, on the Squeaky-Wheel Rule, therefore received of inordinate attention for amelioration of their various and sundry weaknesses, then growing of age, designing to cover the aid and comfort dealt them to ameliorate these manifold weaknesses with the outward appearance of being individualists completely self-made, thus eschewing for others either of any sort of compassion or aid, branding it weak charity for those with nothing to trade. In short, Hitler.

Raymond Clapper provides, in order to suggest a pattern for America to follow, explanation of planned production in Great Britain thus far in the war, each to his or her own fit task most conducive to overall victory, whether assigned to the front lines in actual battle or to the home front to utilize industrial trade skills to manufacture the tools and equipment of war, as best suited to their overalls. Obliquely, his recounting provides perhaps an answer to the soldiers who--though exhausted and wounded from four years of trench fighting, hand to hand and mouth to mouth, nevertheless had to march back to the front to fill the holes in the lines left by their fallen comrades as the Germans split them down the middle--, had sung bitterly to the munitions factory workers in March, 1918, that in fact, rather than being slackers and jackers in need of a round lecture in song, were merely doing that to which they were assigned for best match of skills to necessary labor, of practical necessity to achieve victory such that the seemingly interminable war would not become in fact without end, save complete defeat.

The front page is here: all war news again, mostly bad in the Pacific, some good, but soon to turn more bad and worse. On the Russian front, however, all continues to go well in the retaking of ground lost in inland retreat three months earlier, driving on through the snow piled heap on heap of bones to Vyazma from Mozhaisk, drawing the Hun more tightly into the family traps and the sound of winter-sharp's music, the machine gun and tank track's muted press forward through the sledge-work of an icy morning to the purple evening's dusk, all in beauteous rapture at the surrounding carnage of Hun upon Hun hanging from the trees. As we have already gone through this ground recently, we won't recapitulate it for you again today, except to say--

In a raid of an English village, East Anglia, by a single Nazi bomber, eleven people were killed as the plane dropped its load on a densely populated working-class neighborhood. Nine of the eleven were girls or women. The Hun was up to his old tricks again, picking on women and children to get his kicks and demonstrate his vast courage in the face of "the enemy".

It being another lazy Saturday, there being no Saturday edition on the microfilm for tomorrow, it being Sunday, and so, just when you thought we were behind, presto: we are all caught up. So, with the week's labor thus done, dropped by our offices today at the Tower our old friend whom we haven't seen in awhile, his labors being indefatigably exerted in and around the West Indies of late, Jack Whispering Poniards, (a.k.a. "Jacque 's Eireish Frost"--when in poetic mood, or, in more roguish adornment, replete with candle waxing full, "Jack B. Spooky Frankly"). Jack has only one profession, one which is both honorable through the trespasses of time on the imagination and requires sedulous daily practice to perfect, that of a pirate. He believes in piracy as a means of achieving parity among nations' wealth, but only with due regard to women and children and the safety of all the sailors aboard the ships whose plunder Jack seeks and reaps, in truth, only his own which has before been removed from his possession by legalized piracy of others ab initio. So, we asked Jack whether he would mind reading a little Thomas Wolfe for us.

His reply: "'ose that Thomas Wolfe?"

After we explained and showed him the passage, as read previously by Spooky, Waverley, Frankly, and Ernesty, whose variant versions we played for Jack, he became deeply entranced with the subject and read the entirety of Of Time and the River in one hour, Jack having learned speed reading while marooned on an island in the Mediterranean during a dark and loathesome year many decades ago, whereon his only friends were turtles, from whom, actually, he learned, most slowly, the art of speed reading.

Whereupon, having completed its entire length thusly, he of course provided his verbal reading skills to us, from it, neither of the outcome benighted nor affrighted, in Teachment from our beseechment.

So here is Jack's reading of the Wolfe passage. As usual, you may skip him completely, but, in Jack's case, he is very sensitive about that, and should you shun and avoid him, remind him of his caste, regardless of what lot on which his cast might be so, he may indeed plunder your booty when chance might next arise. Thus, beware the peril of spurning Jack's enticing read. But, nevertheless, should you skip him, be sure and protect your booty as a prize with your eyes with all due diligence, as surely as the sun might also rise. Jack would you just to listen to him prefer than to be forced to engage in booty snapping. So, perhaps that's the easy way, and, therefore, you best get on with it, the listening that is, lest he engage you in the haze of purple prose where satisfaction is at an extraordinarily bespicing premium; that is to say, more simply, that piety without satiety is most given to gaieté de cœur, the consumption resultant to surfeit tending to lend itself gluttonous of the shore, espying such, bespent in blent bletherskates with their brent brows furrowed in burrowy hedgerows sighting fledgling carrows cast away of care who dare row where'er they might down to the frosted tips of their wedging fingers held aright, to the clinging clang gelatinous idée fixe du jour, that kept mainly out of sight, somewhere hidden on the list of kicks fra yonder side of door which ringing wrang Joe fell pattenless, sans even so much as a nocturnal étude from Chopin's fattened bliss of chinquapins roasting on the open pit of sinking sins' cruciform abore.

As prefatory to your perfunctory reception of his deeply moving read, Jack wishes to offer that he has titled his read, not as with Spooky, "A Firesign Chit", or, as with Waverley, "The Firewind Lit, More or Less", or, as with Frankly, "A Fireside Chatte", or, even as with Ernesty, "A Firesmote Pit"; rather he titles this reading "A Pirate's Entraining: The Fireworks Soured by Hidin'".

Framed Edition

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