The Charlotte News

Monday, January 5, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page and its continuation page today provide more bad news for Hitler, his armies continuing to be pounded back, away from Moscow, the suburbs of which had been in their barrel sights in early December, now pushed as much as 100 miles away. His generals continue either to be dismissed or resign as Napoleon XIV slowly retreats into deeper insanity. Among those rumored to be dismissed was General Oscar von Niedermayer, chief of the Eastern Department under General von Brauchitsch. (General Niedermayer's grandson, we are informed, attended Faber College in 1962, pledged a fraternity, and, in his spare time, formed and presided over his own chapter of the John Birch Society, into which were admitted only himself and his horse, all others having been deemed unduly suspect of Communist leanings, and eventually of course went to work for the White House in 1969, in charge of its plumbing facilities, which, being extensive, required considerable administrative talent. But all of that is only a rumor.)

To make matters worse, rumblings now were afoot from France indicating anti-Nazi stirrings within Vichy, charges even that Marshal Petain had deliberately stalled to allow Britain more time to build its military capability, essentially that he was staging a reverse Fifth Column movement, a difficult maneuver for grinding the gears in the process while the vehicle is still in forward motion. Time would not tend to favor or foster this conclusion, but such reports helped to establish the mental beachhead which would turn it into the reality.

On the editorial page today, Paul Mallon provides a nice synopsis of why the war in the Philippines was going badly, and apt to become worse, citing the agreement in 1922 at the Washington Naval Conference, with the former allies of World War I to disarm, including an agreement that the Japanese would not militarize the Mandates of the Caroline Islands and that the U.S. would not seek to arm the Philippines. Just how Mr. Mallon's admonition of the inevitable vulnerability of underground munitions bunkers and hangars squares with the picture on the front page of Saturday touting the impregnability of the underground munitions stores on Corregidor, packed with 10-inch shells waiting to be fired at the Japanese, we shall have to wait and see.

"Bottleneck" provides the first signs of grumbling since Pearl Harbor over what it considers maladroit administration in Washington, especially by FDR. The contention is that there was too little delegation of military authority, too much reserve of command in the Commander-in-Chief. Yet, the column had been carping for months since Cash left, prior to Pearl Harbor, over what it considered to be poor administration by an over-abundance of bureaucracy, too little authority exercised from the top, a line favored consistently by Hugh Johnson. One cannot have it both ways, even if the areas to which the criticism was directed were different, the claim of over-bureaucratization pertaining primarily to domestic regulation and production coordination, while the claim of top-heavy thumbs being applied to military operations, favoring in this instance the Dutch approach of action over words.

Yet, the war was won against great odds when considered against the backdrop of two industrially powerful nations having devoted their entire economic strength to military preparedness, making service in their militaries compulsory, transforming each entire society into a cadre for nearly a decade in advance of the United States and Britain, each now forced, within the democratic constraints reasonably to be applied even amid emergencies, to perform essentially the same task. And those tasks were to be performed without the expedients of dictatorship and work camps wherein the "undesirables" were sent first to work, then to die while providing slave labor to the society, even if to some extent, short of the death chambers and ovens, atavistic of eighteenth and nineteenth century slave life within both the British Empire and the United States.

For all the faults inevitably arising from such conflicting conditions thrust from without and within upon the society, both presently and by the sediments deposited within the river of time, FDR, by the end of his life, had performed in his last twelve years a remarkable task of rebuilding the nation both out of time of depression and then, out of relative economic progress, into and out of war, a war thrust upon the country from without, not mongered from within.

Isolationism breeds war. But then one must carefully discern just what it is we mean when we use that too oft tossed-about term, "isolationism", assuming too easily that we have common understanding of its meaning. It is not just with respect to military aid, but, more importantly, applies to trade barriers and good will to be engendered among nations through insuring to other countries not operating as belligerents and pirates a form of prosperity in relative parity to that of the most prosperous nations. For ultimately it is poverty and alienation which eventually delivers up violence, both in little, within individual communities, and in large, among nations through the compounding of such social indicia of distress as characterized the formation of the fascist states in Europe and the feudalism of Japan in the 1920's and 30's, rippling them through the masses into white hot coalescence within the mind and mouth of a megalomaniacal dictator, someone in whom may be reposited the attributes of a demi-god taking instruction from a power beyond mere mortal man, bent on messianic deliverance of the people through the charmed expedient of armed violence. The alternative is simple: the time-honored method of peaceful resistance to all forms of tyranny, resistance even to the death if necessary, the honorable bravery, far braver than merely facing bullets well-armed and vested from behind torpedoes, tanks, and machine guns and bombs falling from the air.

"On We Ride" reminds us to remind you that you know who came into his first government post during this month in history, as a member of the Office of Price Administration. His job involved the rationing of tires.

And whether the piece appearing from The Chicago Sun on one Bananas Finn who ran bananas from West African colonies to Liverpool inspired "The African Queen", we have no idea. Regardless, we have trouble imagining banana boats entering Liverpool--that only because we simply never thought about it. Hill and gully rider.

In sports, we have reported that the Joe Louis vs. Buddy Baer fight is in preparation for Friday. Buddy Baer, (no relation to Buddy Ebsen), was the brother to famed heavyweight champion Max Baer. Buddy had lost, as the article indicates, his first bout with Joe Louis by a technical decision in May when he protested that he had been punched after the bell at the end of the sixth round and refused to return. Odds-makers take heed: we make bold to offer prediction. This time the Bomber will take down Baby Baer with one solid punch in the first round. A large amount of the purse on each side, all except expenses by Louis, go to the armed forces defense effort. Be sure and enter your bets early and often, and donate part of your certain purse to our defense effort. It's a sure bet. Take it from us.

Incidentally, whether John Lennon had any of that in mind when he wrote the line about the cornflake in 1967, we don't know, but, as it is poetry, anything is possible in the eye of the listener. After all, it all took place, in one way or another, in Battle Creek.

And Uncle Jed, so far as we know, was no kin to J. E. Dowd. But, after the discovery of the Texas tea, his new house was to be found actually in Asheville, not Beverly Hills.

Speaking of sports, we make no comment on that which occurred in Chapel Hill yesterday evening. We, indeed, are in no position to make comment for, in need of a long winter's nap, we fell asleep and missed the entire contest. Apparently, so did the home team. And, if it should happen again, beware. There are penalties for such misapprehensions of an opponent's strength. And we would not wish even to set to print the extent to which those penalties might go and how they might be exacted. Thus, we caution that in all due perspicacity, such lassitude and inattention had better not recur at any point during the season, especially in March. From now on, Mister, you had better play every single minute as if your very existence depended upon it, especially against Yankees. Now, drop and give us twenty.

Happy Twelfth Night and happy dozen monkeys smiling.

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