The Charlotte News

Wednesday, November 11, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

The German propaganda machine treated this resounding denunciation of Hitler and Nazi Germany as a mere friendly "remonstrance" and proclaimed that Petain remained, whether friend or foe, under the control of Germany.

Yet, psychologically, without an invasion of France, the Allies had struck a blow, ancillary to the attack in North Africa, to soften France for eventual its invasion, as the predictable move by Hitler served its purpose further to divide an already divided and demoralized French people whose young men and intellectuals had been systematically imprisoned or murdered during the previous 29 months of Nazi occupation, while just in the previous month, Vichy had been forced to draft 40,000 Frenchmen and send them to bolster the depleted German labor force. These moves obviously were not designed to achieve support among the people for the German occupiers. Sporadic violence, resistance, sniping, killing of German officers, and sabotage in the country had been occurring with increasing frequency during 1942. The typical Nazi response, as elsewhere, had been to round up large groups of people and summarily execute them after a pro forma trial before a military tribunal. With this violation of the armistice, Hitler had given up any pretense of French coalition, of using Pierre Laval as his lackey to achieve popular acquiescence to the Nazi puppeteer. Now, for all and intents and purposes, the charade in the shadowbox had ended; henceforth, to war's end, France would be, save in the most formal of terms, a completely occupied country.

The headline, while a bit overly optimistic in its implications offered the casual reader--a warning against which Raymond Clapper had just spent an editorial delivering the previous month--, was welcome news in the United States on the 24th anniversary of Armistice Day. Rommel remained on the run from General Montgomery into Libya, as General Eisenhower oversaw the successful landings in Morocco and Algeria, both reported to have surrendered to the Allies, with it further indicated that offensive operations were being prepared for immediate movement into Tunisia to afford a proper greeting for Rommel's forces fleeing from the British Eighth Army.

As these events transpired, the day before at the Lord Mayor's luncheon at Mansion House, the Prime Minister's country residence, Churchill gave a speech, the text of which is set forth below, announcing the British victory in the Battle of Egypt. With due caution against over-optimism, he nevertheless reveled in the moment: "Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

This date, he released a statement warning that "in due course" a front would be opened into France from across the English Channel or the North Sea. Whether regarded as bluff or bravado, Hitler had henceforth to treat the new encirclement by the Allies as affording the possibility of a simultaneous dual invasion, from across the Mediterranean into southern France, southern Italy, or the Balkans, as well as across the Channel or the North Sea into France.

The second front had opened, relieving the battered Russians at long last--just as winter began to bite the fingertips holding the cold steel at arms for the already weary German soldier cast away far from his home.

Leland Stowe, having reported the previous day of the Russian women and young girls taking up duties formerly held by men to release soldiers to the fighting front, now reports of the stalwart Russian manning the posts at Rzhev as winter once again approached in full season. Winter, he says, was not, as it was for the German, the devil to be dreaded for the Russian. It was his friend.

"Colt? What colt, comrade? It is summer, here. Shirtsleeve weather. When the mercury shall reach thirty below, I shall take my sun lotion and bathe myself in the warm sunshine with my bear arms and legs. Your Vermont, I understand, is equally friendly to those who find such warm climate fair and appealing, as we do in Russia. Here, have one of my beach chairs. I have vodka to spare. You have Cuban cigar?"

"After Me" discusses the always fence-striding career of Admiral Darlan, now in U.S. custody at Algiers. Before the fall of France, he was a devoted advocate of the supremacy of the British Navy; then, with the fall, he became suddenly an open devotee of the supremacy of everything German. Now, he sat, with the indulgence of Dwight Eisenhower in exchange for his call for surrender of the Vichy forces, as an ally once again to the Allies. The piece suggests caution in providing Darlan with trust and calls attention to the fact that just a year earlier he had been described as not having the principles of a cat.

"Poll Cats" finds uneasy portent in an investigation by the State into 312 ballots from the previous week's election which had turned up in Boone uncounted and apparently without ready explanation as to their provenance; the editorial suggests the matter as foreshadowing a worse condition for democracy than losing the war.

An abstract from a short story by Saki tells of two bums, one an old man and the other a fellow named Crosby, sitting on a bench in Hyde Park in London having a conversation about better times for the two of them, while each attempted to heist the other for a loan, mutually without success. By way of subtly starting his pitch, Crosby claims to be of Afghan heritage.

Says the old man in reply, "Afghanistan. Ah! We've had some wars with that country; now, I daresay, instead of fighting it we might have learned something from it. A very wealthy country, I believe. No real poverty there."

"It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly talented and ingenious beggars," responded Crosby.

And, Gypsy Rose Lee, in an appropriately brief piece from The American Mercury, expatiates on how she made no discrimination between her high paying pilgrims and those who attended the cheaper shows, proceeding to tell of the middle-aged man who regularly joined the audience for each Monday performance, routinely bringing with him a handful of candy, which he then delivered personally to her onstage.

Just how he delivered the handful of candy, she pulls up short in elucidating.

In any event, we opine that "Foxy Stuff", "Poll Cats", the ascription to Admiral Darlan of no principle even equivalent to that of a cat, and the interlude between the once better-heeled beggars engaged in discursive dialectic regarding Afghanistan while sitting on the bench in Hyde Park, each and all interface with Gypsy Rose Lee's egalitarian approach to aficionados of her art to form in the alchemical amalgam thereof some sort of vaguely familiar political statement.

The statement, we suggest, is one to be found in the continuum of time and space between the election in North Carolina in 1972 of the first Republican Governor since Reconstruction, Jim Holshouser of Boone, the 1972 break-in at the Watergate and its checkered aftermath, the 1974 Tidal Basin incident involving Wilbur Mills, the contested recount in Florida in the election of 2000, and that which has transpired in some respects since.

But, we leave it for you to cross-weave all the stitches together to fashion a reasonably comprehensive and cohesive garment with which to lay upon Ms. Lee's delicate shoulders to shelter her from the cold--and thereby, somehow, within the great chasm which is between time and times, provide her, if only posthumously, with yet another handful of candy on this Armistice Day of 2009.

We offer it to you with no strings attached. And, of course, we doff our hat to Ms. Lee for her democratic treatment of her patrons.

In any event, just remember that the tin in 240 toothpaste or shaving cream tubes is enough to solder the electrical connections on a B-17.

Quoting at its end from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the speech of Winston Churchill of the previous day follows:

November 10, 1942

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil, and sweat. Now, however, the bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers, and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England--he should have said Britain, of course--always wins one battle--the last. It would seem to have begun rather earlier this time. General Alexander, with his brilliant comrade and lieutenant, General Montgomery, has gained a glorious and decisive victory in what I think should be called the Battle of Egypt. Rommel's army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has been very largely destroyed as a fighting force.

This battle was not fought for the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert territory. General Alexander and General Montgomery fought it with one single idea. They meant to destroy the armed force of the enemy and to destroy it at the place where the disaster would be most far-reaching and irrecoverable...

Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Henceforth Hitler's Nazis will meet equally well armed, and perhaps better armed troops. Henceforth, they will have to face in many theatres of war that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against others, of which they boasted all round the world, and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless...

We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were prescribed, someone else would have to be found, and, under democracy, I suppose the nation would have to be consulted. I am proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth. Here we are, and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world...

The British and American affairs continue to prosper in the Mediterranean, and the whole event will be a new bond between the English-speaking peoples and a new hope for the whole world.

I recall to you some lines of Byron, which seem to me to fit the event, the hour, and the theme:

Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children's lips shall echo them, and say--
"Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day!"
And this is much, and all which will not pass away.