Wednesday, November 25, 1942


The Charlotte News

Wednesday, November 25, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page continues the saga of the hacking and carnage on the Russian front as the Russians chased the Nazis northwest of Stalingrad, away from the Volga, back into the Don Bend, that marked in red below.

Fully 50,000 Nazis had been killed and another 50,000 captured in just the previous six days in and around Stalingrad. The bodies were piling high and fast in the snow. General Winter, combined with the redeployment of planes and men away from Russia to form an Axis protective line across Southern Europe, had now worked to enable the Russians to wreak havoc as at no time since the beginning of the Nazi campaign, entering its 18th month.

General MacArthur’s American and Australian forces appeared on the verge of driving the Japanese from eastern New Guinea in the battle between Buna and Gona, the last stand of the Japanese in the area.

Fighting also continued to the west and east of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, the Marines now reported within yards of capturing Point Cruz to the west.

The Sultan of Morocco, Sidi Mohammed, welcomed General Patton and his men to his country, with the proviso that they respect the territory, customs, and religion of the Moroccan people. The Sultan informed President Roosevelt that all was friendly and proceeding well.

And from Los Angeles came a report of a drastic remedy undertaken to staunch the flow from a boxing instructor’s nosebleed, a remedy which almost proved fatal by the time he was transported to the emergency room. We strongly recommend a more suitable solution, such as having the subject lean his head back.

We understand that when light bulbs blew out in this particular establishment, the same helpful persons sought to change them by attempting for some period of days to find a suitably sized turntable on which to place the gym so that it might be rotated.

On the editorial page, “Decision” forecasts the reliance of the Axis on airpower to try to outgun the outnumbering Allied infantry and armored divisions now on the ground in North Africa. Already, Hitler was pouring in his aircraft to Bizerte and Tunis from Sicily and Sardinia just 100 miles away, to try to shore up his defenses there.

It accurately predicts that the ultimate showdown would occur in Tunisia and that conquering the Axis defenders of the country would not be accomplished for several months--not within days as originally thought two weeks earlier.

The editorial addresses the confidence which the leadership of the U. S. air forces had reposited in the newly trained young pilots about to get their first major test in hotly contested combat operations. So far, their experience had been limited to raids in the previous four months over France and Germany, usually accompanying RAF pilots. While no cakewalk, these raids were, it was believed, not so hotly resisted as would be the North African operations.

But, by equal measures, by attempting to trump the Allies in the air, Hitler had to withdraw air support from Stalingrad and the Caucasus where now raids by the Russians were taking place for the first time in the war without the presence of German air superiority hindering them.

“Windfall” reports of a collateral benefit of the North African occupation, the cutting off from the Axis, and acquisition in turn for the Allies, of the substantial food production capability of the region, the bulk of its 285 million dollars worth of exports being foodstuffs prior to the Nazi occupation in 1940.

Dorothy Thompson challenges the Congress to take up pertinent, ratiocinative debate--while dropping the mindless filibuster over attempts to abolish the poll tax--on the type of government to be implemented in Algeria, a French Department, not just a French satrapy, before Vichy came into creation two years earlier. She advocates the restoration of the French Constitution to send a message to the French people that Allied intervention and the wresting of French territory from Nazi or Vichy control would result not in Allied occupation government but rather one by which French territory would be returned to the French who had properly legitimized authority prior to the Fall.

Raymond Clapper reports of the appointment of outgoing New York Governor Herbert Lehman to direct relief efforts in North Africa, a beginning which Clapper believes and hopes would set the example for the remainder of the war and its aftermath, rebuilding and replenishing that which was re-acquired. And, it would be so.

Allied solution to French nosebleeds: Lean your head back until bleeding stops.

Nazi solution: Tie tourniquet around neck of bleeder and wrench tight until bleeding stops.

Caveat, however: The French, if some American Southerners had their way, might have wound up paying a fee into the public coffers in order to vote--and some liked the Nazi solution to things.

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