Site Ed. Note: The front page, amid war news telling of Rommel's continued surprising retreat westward ho from El Agheila, and the sustained success of the Russian counter-offensive at Rzhev and to the southwest of Stalingrad at Kotelnikovski, repulsing the strongest German surge yet trying to relieve, out of the rolling wave of thundering fog before the trackless, muddied looking glass, the beleaguered Nazi forces at the Don Bend, and the prevention by Allied air attack of the landing of additional Japanese reinforcements at Buna, while unable to interdict landings to the north toward Lae, reports briefly of Senator Vandenberg of Michigan inveighing against critics of General Eisenhower's placing of Admiral Darlan in charge of North African French forces in exchange for his cooperation at the time of the November 8 Operation Torch landings. Senator Vandenberg sought to place in perspective the appointment by reminding that the cooperation thus effected with the French forces, who might otherwise have resisted the landings, trumped any negative implications, its salutary benefits having been numbered in the uncounted lives of Allied troops not lost in the successful operation, resulting in part from Admiral Darlan's cooperation.

We stress it, as with a piece on the editorial page by Samuel Grafton pricking at picayunish Administration critics of the day, simply to note that all human endeavors have their share of detractors, and all matters military and political, to effect ultimate goals, have their need for concomitant compromise.

Whether Admiral Darlan was too much of a compromise, the French Resistance, or someone, within a mere nine of the eight shopping days left until Christmas, would put to rest all debate on the dialectic's dilemma and pitfalls among the De Gaullists.

A vice-admiral of the Fighting French disagreed with the photographic assessment of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox in his previously announced determination that as many as twenty ships of the French Fleet at Toulon had survived the scuttling before the Nazi occupation; Vice-Admiral Emile Muselier believed that all bottoms were on the bottom, that the pictures were subject to misinterpretation by the shallow depths in the harbor and the clarity of the water, suggesting to unfamiliar perceptions some ships apparently still afloat which were actually plunged to the depths available, even as he conceded that these ships might be re-floated by the Nazis.

Also on the page is the report of the opening of the new Pentagon Building across the Potomac, with its floor plan exceeding forty million square feet of new office space ready to empty of their current occupants 24 government buildings for fresh digs. Described as "The Doughnut", albeit one with sides, arranged concentrically around a six-acre central court, the mammoth structure which cost twice its budgeted 35 million dollars, being necessarily constructed, of course, by the 3,000 workers at work upon it during the previous year, with golden hammers, platinum rivets, and ruby chisels, was run through and through with telephone connections to the outside world, the piece informs. But, whether the whole of the effect of "The Doughnut" was that of Krispy Kreme or Dunkin, the piece does not inform. We shall let you make the determination for yourself. Whether with the doughnut came, necessarily, a side of grits and plentiful toast and jam, also is not reported. Coffee and sugar, of course, were rationed because of the war. Milk, anyone? Icing and sprinkles are, as always, of course, a little extra, Mr. Sticky Fingers.

What we wonder is what goes on each day in the pie's hole.

On the editorial page, apropos to the opening of The Doughnut, Dorothy Thompson takes on the issue of better sense food coordination by offering specific recommendations to curb the enormous ongoing daily waste in restaurant fare.

She suggests first that the table d'hote be eliminated entirely and the a la carte menu instead be given comparable price settings per item such that the hod carrying consumers of vast quantities of steak might be limited to sensible cuts of prime rib. Likewise, bread and butter--probably toast and jam, as well--should be responsibly charged as an extra dividend to any meal, not set on the table willy-nilly for any patron regardless of figure, haystack or stacked hay, to have at their disposal. She also suggests that the restaurateurs who offer vast quantities of food as mere inducement to patronage of their bar services be limited in the number of drinks they might serve each customer, as long as, she says, the imposition was reasonable.

Well, let's put a cap, say, of ten drinks on the tab, Sir Doughnut. How's that, 1942?

No? Too narrow a limit for comfort, ay, against that to which you are accustomed?

Well, life is rough. Get used to it, kid. Ten it is. Set up the shots, bartender. And bring on that side of beef and appetizer of sugar-cured ham dripping in candied yams to fill your gambols with Falstaffian glee, as those beefeating genes of yore ricked hay cry out for satiation by the gravedigger's side. Alas, poor yore, we knew ye well.

Alright, then, stop yapping, Sir Pie Hole. We'll allow, just this one time, as a bonus for those possessed of either a "C" or an "X" ration card an eleventh, an M & B bitter ale, electrically produced in thirds, in exchange for an extra gallon of gas to the house of York. X'er's obtain unlimited for unlimited. We get around the issuance problem with a simple expedient: a siphon tube, made from pure Indian rubber, stuck in your tank.

Then all will be well out on the farm, as the ladies of the newly inaugurated WLA, as also proposed by Ms. Thompson, or perhaps better, to afford a proper acronym, NOWALLAH, New Order of the Women’s Army of Land Laboring Agri-Hands, take to the fields fully fortified for a day’s labor. (Another adjunctive possibility for its sister bureau was BOWOW, Big Organization of Women Outsourced to Work. And then there was also the likelihood of coming into being its male counterpart, COWOW, Cooperative Organ of Willing Organic Workers, made up primarily from graduates of the disbanded CCC program.) There is no reason why farming cannot be fun.

"'Railroading'" plumps for a proper board determination for committing a patient to the mental hospital at Morganton. Previously, it could be accomplished simply by the recommendation of a doctor, no matter the doctor's fitness for the determination or whether the doctor had even examined the patient for mental illness. The piece cites the actual example of the resulting nightmare: a woman committed on the signature of a physician of doubtful repute, based on her husband's asserted belief that she was insane, allowing her release only upon her promise not to file for divorce, easily having her recommitted when, after promising continued connubial bliss, she filed for disentanglement from her entangled marital alliance.

Given the front page report on the results of the special preliminary investigation--not, per se, a preliminary hearing as we described it yesterday but essentially the same thing accomplished before an arrest warrant issues--finding sufficient probable cause to effect arrest of the former Sheriff and his Deputy, for not only malfeasance but nonfeasance and misfeasance as well, in cooperating with the bootlegging and gambling rackets in and around Morganton, the two subjects ought possibly, especially as the Sheriff was being investigated for bigamy, having married a second time without divorce from his first wife in the mental hospital at Morganton, have applied for asylum to the asylum themselves.

That especially so, should evidence turn up that they had anything to do with the sudden demise of the other former Deputy, found shot to death in his automobile in July after, according to his widow, having arranged a meeting with the Sheriff to lay out his expedient for plea bargaining Federal bootlegging charges, to become a stool pigeon of the Sheriff's schemes. The Deputy's role of implicating his former boss was confirmed by a Federal investigator. But, that evidence of aforethought malice remains yet to be seen. We shall keep our eyes' onion peeled on and our rapt attention committed to this noteworthy story as it develops out of Morganton.

"Dream Stuff" warns prominent public figures of use of metaphors lest they be ridiculed, recent example being Vice-President Wallace's recommendation in his May speech of a quart per day of milk to feed the post-war world and thereby instill continued peace and prosperity; as well, the antithetical sarcasm of NAM president William Witherow, having brought down the house on his head when he suggested that a quart a day for every Hottentot and a TVA on the Danube should not properly be the responsibility of the United States after the war.

It was as if these public figures using metaphor to express themselves had, as a boon to their communicative reception, made Alice's wish for Dinah's bliss as she fell down the well, that of Dulcinea's enchantment while sifting wheat in the fields, that of Cinderella's fitment to the lost slipper as she rushed home to beat the bewitching toll exacted by the ridicule of her sisters Norn, or, in the case of NAM's president, that of the venison in the denizens of the Borderland mountains around Chevy Chase as the hunt by the Douglas of the Hotspur Percy went forward in Scottish lake lore of Benvenue--or something like that.

But, we do not wish to fall prey to the same form of hounding without reservation by the dispossessed of literary appreciation and so pull up short our horse's maw in the meadow of understanding before it could be rendered lame by vapid misinterpretation, and instead resort to straight talk: Mr. Witherow had been less than discreet in his use of "Hottentot" in relation to bovine lactial milk; Mr.Wallace, former Secretary of Agriculture, had enabled his conscientious proposal for the post-war world to be cowed at its calfing by his unfortunate choice of foodstuff recommended for daily intake, when, obviously, what he really meant as panacea to the world's ills was an egg a day, with ceilings, of course, during war time. Goo-goo-goo-joob.

Damon Runyon, the New York City newspaper and short story writer of the time, as suggested in "Santa Jim" having provided an exemplar for wrestling entrepreneur Jim Crockett, whose ample contributions, informs the piece, were made to The News Empty Stocking Fund each Christmas, once developed a character in one of his stories named "Harry the Horse". Whether kin or kith to Mr. Luce or Mr. Henderson, we do not know.

Fly your kite with the key and find out.

It brings to mind the fact that in July, 1964, just as we purchased "Something New", we were at the Alamo Plaza Motel in Charlotte, walking along one evening when, to our astonished surprise, we suddenly encountered the unmistakable rotundity of Haystack Calhoun perambulating his bulk down the sidewalk in our direction, to which we immediately provided ample passage, and without hesitation to his highness. One of Haystack’s primary opponents, apparently, in the 1960’s, we find for the first time today, was Happy Humphrey. Maybe Haystack was following us around for some reason there at the Alamo. We must slow down and cogitate, with a matchbox hole in our floor, on that and what things we may have said that day's night as Haystack passed windily by our position.

Whether, incidentally, Mr. Calhoun was ever promoted by Mr. Crockett, we don't rightly know. But, for some reason, it came to mind there from that experience at the Alamo Plaza in Charlotte in July, 1964. That was the last time we stayed there.

Mr. Clapper, this day, wonders what portended for 1944's presidential politics out of the sought alliances between the Western anti-labor forces and the Southern reactionary forces within the Democratic Party, and whether they might forge a new Democratic surge of conservatism, perhaps led by Jim Farley, ousted maker of FDR, or in some way join the Republican ranks.

Well, of course, we know today what that portended. It portended 1964 and 1984 and the new Republican, former Roosevelt supporter, proclaiming, upon the four-year Great Effect adduced from supply-side economics, "Morning in America". NAM certainly thought it so, anyway.

Mr. Clapper's piece nicely dovetails with that of Sam Grafton taking issue with those finding peevish fault with Administration policy, insisting, even if self-consciously atavistic in his urges, that the government was conducting itself reasonably well.

And well it was, considering that it had a Doughnut now in which to plan prosecution of the war, even if without any coffee to go with it. There was, to compensate for the exiguity, ample bacon for everyone, after the war was won.

The nearly missing quote of the day: "Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle."--Thomas Hardy

Could the "she" to whom he refers be Blackburn Lancashire? Or the madding crowd in a country churchyard scene of the Inner Groove?

Anyhow, for what it's worth, which is not too much, here is the speech to which Mr. Grafton makes reference, by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, to the Falangist Party Council.

At last report, incidentally, as Peter Brown called to say, Signor Franco was still alive, but dying rapidly. [In the bracketed portions labeled by the original translator as "indistinct", we understand that the Generalissimo was providing secret Falangial signals, those which some called the "heavy middle music"--or maybe we misheard that--to his fellow Falangists, not easily picked up or interpretable by radio.]

Madrid, December 8, 1942

I want my first words inaugurating the task of this third national council of the Falange to be clear regarding the statement of our political faith.

For three years of war and for three years of what we wrongly called peace we have had to struggle on in concerted endeavor. No one will be astonished if now, when this phase may be considered overcome, we throw off whatever and whoever would like to deflect us from marching toward fulfillment of our movement.

On this depends the destiny of Spain and the preservation of her eternal values, the suppression of which would imply slavery and chaos. On this path we must be intransigent in exacting sacrifices from all for the benefit of our national unity--a guarantee of Spain's future.

The people might not be with Spain, but what is inadmissible is that any one should be against Spain. The foundations of our policy were laid in the beginnings of our movement, when our youth prepared itself for fight and engendered a spirit of our crusade that they derived from our soundest traditions of spiritual values and merged them with the social yearnings of our times. [There was an indistinct sentence at this point.]

We are living through historical moments that have so complicated a nature that, just as external events produce reaction in the internal life of a nation, so the internal life has had effects beyond its frontiers. For this reason our political attitude sought to correlate our actions in the international sphere with the supreme needs of our own country.

We are actors in a new era in which we can have no truck with the mentality of the past. Spain's way of thinking cannot go back to the nineteenth century, accursed by so many false conceptions. It is necessary for Spaniards to abandon the old liberal prejudices and take a survey of Europe in order to analyze contemporary history.

We do not belong to a world of our own, as distinct from Europe, even though we have our own characteristics and spiritual reserves.

All contemporary events show us we are witnessing the end of one era and the beginnings of another; that the liberal world is going down a victim to its own errors, and with it are disappearing commercial imperialism, financial capitalism and mass unemployment. The happiness promised by the French revolution became nothing but barter business, competition, low wages and mass insecurity.

Wealth did not go hand in hand with equitable distribution. The important part of humanity was prey to misery. Freedom is impossible as long as bondage and want exist. Cleverly exploited Marxist slogans caught on with the masses because they deceitfully promised a change in the justice of the pressing situation.

The liberal world, in giving adult suffrage, made them conscious of their own strength. Then the revolutionary process, accelerated by various crises, started. During the last war Russian demobilization led to a situation in which communism seized power and established a barbarian dictatorship of the proletariat. A similar phenomenon manifested itself in Italy after the war, but Mussolini's genius instilled all just and human elements interested in the Italian revolution into the Fascistis' aims.

Mussolini welded the two elements closely and united his own heart into the synthesis of the fascist revolution--a social urge and a national idea. Later, Germany found a new solution for the popular yearnings in national socialism, which unites the national and social idea for the second time in Europe with the special peculiarities of race thirsting for international justice.

Those are not isolated movements, but rather aspects of one and the same general movement and mass rebellion throughout the world. On the face, a new useful consciousness emerged, which reacts against the hypocrisy and inefficiency of the old systems.

Youth marched conscious of its historic responsibility toward a goal sensed but not clearly defined. The goal then was defined by current events and by the leaders.

These facts should explain to many people why so many Spaniards welcomed the republic with naive emotion. [At this point there was an indistinct passage, referring to century-old unrest in Spain filled with indignation against "the unjust order."]

The greater the hopes, the greater the disillusionment. Anger, indignation and revulsion grew against the vile outfit. [There was another indistinct passage here.]

When the Russian Comintern was about to make the country prey of communism, it was a national movement that saved it and gave hopes for the revolution, its channel and direction. Collaboration--organized youth of Spain--was a new facet of the general movement of European youth, which twenty-five years ago launched forth in open rebellion against the old, decayed and senile selfishness. Liberalism succumbed to its impetus. Empty slogans and vacillations were swept overboard and the task attacked in a revolutionary manner.

In our opinion, this maturing youthful enthusiasm still represents the strongest and most positive social factor. There not only was a fusion with our national and social ideals, but also with our catholic soul, our country's raison d'etre, our history and our greatness. The Spanish solution was a union between national and social forces with supremacy of spiritual forces. On those true, unassailable principles our whole political work was based and will appear greater as time passes.

What the masses of the people in England think is not different from what the German masses think, nor do the dissatisfied people of Old Europe think differently from the disinherited in New America. Liberal propaganda may distort these facts and hide the truth for a time, but in the end truth will prevail.

The moment of disillusionment is not far distant. When the war ends and demobilization begins the moment will arrive to settle accounts and to fulfill promises.

Then, whatever projects there may exist now, the historic destiny of our era will be settled, either according to the barbarous formula of bolshevist totalitarianism, or according to the spiritual, patriotic formula Spain offers us, or according to any other formula of the fascist nations.

Neither the feelings of the most numerous social classes, nor the exigencies of the post-war economy, nor the grave problems facing nations, will allow any other path.

Those are mistaken who dream of the establishment of democratic liberal systems in Western Europe, bordering on Russian communism. Those err who speculate on liberal peace agreements or a bourgeois solution.

The world is marching on other roads. And the sentiments by which it is animated are so strong and just that, be it victory or defeat, they will overrun whatever may try to stop them.

The problem is not to permit that brute force of the torrent to destroy everything in its way, but rather to canalize and harness it, so that it becomes the fertilizing element of the new era.

For this reason, because we know that ours is the truth, and because we have labored for it for six years, we look upon events with serenity.

In these days our generations are not merely faced with territorial and political problems, but also with supreme issues of the existence of our faith, our civilization and our culture, which are now at stake once more. This makes our presence in the international sphere so very important. [An indistinct passage.]

Even without commands our destiny in the world implies such contentions are too empty to be taken into account. Neither the highest cause of all, God, a cause never better served than under our regime, nor the interests of the country, never as well defended as in our days, nor the general welfare of our nation, embodied in our restored economy, reborn industries and flourishing fields, are safe from our enemies. What price, in the face of these truths, those remnants of the old minority groups that still clutch their old ideas?

Is it permissible to indulge in differences and divergencies when the fate of the country is at stake? What interests us is how to reach our aim. We cannot make any truce while we are on the way. We are ready then to install--if Spain's interests demand--the traditional system that reigned through our history, under the condition that everything appertaining to the realization and lasting character of our national revolution is safeguarded.

Certain people wished to be in our ranks in order to create among us a controlling body or a new minority group. That could not be permitted. The phase that begins now is that of unity and perfection in work, and of preparing ourselves for the great moment that the world offers us.

We have called you together to carry our work to completion. It is heralded by continuous triumphs of our State, magnificent work of our youth organizations, silent productive labor of our feminine section, and pious endeavors of our social institutions. But our country demands more from us. The essential task lies before the new national council. It may well be that life will become more difficult. Our paths are strewn with thorns, but there can be no flagging in pursuit of our ideals.

It is not enough to set our goal. It must be pursued with constancy and sacrifice. Fortitude, as well as good-will, is needed. When we have all this, the triumph will be complete, because we shall feel strong and secure. We have the strength of our truth, backed by the reality of our power. We promise a hard life, but a Spanish life worthy of our country and its destiny.

We do not work for ephemeral ends, but for a resplendent tomorrow. Our army has in it the flower of youth. Divine assistance clearly has shown itself to us. With it, nothing and nobody shall vanquish us. If we fought hard on our crusade, we would fight even harder if the new danger of new war should threaten us. We know that with us is life, without us, death.

Somehow, it all smacks as antithesis to this or this.

Framed Edition

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