The Charlotte News

Friday, December 25, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page stressed the death of Admiral Darlan the previous evening in Algiers, the victim of an assassin’s bullets. The assassin is described in the account here as a 22-year old acting on behalf of the Axis, disgruntled with Darlan’s collaboration with the Allies. The murder weapon was described as a 25 caliber pistol, a little small for the Ruby pistol, of 32 caliber, subsequently described as the murder weapon. (To what degree the type of pistol used was ever precisely ascertained, we do not know.) President Roosevelt labeled the act first degree murder and called for swift justice to deter other such acts of violence toward Allied commanders. His command would be swiftly obeyed.

General Henri Giraud, great escape artist of la grande illusion, henceforth would assume the command of French forces in North and West Africa.

Whether the assassin, Fernand de la Chapelle, was in fact, as later stated, an anti-Vichy member of the Resistance or, as also would have appeared quite logical at the time, an Axis sympathizer, is a little enshrouded in mystery. Was the report a smokescreen to kill aborning any urge on the part of French forces under Darlan’s command still loyal to Vichy to engage in violent retribution toward the Allies for the murder? Was it a lone gunman’s act, that of a small group of conspirators--some accounts contending that there were as many as three others involved in the planning--, or was it the result of a carefully plotted conspiracy orchestrated from a high level, either from within the Resistance, the Axis, or even from somewhere within the structure of the Allied command?

When dealing with anything having to do with Nazis or former Nazi collaborators, just as with some of the questions surrounding the killing of Reinhard Heydrich in May in Prague, questions always remain. The Deil confuses.

On the editorial page, Burke Davis continues the commentary on Darlan’s death, with "Last Shift", indicating that regardless of who performed the act, few would grieve over the loss of a man as shifty and expedient as was Darlan, always looking out only ultimately for his own hide, siding, as with many of the other Vichy central cast, with whomever appeared of the moment to promise him the most personal retention of power.

"Good Tidings" wishes the little Nazis and Fascists many happy returns for an equally well-deserved nasty Christmas. We second the motion.

Dorothy Thompson, as did Samuel Grafton a few days earlier, reminds readers of the Holocaust ongoing in Eastern Europe. She even places a number on the matter, five million Jews having been displaced to the camps.

She favors a clearer enunciation of post-war policy--after Hitler's Ragnarok would finally be obtained, in inexorable reproach and disgust of himself as a weakling, with indisputable proof of its obtaining in his majesty's blood-curdling dragon-teeth biting performance in the last scene of Nosferatu, finally rising in duplication of the sun's hidden curtain, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on a pair of whispering summer days--to insure the average German citizen, as well as the military leaders who might foster a coup, that retribution would be carried out only against the actual war criminals of Germany, not the whole of the nation.

So, today, we celebrate Christmas, those of the Christian faith, perhaps those, too, who have grown of age in a society accustomed to its celebratory environment and so embrace its spirit, if not its religious significance.

A report on the front page quotes excerpts of the Christmas Eve message of President Roosevelt, the full text of which is below. Its message rings equally true today in 2009, if, fortunately, because of the sacrifice of so many around the world in those dark years between 1937 and 1945, with less need of wholesale sacrifice.

On Christmas, 1942, some men and women were starving and being gassed and cremated in concentration camps in Germany, in Poland. Others, from France and Germany, to Tunisia, to Burma and China, to New Guinea and the Solomons, were dying beneath bombs dropped on them from above, some from Allied planes, some from Axis planes.

Men on Guadalcanal sustained themselves in tropical conditions, awaiting a day when the enemy might be rid from their small, but significant island outpost in the Pacific, protecting the supply route from Hawaii to General MacArthur's staging ground for the Pacific theater as a whole in Australia.

In Libya, the guns were again mainly silent, but only for the nonce. In Tunisia, the first major action in two weeks resulted from the Allies expelling the Axis defenders from the heights at Medjez-El-Bab, 35 miles southwest of Tunis. West of Kairouan, 65 miles further south of Tunis, French forces encountered and repelled German panzer divisions in a fight which lasted all of the previous day.

In Russia, the valiant fight for preservation of homeland against an invader of eighteen months without respite continued. As the map and report this day, together with the reports of previous days, indicate, the Russians were busy trying to cut off Millerovo in the north and Kotelnikovski in the south, vital rail supply links to Rostov, and thereby encircle and entrap a third of the Nazi Wehrmacht remaining in Russia.

Death answered death on this Christmas Day, 1942 in that theater. In eight days of fighting west of the Don Bend, the Russians claimed to have killed yet another 50,000 German soldiers and captured 42,000 more as prisoners. Death answered death this Christmas Day, 1942 in mind-numbing numbers.

Premier Stalin and Foreign Commissar Molotov announced to the Soviet Central Committee that more territory had been restored to Soviet hands thus far in the fresh winter counter-offensive of the previous month and a half than in all of the previous winter offensive of 1941-42. That greater rate of success, of course, was primarily the result of the Allied invasion in North Africa, forcing Hitler's hand to transfer an estimated one-fourth of the Wehrmacht then in Russia, as well as to divert a large part of the Luftwaffe, to defense of Southern Europe. The Soviet leaders also assured their ruling body a restoration of the Ukraine to Soviet hands in the near future. Military actions certainly appeared to bear out their promises and claims.

On this Christmas, as we pointed out a few weeks ago, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill each received from General George Marshall as Christmas gifts identical fifty-inch, 750-pound globes (the weight being guerilla mighty by deliberation or not) by which they might see with greater accuracy and detail the scope of the war effort and the scope of the enemy encroachment on once free territory, at least free from the tyranny and slavery which was the brand wrought by the Axis guns and the boot-stamp of the thief who supplanted himself as a god astride the world, believing literally in the notion that He comes as a thief in the night; thus so, too, would he, the literal thief.

President Roosevelt would have but two Christmases remaining. He, too, was taken, in the end, by the war.

Today, it rains where we are, having snowed a few inches a week ago today, its remnants still on the ground in patches amid the gloomy grey rain, in a display incongruous with the Christmas spirit.

But, perhaps out of that grey, there is a lesson to be obtained on man’s continuing collective indifference to consequence from material profligacy.

Is it the Deal? Is it the Bargain?

Or, is it, in the end, a form of collective blind stupidity in the face of overwhelming information imparted, during the entirety of the last century, telling us to stop, not at a dead-end, but to slow things down measurably and immediately before the consequences of continuing on apace become irrevocable?

That, to insure that a hundred years from now, others may still celebrate some holiday known as Christmas, and with plentiful snow in places where snow normally ought be, while Christmas Island remains afloat in the tranquil sea.

December 24, 1942

White House news release.

This year I am speaking on Christmas Eve not to this gathering at the White House only but to all of the citizens of our Nation, to the men and women serving in our American Armed Forces and also to those who wear the uniforms of the other United Nations. I give you a message of cheer. I cannot say "Merry Christmas"--for I think constantly of those thousands of soldiers and sailors who are in actual combat throughout the world--but I can express to you my thought that this is a happier Christmas than last year in the sense that the forces of darkness stand against us with less confidence in the success of their evil ways.

To you who toil in industry for the common cause of helping to win the war, I send a message of cheer--that you can well continue to sacrifice without recrimination and with a look of Christmas cheer--a kindly spirit toward your fellow men.

To you who serve in uniform I also send a message of cheer--that you are in the thoughts of your families and friends at home, and that Christmas prayers follow you wherever you may be.

To all Americans I say that loving our neighbor as we rove ourselves is not enough--that we as a Nation and as individuals will please God best by showing regard for the laws of God. There is no better way of fostering good-will toward man than by first fostering good-will toward God. If we love Him we will keep His Commandments.

In sending Christmas Greetings to the Armed Forces and merchant sailors of the United Nations we include therein our pride in their bravery on the fighting fronts and on all the seas. But we remember in our greetings and in our pride those other men who guard remote islands and bases and will, in all probability, never come into active combat with the common enemy. They are stationed in distant places far from home. They have few contacts with the outside world, and I want them to know that their work is essential to the conduct of the war--essential to the ultimate victory--and that we have not forgotten them.

It is significant that tomorrow--Christmas Day--our plants and factories will be stilled. That is not true of the other holidays we have long been accustomed to celebrate. On all other holidays work goes on--gladly--for the winning of the war.

So Christmas becomes the only holiday in all the year.

I like to think that this is so because Christmas is a holy day. May all it stands for live and grow throughout the years.

Herblock, however, calls to mind this number, from circa 1930, another type of Christmas music to the ears of millions, no doubt, on this particular Christmas.

In any event, perhaps we now understand what the "Visitin' Around" was trying to impart, by way of the Lexington Dispatch, back there in September, 1941.

The partially cut off quote of the day is: "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" --Luke 6:26

We second the motion.

Nevertheless, Merry Christmas. Hope we don't drown in the product of leftover Nazi post-war bequests to us in the year to come.

We conclude, incidentally, from the following discourse, that Marley, alias Darlan, was dead as a doornail, doornail as dead he was; or, perhaps, as a titmouse caught in the vice between the devil and the Qatarra Depression. (We got that one on the phone from John Mitchell downstream. But his was quite a bit more krummy, a la de Butz.)

KATHARINE

Alice, tu as ete en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le langage.

ALICE

Un peu, madame.

KATHARINE

Je te prie, m'enseignez: il faut que j'apprenne a
parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en Anglois?

ALICE

La main? elle est appelee de hand.

KATHARINE

De hand. Et les doigts?

ALICE

Les doigts? ma foi, j'oublie les doigts; mais je me souviendrai. Les doigts? je pense qu'ils sont appeles de fingres; oui, de fingres.

KATHARINE

La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je pense que je suis le bon ecolier; j'ai gagne deux mots d'Anglois vitement. Comment appelez-vous les ongles?

ALICE

Les ongles? nous les appelons de nails.

KATHARINE

De nails. Ecoutez; dites-moi, si je parle bien: de hand, de fingres, et de nails.

ALICE

C'est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon Anglois.

KATHARINE

Dites-moi l'Anglois pour le bras.

ALICE

De arm, madame.

KATHARINE

Et le coude?

ALICE

De elbow.

KATHARINE

De elbow. Je m'en fais la repetition de tous les mots que vous m'avez appris des a present.

ALICE

Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.

KATHARINE

Excusez-moi, Alice; ecoutez: de hand, de fingres, de nails, de arma, de bilbow.

ALICE

De elbow, madame.

KATHARINE

O Seigneur Dieu, je m'en oublie! de elbow. Comment appelez-vous le col?

ALICE

De neck, madame.

KATHARINE

De nick. Et le menton?

ALICE

De chin.

KATHARINE

De sin. Le col, de nick; de menton, de sin.

ALICE

Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en verite, vous prononcez les mots aussi droit que les natifs d'Angleterre.

KATHARINE

Je ne doute point d'apprendre, par la grace de Dieu, et en peu de temps.

ALICE

N'avez vous pas deja oublie ce que je vous ai enseigne?

KATHARINE

Non, je reciterai a vous promptement: de hand, de fingres, de mails--

ALICE

De nails, madame.

KATHARINE

De nails, de arm, de ilbow.

ALICE

Sauf votre honneur, de elbow.

KATHARINE

Ainsi dis-je; de elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?

ALICE

De foot, madame; et de coun.

KATHARINE

De foot et de coun! O Seigneur Dieu! ce sont mots
de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et
non pour les dames d'honneur d'user: je ne voudrais
prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France
pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le coun!
Neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon
ensemble: de hand, de fingres, de nails, de arm, de
elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, de coun.

ALICE

Excellent, madame!

KATHARINE

C'est assez pour une fois: allons-nous a diner.

Ah yes, our little chickadees, a lady without a care is like a man without a sword, in need of relish.