The Charlotte News
Friday, March 20, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: "Intuition Fails" suggests that Hitler decided that being a general was not so easy as it might have at first seemed to the lunatic when, in December, he fired his generals in Russia and took command himself at the front. So, now three months later, he called back his three standard bearers to plan the new spring offensive.
"Ever Upward" describes the perpetual motion machine desired by the auto workers, wages keeping pace with inflation, in turn giving rise to higher prices on automobiles and thus inflation and higher wages, ad infinitum down Route 66 with Maybelline at the wheel.
"Easy Mark" may misunderstand the usual purpose of the "prayer for judgment" in North Carolina. While it may be used to continue a case for sentencing, as assumed in the instant case, it also may be used to suspend criminal proceedings in a matter indefinitely. Which procedure was intended in this instance is not discernible from the facts provided. The News consistently criticized Solicitor John Carpenter for inefficiency generally and so it probably didn't matter too much to the editors whether in the particular example he was being lenient or incompetent--with respect to a known bootlegger.
Paul Mallon explains the difficulty with which the Japanese would have in conquering Australia, natural lines of defense being offered by the Great Barrier Reef protecting the northeast coast, and the northern coast generally being 2,000 miles from the centers of population, Sydney and Melborne. The strategy of the Japanese appeared to be to try to secure Darwin and other places in the north which might be used as staging grounds for offensives against their positions now held in Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celibes, and New Guinea.
Mr. Mallon also indicates why MacArthur was such a welcome addition to the command structure in Australia. Australia had no standing army and only a skeletal force therefore when the war began, hardly any experienced officers. Thus, a commander with the stature of MacArthur, fresh from his heroic stand on Bataan, was a welcome comfort.
The front page indicates that MacArthur was rumored to be planning an offensive strategy for the Pacific, not just to defend Australia. The report also had it that he intended to provide reinforcements to the contingent of men he left behind in the Philippines.
The President, meanwhile, educated the public to the fact that transportation of supplies by sea to the southwest Pacific took months to accomplish. As a lesson break, he recounted to reporters his passing the rumor at a White House dinner that General MacArthur had been rowed 2,500 miles from the Philippines to Australia while disguised as a fisherman. Some among his listeners apparently accepted the President's version. Imagine FDR slowly enunciating the word "rowboat" and you will well understand the credit to which any auditor would give such an otherwise preposterous account. In any event, we heard that the idea came to the President from reading a March 11 News editorial.
A letter writer recounts with approval that which Woodrow Wilson did to exert control of labor and management during World War I. He gave an ultimatum to labor: accept the result of mediation and go back to work or be barred from working in defense industries in the same area for a year, and lose deferment status in the draft. He had already taken over the factory and so when he urged it to hire the workers back, after they readily capitulated to his invitation to accept the mediation, the employer likewise complied.
And Bernard Baruch writes a letter in praise of a News editorial, "Man the Pumps!" of March 11. Mr. Baruch, a native of Camden, S.C., was the chairman of the War Industries Board during World War I and was instrumental in writing the economic restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. Later in 1942, he became an advisor to James Byrnes, also of South Carolina, after Byrnes resigned from the Supreme Court to rejoin the Administration in aid of the war effort, first as Director of Economic Stabilization and then the following year as Director of War Mobilization.
Framed Edition
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