The Charlotte News

Thursday, April 23, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The Office of Price Administration, it seems by the front page, had jumped the gun, said oil czar and Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, in suggesting rationing of gasoline would be for so little as 2.5 to 5 gallons per week. A better estimate was 25 gallons per month, that is 6 gallons per week. But, said a spokesperson for Leon Henderson, OPA head, the actual final volume of the ration would "depend on how much gasoline is available". With that sort of candor, one could scarcely go wrong nor ever contend either dishonesty or ineptitude in government managment of resources.

The raid on Bologne reported the previous day was having its increasing effect on Nazi anticipation of an Allied invasion of France or Norway in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the Allies speculated that the arrival of General von Runstedt in France to oversee for the Reich the military operations there suggested intended offensive paratroop raids on Britain on a scale designed to keep more troops stationed on home watch and out of Egypt, Syria, Malta, India, and Australia. It was a game of distraction on both sides.

The point of strategic emphasis, however, for the Nazis was plain enough: they were in the process of delivering up 1.9 million men to the Russian front. But of these, 900,000 were fresh recruits 17 and 18 years old; another 500,000 were taken from countries occupied by the Nazis; the remainder, from industrial workers in Germany. Thus, this newly refreshed Wehrmacht was not going to be of the same caliber as the one which had been so decimated in its ranks during the fall and winter in Russia, and betrayed the accuracy of reported estimates by the Soviets that two to three million of the Nazis’ best trained and most seasoned troops were now no longer available in the fight. The replacements were, in effect, the new lambs to the slaughter, nothing more. For if the best trained could not crack the Russian lines, then how could the callow, the unseasoned, and the involuntary conscriptee with no incentive except to avoid death from the rear by facing certain death from the front?

In a year’s time, the spirit of England had markedly improved, as summed by the London Daily Express, that whereas the previous year on this St. George’s Day, Brits looked at the French coast across the Channel with dread of more bombing and the potential for invasion, they now could, as their ghosts of women, men and children of the bombed streets of London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol stood over them, with determined fervor instilled within the shadow of repeated RAF bombings of German positions, shake their fists in boast at the Nazi invader, who, having advanced previously without hindrance, was now ignominiously restrained by his own arrogation stretched to such surfeit as to be impractical of further fulfillment.

And, no doubt, beat their helmets with both hands, and stick out their tongues while putting opposing thumbs in either ear and spinning them round, back and forth, in derision.

The object lesson being to the dictatorial sorts and their very serious minions that one must not mess too long with those who celebrate dragonslayers.

Madagascar, it appeared, was being ripened for hand delivery by Vichy to the Japanese, as it was reported that hundreds of Free French had been arrested there and 50,000 tons of French shipping conveyed to the Mikado.

On the editorial page, Dorothy Thompson aptly sums up Pierre Laval as the only politician of whom she had ever heard that could spell his surname the same way, backwards or forward. (Nixon was close, but no mustard; yet, it does rhyme, actually, with a word, when spelled wrong way around, come to think of it now, doesn’t it? Perhaps, that is why, ultimately, a man named Ervin had to be the one assigned to get the goods on him.)

"Den of Thieves" tells of North Carolina’s understudy to M. Laval, Clarence Snead, and his eight fellow thieves on the government payroll. Fortunately, he was checked before he achieved any more power.

The piece from The United States News portrays the new ubiquitarian fixer of the Roosevelt Administration, Harry Hopkins, who had replaced in that role Louis Howe, who died in 1936. Mr. Howe had been the rumpled little man who made FDR a legend, first in New York and then throughout the nation, leaving therefore behind him big shoes to fill. Mr. Hopkins would occupy the role admirably. The piece mentions his failing health; he would outlive Roosevelt and the war, but not by long, dying of stomach cancer on January 29, 1946. Unlike Mr. Howe, with whom, despite respect for his political cunning and advice, the First Lady did not find personal affability, Mr. Hopkins and Mrs. Roosevelt got along well.

Paul Mallon, in the process of describing the sudden decline in Atlantic ship sinkings during the previous three weeks, relates the very unofficial account of the German U-boat which surfaced next to a fishing vessel to negotiate a trade for some of the catch. It was said that, during the episode, an American plane spotted the Nazi and opened fire, killing the already harpooned and dying kæstur hákarl.

"A King Revives" in the column tells of the now relieved excess afforded by the war for the market in cotton. No longer would the government have to make "loans" to farmers and then take the cotton on consignment for storage in warehouses, effectively purchasing the cotton at an inflated price (sometimes with it nearly winding up in shady pre-war oil deals as a conveniently surreptitious medium of exchange between Mexico and the Nazis for the more viscid commodity). Now to every boll there was a use in warfare, indeed, creating so much of a shortage that production of ordinary consumer items was now being considerably curtailed, starting with the ladies’ dresses and, with silk having been cut off the previous summer, even excluding from ready availability so mean an article as the coarse lisle stockings which some of the ladies, led by Frances Farmer, had begun wearing in boycott of Japanese silk in late 1937. War had its benefits, to cotton farmers anyway. Brother Starkey knew whereof he dreamt.

"Quitting Winner" compares the situation at hand of the Nazis and the Japanese with that of "Chester Whipple", neighborhood marble wizard who regularly filled his pockets with cat-eyed booty before his trigger thumb gave out, at which point he took his winnings and headed home each afternoon while ahead; advises of the expectation that the Axis soon will behave similarly, tender peace offerings on the basis of keeping the territory acquired. By this point, however, even Hitler and Tojo were not so deranged as to believe any such thing could any longer work. It had been one of the hopes from the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, that the Americans would be cowed into brokering a peace arrangement between the British and the Axis to avoid America’s being thrusted into a two-front war; the opposite had been the result. The war for survival was now on to the death of one or the other, the Third Reich and Imperial Japan or the varying forms of government within the Allied array of nations. Germany and Japan by now understood this fact all too clearly.

While, prior to December 7, to Japan had been sent too much of the scrap iron with which to build the instruments by which the marbles could be had, the Japanese did not reckon with the fact that much of that scrap iron came from our junk cars, the ones which had lost at marbles to begin with.

The country was carved out from wood by foresters and by wood has sustained itself, and so, eventually, its most valuable commodity in the end, we conclude, is wood, not marbles. Hence, the Allies won the war. (We ourselves offer by way of explanation that we never understood or played therefore the game of marbles, though at one stage we did, for ever so short a time, lasting perhaps a few months, collect them for their aesthetic beauty. But, of course, long ago, we lost our marbles, realizing then that they were items hard with which to keep track; thus, because of their limited utility, serving of little consequence, stretch one’s supply lines far too thin.)

The dean returned to the hearth and began to stroke his chin.

--When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question? he asked.

--From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once a fortnight if I am lucky.

--These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many go down into the depths and never come up. Only the trained diver can go down into those depths and explore them and come to the surface again.

--If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.

--Ha!

--For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas.

--I see. I quite see your point.

--I need them only for my own use and guidance until I have done something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell it and buy another.

--Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which was sold for a fancy price after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophical dissertations by. You know Epictetus?

--An old gentleman, said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul is very like a bucketful of water.

--He tells us in his homely way, the dean went on, that he put an iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character of a thief to steal and determined to buy an earthen lamp next day instead of the iron lamp.

A smell of molten tallow came up from the dean's candle butts and fused itself in Stephen's consciousness with the jingle of the words, bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. The priest's voice, too, had a hard jingling tone. Stephen's mind halted by instinct, checked by the strange tone and the imagery and by the priest's face which seemed like an unlit lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What lay behind it or within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the thundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom of God?

--I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.

--Undoubtedly, said the dean.

--One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace is quite different. I HOPE I AM NOT DETAINING YOU.

--Not in the least, said the dean politely.

--No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean--

--Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point: DETAIN.

He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.

--To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold.

--What funnel? asked Stephen.

--The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.

--That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?

--What is a tundish?

--That. The... funnel.

--Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.

--It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.

--A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.

His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all but given through--a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?

The dean repeated the word yet again.

--Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!

--The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.

The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:

--The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

--And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean added, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And to inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts. These are some interesting points we might take up.

Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the dean's firm, dry tone, was silent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots and confused voices came up the staircase.

--In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr. Moonan. He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.

--I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.

--You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. PER ASPERA AD ASTRA.

He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first arts' class.

--from Portrait of a Young Artist, by James Joyce, 1916

****

LUCIO

No, pardon; 'tis a secret must be locked within the
teeth and the lips: but this I can let you
understand, the greater file of the subject held the
duke to be wise.

DUKE VINCENTIO

Wise! why, no question but he was.

LUCIO

A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.

DUKE VINCENTIO

Either this is the envy in you, folly, or mistaking:
the very stream of his life and the business he hath
helmed must upon a warranted need give him a better
proclamation. Let him be but testimonied in his own
bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the
envious a scholar, a statesman and a soldier.
Therefore you speak unskilfully: or if your
knowledge be more it is much darkened in your malice.

LUCIO

Sir, I know him, and I love him.

DUKE VINCENTIO

Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with
dearer love.

LUCIO

Come, sir, I know what I know.

DUKE VINCENTIO

I can hardly believe that, since you know not what
you speak. But, if ever the duke return, as our
prayers are he may, let me desire you to make your
answer before him. If it be honest you have spoke,
you have courage to maintain it: I am bound to call
upon you; and, I pray you, your name?

LUCIO

Sir, my name is Lucio; well known to the duke.

DUKE VINCENTIO

He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to
report you.

LUCIO

I fear you not.

DUKE VINCENTIO

O, you hope the duke will return no more; or you
imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. But indeed I
can do you little harm; you'll forswear this again.

LUCIO

I'll be hanged first: thou art deceived in me,
friar. But no more of this. Canst thou tell if
Claudio die to-morrow or no?

DUKE VINCENTIO

Why should he die, sir?

LUCIO

Why? For filling a bottle with a tundish. I would
the duke we talk of were returned again: the
ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with
continency; sparrows must not build in his
house-eaves, because they are lecherous. The duke
yet would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would
never bring them to light: would he were returned!
Marry, this Claudio is condemned for untrussing.
Farewell, good friar: I prithee, pray for me. The
duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on
Fridays. He's not past it yet, and I say to thee,
he would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown
bread and garlic: say that I said so. Farewell.

--from Measure for Measure, Act III, Sc. ii, by William Shakespeare, 1603

As we have made mention before herein, when we were young, in our student days, we had a lamp, the visors of which were comprised of steel, which we employed to view the objects of our various studies. The outer surface of each the bell-shaped visors, however, was black and a little shabby looking by the time of our acquisition of the lamp, with tinctures of oxidation forming among the particles comprising the surface coating; it also, however, became, on a plane of uninterrupted passage of moments, increscently emissive of molecular acceleration, and thus kindled, even smoked after a term of sedulous intellection bequeathed our cerebrum by its delectation in lux to us imparted, posited as we were consistently through the track of moments underneath its keen, iridescent aperture.

To improve its aesthetics, or so we thought, we took it outside one Saturday afternoon and, after putting exertion to cloth enlaced with adamantine spar to erode its rude rustication, proceeded to alter its frequency of light-vibration reflecting from its mean surface, doing so via utilization of a diffusing aspirator.

The resulting effect to the eye was that of viewing a surface aesthetic comprised of dull, flat aurum, yet possessed of a faux appearance, the diffuser having left behind, commensurate with its apertural diameter, a rather pointillistic array. It did, however, look considerably better than what preceded. We also, in a separate operation, instructed the inside of each of the two visors with likewise diffused aspiration, but with application of a substance whose composition was such as to coat anew the surface in a manner so that light striking it reflected all spectral colors visible, with the absorption of each maintained in de minimis status. Upon drying, we placed the refreshed steel-visored lamp again on our blue desk.

It only burned the hotter, smoked the more, while yet providing in the process brighter light.

Was the aesthetic therefore improved or, on balance, made inferior to its prior state?

Eventually, we bought a new lamp.

No one stole the old one though, at least not so far.

And should you be unable to read the zig-zag print, the Herblock quote is from "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae.