The Charlotte News

Friday, May 29, 1942

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Incidentally, we thought we should reference the fact that the Hertz commercial to which we linked you from fall, 1963 (the time it was first aired being made evident by the presence of a 1964 model Chevrolet), besides in part being set obviously in the French Quarter of New Orleans, begins near Ft. Lauderdale at the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse, which is between Jupiter Lighthouse and Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, right off Key Biscayne. Jupiter is between Hillsboro and Cape Canaveral Lighthouse. We just thought that we would mention it. And, for you too young to remember them, it was an actual commercial which aired at the time, a regular Hertz campaign in those days, one having used that jingle to such effect that it became wedded with the average person’s consciousness, even if this particular one, we do not recall seeing. But that jingle...

The name of the Nazi driver of Heydrich, incidentally, was Johannes Klein.

The U-curve was at the intersection of Kirchmayerova and V Holeševičkách. Heydrich was riding from his Chateau at Panenské Břežany to visit Hitler in Berlin. The time of the attack was 10:30 a.m. He was first going to Prague Castle, his headquarters, and had to pass through the long, slow curve to get there. This route was described as one of daily routine to and from work; so, we may assume fairly that the plotters knew of the likelihood of his passing this spot by this routine.

The front page reports from Bern, Switzerland that Heydrich had died. Who knows? Maybe he had. Officially, he died June 4 of blood poisoning, posited to be the result of either the delayed reaction to poison in the bomb thrown at the side of his vehicle or the result of horsehair flak from the upholstery exploding into his wounds--the caper, in other words, of the herr done in by the horsehair.

"Wounded Beast" in the editorial column, presumably one of the first pieces from Burke Davis, eloquently lays out the case as to why this tree-climbing gorilla sans a soul was fit to be the object of proof of Nazi mortality, inapposite to the Superman myth.

The front page offers a speculative report that Bohemia and Moravia would be absorbed into Germany immediately and that the pogrom which Hitler had planned for Czech territory on a gradual basis would be instead implemented forthwith.

We ask again, therefore, whether Heydrich was more valuable to the Reich dead than alive, whether his death was actually allowed by the Reich in order to afford an excuse for massive retaliation.

A report tells of a British Army photographer relating his experience briefly as a prisoner of war in Libya. A Nazi lieutenant told him that they finally had Churchill this time "by the throat" and would be in Tobruk by nightfall. ‘Twasn’t long, however, until British artillery opened up on the column and the lieutenant fled, leaving his 22 prisoners behind. He, too, had seen the Rebbaj gnickow.

Time to run away.

Native refugees walked 530 miles through the jungles of New Guinea to try to effect passage to Australia. At destiny's end, they could not find transit, and so a Catholic priest assisting them walked back 530 miles to obtain an airplane. He flew the airplane to the refugees' location, but cracked up on attempting to land. He obtained a canoe, perhaps blue, and undertook to row a difficult month-long sojourn to Australia. A rescue plane, summoned by the priest after arrival in Australia, flew to the point where the natives were and landed safely. But, on attempted take-off, they found the ground too rough. In consequence, they began a ceremonial dance to tamp out rhythmically a suitably flat surface by which to taxi for taking flight. It worked, and the natives ascribed to their performance a magical spell. Thus, one could say that it became a magical mystery tour, from New Guinea to the Land Down Under.

As we mentioned once before in the last few months, we have to assume that New Guinea therefore constituted the original Land of 1000 Dances.

To rattle Hitler’s gorilla cage and effect distraction from the Russian front, General George C. Marshall announced that the Allies would effect an invasion of France. He did not say when. He was correct.

Russia had asked the Americans and British to open a second front to relieve them; it was being done, subito.

Dorothy Thompson on the editorial page suggests that whether the Allies meant what they said as to an imminent decisive blow was of practical importance to a Frenchman in determining whether to resist or collaborate. If this decisive blow were to come within a year, she opines, the decision is much simpler than if it were to be delayed, say, until 1945.

Paul Mallon writes of a wallpaper plant somewhere in the midwest which, befitting the little paperhanger in Berlin, decided instead to manufacture bombs in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The winter construction began, also befitting the gorillas of Berlin, under a circus tent in result of the cold weather. Now, bombs were turned out by the wholesale, rivets in the hopper, hopper to the riveter, rivet, rivet, rivet. In the box, in the mail, on the ship, on the plane, take-off, drop, home, bicycle for some rest, and then start the morning process all over again.

Raymond Clapper writes of where the action is when it comes to propaganda: action, now! And lots of it. He tells of a big bomb being touted by the British, bigger than the big bombs of the Nazi dropped on Britain during the Blitz. That would be Big, indeed, suggests Clapper. And by the time they got to Dresden in the last months of the War, Big it would be.

"War Birds" in the editorial column tells of the Lincoln Electric Co.’s huge bonuses being paid to avoid excess profits taxes on which the government had depended in awarding large contracts such as the Navy contract to which Lincoln, the welding equipment dealer, was party. The title derived from the predatory nature of the Bird.

"Same Old FDR" criticizes the President for his heavy-handed attitude on the High Point power plant to be built for six million bucks, in spite of its having been blocked by the Supreme Court two years earlier. But, resorting to the War Powers Act, enabling the President to do what was necessary and proper during the war to effect defense efforts, the President found a power shortage in and around High Point threatening war industry and so approved the project. This editorial critique sounds as the same old News, post-Cash, consistently finding ways to criticize the Administration for over-spending, even as it consistently supported the active defense effort and as it campaigned for defense industries to be brought to the area so that North Carolina might obtain its fair share of the war-booty prize. But, without sufficient electricity available to power the industry to make the propellers, the shafts, or other widgets required for war, then the area could scarcely qualify to receive its fair share of contracts.

This day, we note, marks what would have been President Kennedy’s 92d birthday, twice the number of years, less six months, he was afforded. We note it for his great benefit provided the country during his short tenure in office, both domestically, in supplying hope and law to realize that hope for those deprived of rights in a society divided upon itself by apartheid in varying degrees since its founding, and abroad the world, with respect to keeping the country at peace in a time which threatened during the Cold War as no other time, both in Berlin and in Cuba. Had he lived so long as today, of course, we do not know what might have transpired for better or worse after November 22, 1963. But we do know that one does not cut short the life of another. It is contrary to nature and the natural order of things.

Ah, then, the cynical rationalizer might intrude: what about the likes of Reinhard Heydrich, then? Wasn’t he human? Wasn’t his killing equally a "political assassination"? Weren’t the Nazis entitled to their martyr for a cause dear to their hearts and minds?

No, mein herr, we rejoinder. His was a mercy killing, for one so far removed from humanity that he no longer understood the difference between good and bad. Good had become bad and vice versa. Read "Wounded Beast" and compare it to the documented history, should you doubt it. It was defense of others, legally, to which Jozef Gabčik and Jan Kubiš and their fellow underground members resorted—for the preservation of their country, for the preservation of their homes, against an interloping predator of the lowest order. For Heydrich was involved directly in the extermination and displacement of masses of people, simply taking whatever he wanted, looting the land, authorizing the killing of those who dared stand in his way, all with the imprimatur, of course, of Der Fuehrer. He did not supply the gas or pull the trigger, but he actively planned the operations in concert with Hitler and Himmler and the rest, and was therefore a war criminal, a co-conspirator, an aider and abettor. He deserved nothing less than what he got, would have been hung by the Allies post-Nuremberg.

By contrast, President Kennedy had, a year before his death, which occurred 1,037 days into his term of office, 37 days after the first anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, saved the United States and the free world from nuclear enslavement, was seeking at the time of his death peaceful nuclear disarmament with the treaty for which he fought, banning above-ground atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons, and the attempt to funnel space and rocket technology into peaceful pursuits of scientific value to mankind. He had in the latter days of October, 1962 in fact saved the world from a turn which, potentially, if not immediately, was, in train, edging toward nuclear self-immolation at the crossroads.

In all of that critical 13 days of history, one lone U-2 pilot was killed. The President's military advisors, to the man, had advised otherwise, had advised embarking on an invasion of Cuba which would have likely resulted in use of already operational nuclear weapons in response, either directly from Cuba or in Berlin, and then use by the United States of nuclear weapons in counter-response in one or both venues, defeating the original intention of these monstrous weapons to act, with balance of mutually assured destruction, as a deterrent to any form of renewed aggressive action by one sovereignty against another such as that which had led to the Guns of August, 1914 and the Blitzkrieg of September, 1939.

And, many among the citizenry, thinking it to be a nice tv show in the offing, to go out onto the beaches there in Florida and watch the rockets’ red glare, also counseled action, now, against the Commie rats—not appeasement, nawsuh, for we know what that led to at Munich, and we, of course, know who was behind that one, now, don’t we? And we shall have to fight the Comm-mmm-unists sooner or later and so why not now?

There is, mein herr, therefore, a profound difference between choosing life and choosing death, between executing a known war criminal who has the whiphand over your country, representative of a foreign invader, one responsible for genocide, for sending masses to involuntary servitude, and rationalizing the death of a free world leader.

That you or your relatives were living in East or West Berlin or in some Communist-bloc country elsewhere in 1963 and remained a Nazi, despising therefore the recognized pre-eminent leader of the free world when he spoke to great approbation before the masses of your fellow countrymen in June of that year, affords no rationale or excuse for your collaboration based on a belief that Communists were in fact being appeased as at Munich and, sooner or late, that, as in 1939, the rockets would be launched across the Wall in Blitzkrieg fashion, such that it would have been better to have gotten the thing over with in a controlled setting, in a controlled burn.

But, that was only in the Superman comics, mein herr.

Furthermore, there was a great and fundamental difference between a Union Blue Lincoln Continental and a Hearse-Black Mercedes-Benz.

We recommend, mein herr, reading a little history first before acting impulsively. Candidly, had we lived in the South in 1861, we might have been tempted to take a derringer and go visit Massa Jeff Davis in Richmond, to pay a little social call, volunteering our services as a Confederate Marshal-at-Large over Yankeedom. It is too bad that someone of the abolitionist group did not do so. Yet, we recognize that such action might have only emboldened a cause which was based on irrationality to begin with, and that someone equally magnetic to the likes of Massa Davis was not very difficult to find as replacement. It might have been exchanging merely the devil you knew for the one you didn’t. And so, on second thought, we might have returned the derringer to its shoulder harness and let it go, realizing that the battlefield is where the battle, when unfortunately it must be waged at all, is fought, where it has to be lost or won, not through assassination of leaders, only providing to the led a patina of justice to their cause, no matter how flawed or irrational in the abstract that cause may be--as was the extermination of masses of people, the deprivation of social and economic rights to millions, too numerous to count, throughout Europe, all to build Greater Germania for the few at the top in Berlin, in Prague Castle, the similar "protectors" assigned to watch over the satrapies set up in Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States, the Balkans, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, France, Albania, Greece—until they met the Rebbaj gnickow.

Framed Edition

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