The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 17, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The carrier pictured on the front page, still building on the ways, was the Essex, which was launched in July and went into operation in December. The Essex survived the war, seeing service through 1969, serving as the recovery ship for Apollo 7 in October, 1968, the first manned Apollo spacecraft flight, the first manned flight launched by a Saturn 1B rocket.

It was, incidentally, a kindred booster of which President Kennedy spoke at the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Center in San Antonio on November 21, 1963 when he said: "And last Saturday at Cape Canaveral, I saw our new Saturn C-1 rocket booster, which, with its payload, when it rises in December of this year, will be, for the first time, the largest booster in the world, carrying into space the largest payload that any country in the world has ever sent into space."

Later, that evening, at a testimonial dinner held at the Rice Hotel in Houston for Congressman Albert Thomas, he said: "[Albert Thomas] has helped steer this country to its present eminence in space. Next month when the United States of America fires the largest booster in the history of the world into space for the first time, giving us the lead, fires the largest payroll--payload--into space giving us the lead--it will be the largest payroll, too--and who should know that better than Houston? We put a little of it right in here. But in any case, the United States next month will have a leadership in space which it wouldn't have without Albert Thomas. And so will this city."

He might have added that hardship boots from repetition, and humor sometimes boots hardship.

Another piece reports that the Red Army was clinging to Balaklava, seven miles south of Sevastopol in the Crimea on the Black Sea.

The report mentions that Balaklava was the site of the October, 1854 charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War, as memorialized by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem. Great Britain, France, and Turkey fought against Russia in that war for control of the Dardanelles and its sea route into the Mediterranean. Of the 637 crack British troops who went into the valley, 122 were wounded and another 156 did not return at all.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
Boldly they rode & well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

The Nazi would not involve himself in such derring-do or die. For he had only Der Fuehrer for whom to fight-- no god, no country, only Der Fuehrer embodying all, will.

In their first action of the war in the Mediterranean, American planes scored 35 direct hits on Italian naval vessels and returned safely home, indicates another piece.

John Lardner provides the belated report of the last days of Bataan in early April, and the forced march of the captured Americans and Filipinos, some 72,000 in all.

The editorial page begins by imparting the information that South Carolina spent $101 more per mental patient per year at $278 than did the mental hospital at Morganton. And South Carolina’s insane asylum provided care for both black and white patients, whereas North Carolina devoted only $108 to its black patients at a separate hospital at Goldsboro.

Yeah, but South Carolina had so much more to cure than did North Carolina. And, the figures obviously suggest that black mental patients in North Carolina had much less need of cure than did the average white mental patients.

Or, do we misunderstand those figures?

Regardless, as we pointed out, today the Broughton Hospital at Morganton spends more than $500 per patient per day, three times that spent per year in 1942.

"Death Toll" tells of the British military losses since the war began in September, 1939 through September, 1941: 48,973. The editorial points out that this figure does not include civilian losses, which totaled about an additional 50,000 during the Blitz of 1940-41.

While striking, it contraposes the figure relative to the overall population of the British Empire, 504 million, and thus sets the balance, as well finding solace in the fact that during World War I the Empire lost fully three million soldiers, over a third of its armed forces. Even this latter figure pales, however, when it is juxtaposed to the number of German and Austrian dead in the World War, 14 million.

It ends, however, on a grim cautionary note, that the 126,000 American losses in the 19 months of the AEF commitment in the World War would prove small compared to the likely losses ahead on two fronts in the present war.

And, indeed, the United States would suffer about 255,000 men killed or missing in World War II.

In "Enough", the column once again denounces the religious bigotry being demonstrated by the Baptist ministers in Lumberton re the Catholic-run USO hut there. Now, it finds the clergy advocating that the USO not operate a hut in Lumberton at all, that the men in uniform instead attend prayer meetings with the Baptist clergy. Meanwhile, as it points out, the Catholic charities had spent $345,000 thus far in 1941-42 on the USO compared to $855,000 contributed to it by the YMCA, YWCA, Salvation Army, and Jewish Welfare Board, the first of the four contributing the most. The piece also reminds that many of the men quartered at nearby Fort Bragg were Catholic.

Oh, Happy Day.

And apparently Herblock had been reading The News of late...

In any event, while in the backyard, though a little early for football, we may re-read the Cash piece of November 18, 1940, not forgetting the other two editorials he set down that date, and dream of times to come.

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