The Charlotte News

Saturday, June 20, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Today’s editorial page pays homage to the foresightedness of The News itself in the pre-war days, and especially that contained in the pieces set forth by Cash.

Having anticipated back in 2001 this prognostic, a mere 59 years after this date’s pieces were written, yet eight years before we ever read them, and thus in 2001 having grouped the pieces from The News, as reprinted in the five-inch thick volume of editorials and cartoons from around the country contained in the 1941 publication What America Thinks, we can simply now refer you to the column’s first abstracted piece, that of September 17, 1938. From there, you may easily navigate via our fancy 2001 model drop-down menu to each of the other whole pieces from The News contained in that volume, not limited only to the three partially re-printed on today’s page, the one aforementioned plus those of August 18 and 19, 1939.

"Wrong Number" declines to accept Eleanor Roosevelt’s rosy picture painted of a post-war world in which Germany, Italy, and Japan would be welcomed back into the brotherhood of nations with a chance to rebuild and make prosperous societies for their citizens while governed on a democratic model. The editorial views the prospect as a bit starry-eyed and, for the warring history of these countries, especially Germany and Japan, not worth the time of day.

Yet, the effort would be undertaken, and the effort would be successful in each case.

Whether the treachery unleashed upon the world from the visible results of splitting asunder its unseen particles, changing thereby a myth into a legend, and the threat of its spiny re-emergence on a moment’s notice, eventually as potentially delivered at the tip-end of a rocket within minutes to any place on the globe, had anything significant to do with reasonable compliance with basic tenets governing humanity at large, is impossible to say. It is as it was.

Regardless, the wrong number turned out right, at least so far in history.

Little cars and transistor radios, as we have previously pointed out, primarily did the trick. That, maybe, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Eventually, the cars became larger and the radios became computer components.

But, lest we become overconfident, it is best to remember that the night is still young. And the crippled Lady from Shanghai, stuck in her bed at home, still answers the phone. Thus, best not plot to kill her again.

Speaking of perspicacity and lack thereof, "Red Encore" tells perspicaciously that from that displayed previously vis à vis Russia by Joseph E. Davies, Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. between early 1937 and mid-1938, the reader of the Saturday Evening Post piece by him might glean a fair rendering of that which lay ahead: that the Soviet would withstand yet again the assault by the Nazi in the summer ahead, and that, as a final coup de grâce, eventually would invade Germany offensively from the east.

It would of course come to be by early 1945 and, by April 30, the Cossack would be knocking on the Bunker door to wish Auf Wiedersehen to the little Rat-boy on his way to Valhalla, or wherever Rat-boys wind up going, maybe to Fólkvangr, that making somewhat better sense because the machine was indeed at the end used up, its Third Cylinder banger having blown out consequent of the weakness built in to it by Ferdie Porsche, insufficient air flow to Third Cylinder’s fins, blocked as they were beneath the fan shroud by the towering oil cooler.

Come to think of it, that Chevy compact was really more akin to the Karmann-Ghia, wasn’t it? The problem is that they left out the German engineering at Chevy and just plopped the box on the chassis turned about on itself. You can’t do that.

You’ve got to engineer it.

The editorial by Paul Mallon contains an erroneous assumption, presumably based on erroneous assumptions communicated to the press from General MacArthur after the Battle of the Coral Sea: that the Shokaku was sunk. It was heavily damaged but was repaired and subsequently lived to fight another day. The Shokaku finally was sunk, however, on June 19, 1944 by the submarine Cavalla during the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The editorial also, relying on erroneous information apparently imparted by Jane’s Fighting Ships, mistakes the displacement of both Shokaku and its twin Zuikaku. The tonnage of each fully loaded carrier was 32,000, not 14,000.

As the editorial correctly asserts, the Hiryu, Soryu, Kaga, and Akagi were the four carriers sunk at Midway. The Soryu, however, had a fully loaded displacement of 19,000 tons and carried 73 planes, Hiryu, 20,000, also carrying 73 planes, and Kaga and Akagi, 43,000 each, each carrying 90 planes. The information on which Mr. Mallon relied therefore erred significantly on the side of the elimination of smaller carriers than in fact was the case.

Additionally, also from an erroneous report after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the aircraft carrier identified as Ryukaku was in fact the 14,000-ton light carrier Shōhō, (Auspicious Phoenix), sunk May 7, which carried only 30 aircraft, compared to the 84 planes carried by the obviously much larger, 30,000-ton class Ryukaku.

Regardless, its primary point was sound. The Japanese Navy was now reeling from loss of the bulk of its primary component, the carrier task force. Threat to Hawaii, the Panama Canal, the West Coast, Alaska, were therefore largely removed, freeing up United States ships previously devoted to protection of these positions, enabling them henceforth to sail offensively against Japanese positions.

"In the Net" tells of the trapping and killing of the principal plotters in the death of Reinhard Heydrich, Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčik, within the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius on Resslova Street in Prague on June 18. The two, along with five of the other plotters, Josef Bublik, Jan Hruby, Adolf Opálka, Jaroslav Švarc, and Josef Valčik, had gone to the church for sanctuary from the searching Gestapo.

One of the plotters, Karel Čurda, gave into pressure from his associates and fear engendered by the news of the June 10 massacre at Lidice, and, first in a letter of June 13 and then in person at the Gestapo’s Prague headquarters on June 16, betrayed Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčik. He told the Gestapo of the entire plot and its members. The Gestapo then began interrogating those implicated and systematically murdering them after obtaining the necessary information, eventually leading to the church on Resslova Street.

The seven were hiding in an underground crypt beneath the church floor. Surrounded, fighting to the last, six of the seven plotters each took their own lives rather than suffer torture at the hands of their captors. In the case of Jan Kubiš, he had multiple bullet wounds, suggesting that he chose to fight to the bitter end and was shot down by the Gestapo’s barrage of machine-gun fire unleashed on the church.

For two weeks afterward, the Nazis and the Nazi-puppet Czech Protectorate Government conducted a propaganda tour of the country, culminating with a mass rally in Prague on July 3 to celebrate the end of martial law, enacted after the Heydrich attack of May 27.

On this date, June 20, the Gestapo learned of a radio transmitter used by the underground located in the village of Ležáky. On June 24, the Gestapo arrested the inhabitants of Ležáky, transported them to a quarry, and set fire to the village. Thirty-three persons from Ležáky were then murdered within the next few days and the remaining 24 adults were either murdered shortly thereafter or died in concentration camps. The children of Ležáky, save two, disappeared forever in concentration camps.

Other villages which might have suffered the same fate as Lidice and Ležáky were spared by the rise in public anger throughout the region of Bohemia and Moravia in the wake of news of the massacres. Eerily bearing out the editorial’s suggestion raised from Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down, the Gestapo, to prevent an uprising of mass proportion, began, after June 24, limiting their murderous rampages to those whom they could identify in particular locales as directly being involved in the plot on Heydrich.

Whether, as the editorial goes on poetically to suggest, the Gestapo, having bloodied its hands, found the killers in order to stop their own rampage, has an answer probably only within the villages they murdered and destroyed.

During the reign of martial law, 1,585 Czechs were executed. Others came to the executioner’s chamber later during the course of the war.

For photographs and additional detail of these atrocities, we refer you again to the report on "Operation Anthropoid", which we referenced in our note of May 29, pages 76-90.

Incidentally, since writing the note for May 18, we have read that the Secret Service, to comport with the newly designed front complement of the 1962 Lincoln Continental, ordered a new grille and bumper to replace the 1961 set-up on the same limousine prepared for the President in spring, 1961. And, sure enough, the grille, we ascertain from closer observation, was a 1962 grille, not a 1963 grille, as we had thought lo these many years. The 1962 grille, while similar to the 1963 grille, was possessed of slightly different grillework. We stand corrected. You learn something new everyday.

Yet, we still distinctly recall reading in the newspaper at the time that Ford was preparing to provide a new limousine to the President in 1963. Maybe, after all, it was that one for the First Lady. Or, maybe the newspaper had it wrong. Such has been known to happen.

Regardless, we built a scale model of each year’s Lincoln from 1960 through 1965. We still have a couple of them.

We built a couple of aircraft carriers also, circa 1962-63. One, we recall, was the Yorktown. They were easy to build.

Coincidentally, yesterday, speaking of Falcons, we were reminded of that old commercial for the Futura, the sporty bucket-seated version of the Falcon which came along in its second model year of existence, 1961, and appeared with the inaugurating theme song "Hey, Look Me Over", from the Broadway musical "Wildcat". And, out of curiosity, looking it up to see if anyone else remembered this theme associated with the Futura, we found that just a week earlier, on June 12, had appeared this piece from The New York Times, mentioning that song in relation to the Futura. You remember those wondrous days.

By the way, speaking of Cash, we were reminded by the Herblock of two days ago of his American Mercury piece of April, 1933.

In any event, we prefer them served with the heads on. Hope you don't mind.