The Charlotte News

Friday, June 26, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page today hails the news of another 1,000-plane raid the previous night, this time on Bremen, following on the similar blitz raids of Cologne and Essen on May 30 and June 1, respectively. This one, the report indicates, broke the record of the previous two. Fifty-two planes were shot down, the most losses in a single night by the RAF thus far in the war; the Germans contended that the number represented a quarter of the entire squadron involved in the raid.

The Nazis meanwhile were busy charging the Russian lines southeast of Kharkov; the Russians contended that they had been able to retreat in an even line without suffering breaches from the repeated assaults by tanks and airplanes, attempting to drive wedges through the lines and flank and entrap in various pockets the Russian forces.

In London, speculation was running high that Dwight Eisenhower, newly appointed Commander for the European theater, was planning the opening of a second front. The piece warns, however, that Major-General Eisenhower believed that planning and preparation for attack was the key to victory, that planning did not necessarily imply an imminent invasion of the Continent. It also suggests that his name in German, translating to "iron beater", would surely instill respect and fear in the little German boys and girls.

"Das ist 'Iron Beater'."

Ah well, you supply your own lines.

Of course, with the 6^th Avenue El train tracks now running through Japanese cannon and carbines, the German meaning might have had greater detrimental impact in the Pacific theater, where, another piece informs, the morale of the Tokyo residents following the Doolittle raid was now at low ebb. The people could not understand why the raiders could not have been caught at their source, Shangri-La or else, and stopped, echoing the same sentiment of course prevailing loudly within the United States four months prior to the Doolittle raid. Responding to the consternation thus expressed, the Japanese kept-press stated that the American planes flew too fast and too high to be caught by the Japanese pursuit planes and interceptors. Perhaps there were, after all, drawbacks from building too much of their materiel from the remains of the 6^th Avenue El line. For it flew low and slow.

The President pridefully announced that 1,500 tanks and 4,000 airplanes had been produced in America's converted war factories during May, still, however, a far cry from the goal set in January of 185,000 planes and 120,000 tanks in 1942 and 1943, an average of about 7,650 planes and 5,000 tanks per month for the 24-month prospective period. But, of course, because production lines were just coming into being during the early months, after the February 1 order to cease automobile production and begin building tanks, planes, and anti-aircraft guns where formerly shiny new Fords and Chevys had rolled proudly down the lines to their new owners, and as men and women, formerly engaged in their production, were steadily being re-trained to fit the new parts-militaire together and as continual re-tooling consistently brought new machines on line and increased the output commensurately each month, these early figures, yet depressed as they were, were deemed encouraging.

After less than 24 hours, the Yellow Truck & Coach Co. workers of Pontiac, Michigan agreed to call off a strike at the request of the UAW leadership; the strike had come in protest of lack of pay during a 20-minute blackout drill.

OPA announced that rationing for gasoline beginning July 1 would be 4 gallons per week, figured at 15 miles per gallon, allowing 2,880 miles of driving per year, 1,800 of which was expected to be commuting and other business-related travel. (Actually, given that allotted mileage per year, it is based on 13.9 m.p.g.) Exceptions would be made for those able to demonstrate greater business need.

On the editorial page, Major A. L. James, Jr. of Charlotte, as previewed on the front page, provides a quick overview of the progress of World War I, that German gains were unrelenting between 1914 and mid-1918. But then, fourteen months after the American declaration of war in April, 1917, the AEF had so accumulated in France that it could make a definitive drive in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, begun September 12. Two months later, the Armistice was declared, with the Allies victorious. They had lost most of the battles, but the war was finally won. He thus counsels patience as the troops were trained and the basis for an offensive developed by accretion somewhere on the other side of the pond.

A re-print from the Congressional Record finds Senator Claude Pepper of Florida advocating passage of a bill he had sponsored to allot about $350 per victim to those who might become as the 55,000 British civilians killed during the Blitz in 1940-41. He posits that the cost would be de minimis in the aggregate. Fortunately, the need for such a bill was never realized.

Yet, just three days earlier, a torpedo, presumably Japanese, had been reported to have blasted a crater near Seaside, Oregon, just hours after shelling had been reported on Vancouver Island, B.C. Thus, however nonsensical the matter might appear in hindsight for its non-recurrence, the prospect of the need for such a victim's indemnity fund loomed not in remoteness in June, 1942.

A year earlier, in May, Senator Pepper was on record as arguing for an immediate bombing strike on Japan in retaliation for repeated sinkings of American ships in Asiatic waters. No matter how much in hindsight such a strategy might appear tempting, had the President and Congress followed this course, would it have been a wise one? Would it have provided the casus belli to Japan, justifying the attack historically on Pearl Harbor? Did the talk add fuel to the feudal fires of empire dreams in the minds of the militarists in Tokyo? Did it give the Emperor on July 2 rationale for lending his imprimatur to the militarists' plan to drive south into Indochina, to the Malay Peniunsula, Singapore, and ultimately the Dutch East Indies, all necessitating the Pearl Harbor attack to prevent counter-offensive operations by the American Navy and Air Corps--or so the plan seemed on Tokyo paper at the time.

"Dark Commandos" follows eagerly the report of the Nigerian tribal chief who was willing to sacrifice three of his best sons on an errand to kill Hitler. Recalling the Bong of Wong, the provincial chieftain of India who had recently volunteered his tribe's services in the war effort, the editorial snaps a picture of how that operation might appear on the streets of Berlin. Aside from the obvious drawbacks the mode of accoutrement would pose in perfecting such a plan, it of course would have been poetic justice for Der Fuehrer to have met his end at the poisoned tip of an arrow executed in its flight by a simple Nigerian bow, perhaps one strung with cat gut. Tennis, anyone?

"Rustlers" tells of the new and strange sounds being applied as nomenclature to the various islands and outposts taken during the previous six months by the Japanese. The editorialist begins to imagine with grimacing rue various phonemes to be applied to American outposts, finding special perturbation in the prospect of Washington becoming, say--Tuta Frutta.

Well, we had never read that one until today, had never laid eyes on the microfilm containing it until March last. So it becomes another one of those spooky little drifts when juxtaposed against our warning of those clever Jap spies, a photograph of whom we ran across a year and a half back in conjunction with the pieces of December 31, 1937. Make of it what you will.

Whether the author had in mind merely an ice cream flavor of the day or was predicting the advent of fifties rock 'n' roll, we are unable to say. Perhaps they know down in between Lick Skillet and Hard Scrapple--neither of which we can find on today's road map and thus make no attestation that they ever actually existed.

And another letter writer from Rockingham complains of the editorial a few days earlier rubbing in the summer heat, making it the more onerous to the letter writer. Instead, he commands, editorialize about the cold days of winter in summer, or spend the summer in jail. The injunction seems a little extreme: talk about ice at solstice time or put the soles on ice in the cooler's clime.

Regardless, we comply, Claude.

Cool town, winter in the city...

Best not go any further; we don't wish to offend the Governor of Alaska.