The Charlotte News

Monday, July 20, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Incidentally, it was, obviously, Friday, July 17, 1942; it was Wednesday, June 17, 1942. We lost track of our month on Friday. The error somehow works, however, from out the mystical ether of time, and so we leave it for your ponderation.

Today, first, we note to you at last that we have acquired those higher resolution prints of The News and will be gradually substituting them for the low-resolution versions by which we strained our and your eyes since March 1. So, if there were one or two or a dozen or more editions among that last four and a half months worth of print which you wished you could have read more clearly, but instead, as we admit we sometimes did, gave up to avoid the precipitant need for a visit to the optometrist, you soon will have your chance. (We may even find out for sure what Robert Rice Reynolds was doing to the walrus in Alaska, as reported March 7 on the front page.) And, to those who come to those earlier pieces later than their daily postings, pay no heed to that part of our notes in the last few months when at times we have questioned what was being said, or, perhaps, at other times, incorrectly intuited the print, especially as to squiggly little figures. It was fuzzy before we substituted the more readable versions.

"Nice Nellies" complains that the Allies were being too soft on the hardened Axis, this time the finishing school manners being applied in contemplation of transplanting the French fleet, seized in North Africa and harbored in mothballs at Alexandria, to safer waters to avoid capture by the Nazis. The editorial, consistent with the column's recent hard-nosed stance, a hang 'em high and now advocacy offered up in recent weeks since Burke Davis became the chief editorial writer in late May, says grab forthwith the fleet and use it to infuse the killing machine with that much more power.

"Baltic Piracy" urges a similar laying aside of the kid-glove gauntlet and proceeding to raise arms and have at it with no respectful obeisance to the "neutrality" of Sweden, shipping as it was iron ore and coal to German factories to make steel to produce new planes and submarines, tanks and bombs to kill Allied troops and pilots.

"'Tenshun, Suh!" begs the question: what in all Hades exactly is the issue to which this piece addresses itself and who or what in the world is "Egg-wipt"? We assume there was some change of name of some of the tank models from Grants to Lees to accord a modicum of regional equality--akin to the Union blue Lincoln of President Kennedy and the Confederate grey Lincoln of Vice-President Johnson sported during the centennial of the Civil War. But the gleaning of that information from the editorial comes hard to the feeble-minded as we.

And that still leaves unanswered who or what was "Egg-wipt"? Humpty-Dumpty? The Walrus? The Carpenter? Are we stupid or was it the editorialist on this hot July day down heyeh. (Actually, it rained and was cool by comparison to recent hot, humid times.) In any event, we find this adoption of colloquial color quite silly and we'd prefer the editorialist to remain faithful, as we invariably and assiduously do heyah, to the tried and true Anglish langage. Moreovah, he couldn't even spaell co-rectly: it isn't "wah", for Heaven's sakes; it's "woa", as in "What we have heyah down heyah is a ree-al, shore anough woa." Where'd he learn Southern, in New England? Wah. Bah.

What's more, we don't quite understand it anyway as the South lost that war of which the editorial makes bragg.

"The Last Straw" cavils at Eleanor Roosevelt's rationalization for rationing gas and rubber in the East while allowing the West to drive where it pleased. The First Lady had rationalized rationing thusly on the premise that the Western folk were so far apart and missing mass transit to get them closer to one another that the absence of a car meant that they couldn't go visiting for weeks at a time. The editorial finds this notion of a piece with the recent flak in February aimed at Mrs. Roosevelt's alleged hiring of a "fan dancer", actually a friend who taught modern dance, to boost morale among the youth by organizing dance classes as part of the Office of Civilian Defense, as well as other such controversies into which she had stepped in recent times.

"No Bottom" mocks the latest excuse offered up by the German officers for a slowed offensive in southern Russia, bottomless roads. We opine that it was akin to the Bottomless Pit, one to which they ultimately would not find the key, but rather would partake of Wormwood.

Ernie Pyle makes his first appearance on the page in replacement for vacationing Raymond Clapper. His homespun slice-of-life column regularly appears for the next two weeks until Mr. Clapper's return in early August. In this first installment, he tells of his recent trip from Canada across the pond to Northern Ireland. After censorship, he reports, little is there to be told beyond the mundane. He slept on the floor of the plane after a few rounds of poker, chatted with other passengers, and arrived in an undisclosed location to no fanfare. Mundane. Yet, they crossed an Atlantic full of anything but the mundane, even if all of that remained hidden to the naked eye peering down from above the cotton clouds.

Pertinax tells of the continuing troubles in India after the failed March mission of Sir Stafford Cripps as envoy of the British Government to try to effect a compromise agreement between the Indian National Congress and the Allies, whereby India would receive post-war dominion status from Britain in exchange for full cooperation with the Allies in the war effort. Gandhi and Nehru and the Party had rejected it. Nevertheless, he reports, defense preparations in India were proceeding apace with plenty of soldiers in training, one and a quarter million, and fifty thousand enlistments per month.

But Gandhi was headed to jail for his civil disobedience.

Incidentally, the Bartlett's quote of the day was: "Despatch is the soul of business." --Earl of Chesterfield.

We inadvertently clipped it off in our rush to bring you the higher resolution versions of the print. You will note such occasional cuts as we proceed down the line. We shall endeavor, for your mirth, to fill in any such lost matter, over, under, sideways, or down, whenever possible from the fuzzy versions we shall from now on withhold from your fancy but retain for our own consultation. You can't have everything.

We attribute, incidentally, the cause for these exiguities most likely to our having recently returned from mountaineering up all four peaks of the Kilimanjaros.

Here is the front page. Now that you may read it clearly for yourself, we shall offer less daily commentary on it, that is at least until something of substantial historical note in the war or otherwise appears there. Today's page, with the possible exception of the story of the little boy found chained in his family's attic in West Virginia, is full of pretty much the same news pervading for the previous several weeks--weeks in which the war was not quite an idle business, not so at all in Russia or in Egypt, but had gradually ground into a summer lull by mid-July in all theaters, including the fronts at El Alamein and on the Orel-to-Rostov Nazi offensive line along the Don aiming for the Caucasus in Russia. In a couple of weeks, things will begin, however, to get hot again, especially in the Pacific.

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