The Charlotte News

Thursday, July 9, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Reserving the right always to be of greater erudition today than yesterday, (cf. front page picture of day before yesterday), we admit a misread of the title of an editorial on yesterday's page: it was "Caoutchouc", not "Caoutchoue". We didn't think a sneeze, as we interpreted the misreading to mean, made much sense in the context of rubber rationing, but then the irrationality of the rubber rationing plan was the whole point of the editorial, and so our erroneous assumption was nevertheless rational in context. What's more, come winter, the East Coast having its oil rationed more heavily than the West Coast without the same distribution problems suggested a sneeze as apropos to nature's eventual intrusion on the matter, in gradual unveiling of demonstrative proof of the plan's inherent inability to achieve equable satiety of the hunger for speed while also meeting basic physiological needs of those who had not yet reopened their coal chute.

Sometimes spelled "caoutchu", caoutchouc is a form of India-rubber or gum elastic from South America and the East Indies. We never heard of it; perhaps it was better known before the coming of the synthetic age. Oxford lists its most recent usage as 1875. We thus offer no apology for the error.

Cuckoo-caoutchouc.

"Jap-Meter" and "One for Rome" on the editorial page both remind of the wariness with which the reader must approach the various claims of casualties, ship sinkings, planes downed, tanks destroyed or captured, etc., especially as offered by the Axis, but also on occasion with respect to Allied reports as well. The contention by the Japanese that in the war in China precisely 111,111 Japanese had been killed against 2.330 million Chinese was the tip, says the piece, that the propaganda agent was hard at work spinning his odometer abackward--or, maybe in this instance, his abacus forward.

The truth is that, to this day, the wholesale death rates in the wars in Russia and China were so large that no one knows precisely how many died on any of the four sides. Between propaganda and war's end destruction of records by the Germans and Japanese, it is simply not possible to know. The death toll was in the millions as to each of the nations primarily involved. That is about as close as it may be estimated.

Paul Mallon points out that the Mediterranean was presently verboten, or nearly so, to the British, that Axis raids, both Italian and German, on British shipping had made passage through the sea prohibitive. Most of the supplies to the British Eighth Army in Egypt were now being sent instead via India, Syria, and the American air base at Eritrea, resulting in a German supply line one-tenth the length of that for the British.

All of that would quickly change, however, come November with the beginning of "Operation Torch", the Allied landings in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, rolling forth over the North African sands the White House Mat for Rommel.

And, as a rarity, both the Bible quote and "Visitin' Around" are missing from the page today; on occasion one or the other is left out, but we do not recall losing both at the same time. The absence of two regular syndicated columnists at once for the rest of the month no doubt was throwing off the ordinary calibration of available space on the page.

Or, maybe the presence of a quote from Clarence Darrow simply occluded both.

Whatever the case, we forgive the double omission--this time.