The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 13, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Incidentally, yesterday’s second headline, we have discovered, actually referred to the two Army ladies from Chico, California about whom the letter to the editor of yesterday found fault for comparing Charlotte to Dogpatch.

Never mind.

On the front page today, the Nazi High Command reported that the carrier U.S.S. Wasp had been hit in the Mediterranean near Malta.

That would have been a fairly remarkable hit as the Wasp was at the time on patrol duty around Guadalcanal.

The Nazis in this instance, however, were prescient: the days of the Wasp were indeed numbered as the Japanese would sink it on September 15.

Presumably, the Nazi report had confused the H.M.S. Eagle with the Wasp. Or, it was lying again.

The map shows the relative distances to Australia via a protected route through the southern Solomons versus a route requiring substantial divergence to avoid enemy planes stationed in the Solomons. The map, assuming that is what it was trying to point out, is in error in having the roundabout route converge on the Solomons themselves. But the point is made adequately that the route, 4,500 miles directly, is lengthened by at least 2,000 miles via the roundabout. By ship, that lengthened the time of the voyage by several days; by plane, the longer route spelled trouble for refueling operations without a properly protected island base on which to land to accomplish it. Thus is explained rapidly the strategic significance of Allied control of the bases at Guadalcanal and Tulagi versus leaving them in Japanese hands. (The map is showing a destination roughly in the area of Rockhampton on the east coast of Australia, several hundred miles north of Sydney and Melbourne, the primary staging areas for General MacArthur’s troops. But that was classified war information at the time.)

Confusing reports were now coming from the Solomons, mostly unsubstantiated and incorrect reports.

From Southeast Asia, a report surfaced of a convoy delivering 20,000 Japanese troops to an undesignated location in the Gulf of Tonkin area on August 7. Haiphong was bombed by the Allies August 9, the report indicates. Thought was that the Japanese troops might be headed to bolster forces in Burma, preparatory for a border incursion to India.

Twenty-two years later, the Gulf of Tonkin of course would become a major topic in the news when four North Vietnamese patrol boats fired torpedoes at the U.S.S. Maddox on August 2, 1964, followed by a bogus story of torpedo firing at the ship on August 4, based on bad weather, ghost radar readings, and overly anxious sonar listeners, both of which incidents nevertheless led to the accretion of substantial American forces in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by Congress on August 7, authorizing the President to use the necessary force in the region to protect U.S. personnel already there.

Haiphong Harbor was bombed numerous times during the war, starting in January, 1966 and proceeding right to the end of the war when, during the last days of December 1972, President Nixon ordered the largest bombing strike since World War II in what many believed was an act of gratuitous bombing. Its primary purpose was merely to maintain the confidence of the South Vietnamese, reluctant to sign the Paris Peace Accords, finally accomplished four weeks after the end of the Haiphong bombing, to assure that the United States would be fully supportive of the South against any future incursions by the North in violation of the Accords.

Ho-Ho-Ho. Down the chimney came not New St. Nick, but yet again Olde St. Dick. (As we said once before, he was a little pink.)

The North Vietnamese had quit the Paris Peace Talks prior to the December bombings and an ancillary purpose for the raids was to promote the North’s return to the negotiations. But, the reason for the North quitting the table initially was that the South was reluctant to sign the existing accord worked out in October, just prior to the November election, for its perceived weakness in protection provided the South after the war.

Au revoir.

On the editorial page, "Auf Wiedersehn" recalls the Munich Agreement and the salute by Neville Chamberlain to the compliant representatives of Herr Hitler at Munich for establishing "peace for our time", which lasted not quite all of eleven months.

No doubt, the valediction was called to the editorialist’s mind by a Cash piece, "The Sale Takes Form", from September 17, 1938, which had been reprinted the previous year in a massive volume of editorials and editorial cartoons, What America Thinks, to which the editors had made recent reference on June 20.

"Tables Turned" comments on the air sick Italian pilot whose malady overcame his ability to deliver up his Allied prisoners and instead, himself, became their prisoner, as they commandeered the plane and successfully landed it on Malta.

As suggested on the previous day’s front page, the only problem coming from the adventure for the four RAF, New Zealand, and Australian pilots was that they nearly died laughing on the way back to Cairo to resume bombing operations on the Italian and Nazi positions in Libya.

When last seen, we understand, the air sick Italian ace was dancing the Tarantella. Or, maybe the story was garbled and instead he was air sick from the Allied aces dancing the Tarantella to his back. (By the way, the dead link's story is now summarized here. We move around as the monkeys move around.)

Raymond Clapper writes of the problem of lack of enough specific enunciation of a post-war policy with regard to Asia to counter and educate the followers of Gandhi now threatening to upset the entire globe should the violence besetting the streets of Bombay and Delhi cascade further into such a full-scale revolt that the Japanese could make short shrift of India’s defenses and conquer the land, thereby gaining control of the Indian Ocean. Mr. Clapper counsels more of the sort of expression of post-war ideals and goals set forth in the speech of Vice-President Henry Wallace in May and the "new frontier" speech of Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in early June.

Meanwhile, according to Herblock, the crying croc offers his helping hand to India.

Which suddenly causes us to wonder how it was that the pilot who saw that "9" on the field somewhere in New York knew that it was a "9" and not a "6". It might have made a difference.

The quote of the day brings to mind this one from July 13, 1938. (Whether it has anything to do with the convicted murderer who, as described in "No Sensation", having a mental age of nine, (that of the alienist so testifying not being given, though apparently established by Solicitor Carpenter during the trial), was found in possession of abortion tools and several thousand dollars in cash at the time of his arrest, though not accused of any associated crime, we don’t know. You may wade in yourself and be swept away. We have, instead, to go to listen to some Elmore James.)

And, another offering of verse is brought to the pages by L.A. Tatum, a fairly regular writer to the letters column. Mr. Tatum best watch his words, however, lest he suffer the death penalty for treason, or at least a stretch of twenty years for sedition.

We don’t agree with what he said, but he had the right to say it. Which is why The News printed his garbage.

Nor was it very poetic. But that, neither, is a qualification for exercise of fitched blues and blented misverbiage's defalcations.