The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 20, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Mr. Proulx’s report, back on the front page, relating his hard experiences inside the Japanese prison camp after the fall of Hong Kong, gives us to offer a lyric which goes: Scotch and soda, a jigger of dog, oh what a spell it is befogged, oh my, it is lower than a rat could go, scotch and soda, doggie, you‘re ‘bout to go.

Well, he made it out alive anyway to relate the tale. Demonstrating that all is relative, the patients at Morganton at least didn’t have to have their taste buds stimulated by a plump dog, becoming ostensibly plumper on rats, passing before them—or, before the elimination of the White Horse gravy, was it even worse for them than in the posh Japanese camp restaurant?

The remainder of the page is largely consumed with news of the raid at Dieppe. The noteworthy part is that the eyewitness accounts by the three reporters, Messrs. Middleton, MacGowan, and Munro, the latter recollecting the "wild scenes that crowded helter skelter one upon another in crazy sequence"—sort of akin to the 1960’s, in another words--each provide a scenario of great success in the landings by the Allies.

While not detracting from the general credibility of the reports, the conclusory assessments were obviously not objective in terms of the outcome with regard to the relative numbers of captured or dead, or were the product of incomplete information amid the helter-skelter and the need for self-preservation of the moment as each chronicler incurred the risk of death to bring the report to the reader in first person, or was done with the condition precedent of military censorship which disallowed an account with any conclusion other than "victory"—not the first nor last such limitation placed on wartime accuracy should it have been so.

The O.S.S. and all of its manifestations, made increasingly familiar to us in the war's aftermath, were now in full operation.

But, of course, if accuracy of the moment had meant in the end loss of the war with Hitler as the new boss, we would have to concede that inaccuracy of the moment was, on balance, an acceptable operating premise--at least as long as the deception remained transitory, temporal only of the duration.

Yet, it remains in the realm of hypothetical speculation as to whether such inaccuracy was stimulative of optimism which encouraged the fight or stimulative of passivity which lengthened the war for its being given an appearance at times of being won.

Assuming the guiding hand of censorship at work, it would appear that the government was experimenting to see what impact the good and bad news of the war had on the public in order to adjust its balances accordingly. For some of these engagements are reported, even if after the fact, more or less accurately, regardless of the outcome for the Allies, while others are plainly only sugar-coated facsimiles of the truth. We shall return to this topic from time to time and check the accounts against the historical record.

Whatever the case, the reports thus far released on Dieppe were grossly inaccurate, possibly, along with the reports of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the worst reporting yet of the war. But again, we do not lay fault for that at the doorstep of the brave reporters who risked their very lives to cover the story. It was an understandable concomitant, an understandable bargain with accuracy, in order to achieve any first-hand account.

Somewhere between "Belle Ringer" and "Curiosity" on the editorial page, we are reminded to offer the following:

Those lips that Love's own hand did make,
Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate',
To me that languish'd for her sake:
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was us'd in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet;
'I hate' she alter'd with an end,
That followed it as gentle day,
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
'I hate', from hate away she threw,
And sav'd my life, saying 'not you'.

--by Willie & the Poor Boys, 1609

The secular quote of the day leads us to conclude that catchers are adepts at the art of engraving and quite discretely. Pitchers on the other hand and third basemen...

The Bible quote of the day leads us to conclude that if you teach your children well, their father’s hell will slowly go by.

You can figure out the "Visitin' Around" for yourself. It’s much too complex for the heat and humidity which we endure.