The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 21, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: Incidentally, to confirm the insistence with which false news was being purveyed to the American public, and presumably that of the other Allies, regarding the claimed unmitigated "success" of the raid on Dieppe, assessments of the raid, prepared contemporaneous with it, by its British military leaders appeared publicly in London five years later. While much was gleaned which aided in the D-Day invasion, the raid itself was a blunderful failure, which, undoubtedly, was premature. General Montgomery's advice against it should have been heeded, in favor of continuing successive smaller raids. Obviously, what was learned at Dieppe most likely could have been learned in the course of 22 months in a series of smaller, less costly raids, perhaps becoming gradually larger with experience. But what happened, occurred as it did, an attempt at a surprise raid by a large force, surprise with such a large daylight assault which might have been lost with successive smaller raids.
It would be tempting to find room for sympathy this time for Senator Reynolds of North Carolina in being rebuked by three other Senators for expressing his support for immediate independence to India, as reported on the front page.
But that sympathy, mutatis mutandis, quickly becomes contempt when the motivations for the Senator’s support, and, likewise, the condemnation of the statement by his fellow Senators, come into sharp focus. Senator Reynolds, prior to Pearl Harbor, after all, had been one of the loudest advocates in the Senate of not only isolationist policies, but was wholly supportive of pan-Germanism, that is Nazi expansionism, that is the Greater Germania in all of its ugly imperialistic connotations, while simultaneously voicing consistently his distrust and contempt for Perfidious Albion. Thus, his statement was merely an extension of his former emotions: since Britain had nominal sovereignty in India, India should have its independence, especially if Senator Reynolds could be assured that Gandhi, in that event, could be taken at his word to negotiate immediately with Japan for peaceful non-aggression.
Vice-Admiral Yamaguchi, in his watery grave somewhere off Midway, having led a part of the Japanese Imperial Navy into the Indian Ocean in April, must have been chortling mightily from Davy’s Locker at Senator Reynolds’s thusly communicated support of Gandhi’s campaign for an independent India.
Senator Reynolds, we remind, in spring, 1940 provided valuable French shipping data to a friend who was an Abwehr agent. Senator Reynolds had once found the pleasure of Hitler’s company, counting him a first-rate dinner companion.
Senator Reynolds was not in favor of India’s independence, except nominally its independence from Great Britain, with the full belief, no doubt, that shortly thereafter its thusly weakened defenses would cause it to fall under the spell of Japan, enabling Germania and Japania to link in the Middle East and throw out the dratted British from the Mediterranean. Thus, Senator Reynolds’s pet prejudices, against Communist Russia, against Socialist Great Britain, would at a stroke be satisfied, with his pal Hitler driving the horses of Apocalyptic change and Deputy Reichsfuehrer Reynolds ultimately granted a fine new chariot running on fire from which to wield ultimate and unchecked authority within the United States of Greater Germania without the cumbersome nuisance of having other Senators or the Fourth Estate carp at his speeches, those nuisances incumbent in a democracy.
"Traitorous Talk" in the editorial column quite agrees with this analysis of the Senator’s sudden tender feelings for India’s independent sovereignty.
"Jim’s Back" and Raymond Clapper’s piece tell of the division within the Democratic Party in New York, wrought largely by Jim Farley’s intervention in contraposition to his old boss, FDR, making it probable that the effective crusader against organized crime, NYC District Attorney Thomas Dewey, would likely become governor. And he did, of course, serving three terms through early 1955, as well becoming the Republican nominee for the presidency in both 1944 and 1948.
Jim Farley had run against FDR for the Democratic nomination in 1940, having declared his candidacy in Winston-Salem in early February at the Robert E. Lee Hotel (next door to which, circa 1955, Elvis once performed, before anyone knew who Elvis was, except his fellow truck drivers and a Winston-Salem Journal reporter who came upon the kid exiting the Carolina Theater, saying one day he’d be the best rock ‘n’ roller of his time).
The visible source of Jim Farley’s consternation was his disagreement with FDR’s decision to allow his name to be placed in nomination for a third term, even if FDR never actively campaigned for the nomination in 1940. Beneath that facade, however, had lain simmering differences with the President for at least four years, as FDR’s reliance on Farley’s political advice and skills had diminished in favor of Tommy Corcoran and others in the Administration, as Mr. Clapper indicates.
Mr. Farley, the kingmaker, therefore, set out not so much to become king himself but to find another thoroughbred from the stables of New York to guide through the run for the roses. Lightning, however, never struck a second time for Mr. Farley—that is, unless, perhaps, he encouraged Elvis to play at the Carolina Theater in Winston-Salem circa 1955 as a sure road to success.
Mr. Farley passed away in June, 1976, Elvis fourteen months later.
Our ma and pa spent their wedding night in the Robert E. Lee Hotel in June 1939.
Paul Mallon takes issue with a letter writer, so much issue that he indicates that he will turn the letter over to the FBI for investigation, finding no name in the Cincinnati directory consistent with that signed on the letter. The letter writer, claiming a son in the service, crafts an argument that the war was for the support of the British Empire and a world government after the war, run by "international bankers", the typical code phrase of the time, of course, and often to this day in fact, for "Jewish bankers", a code phrase interlacing most of Hitler’s most virulently anti-Semitic pronouncements. Mr. Mallon offers the author gentle instruction before dropping the O. Henryesque bomb at the end, (or was it O’Henryesque?—note to linotyper, cf. "Plain Ol’ Possum", December 27, 1938).
Mr. Mallon should have, of course, asked the letter writer the ultimate question: on what planet did he spend most of his time?
You would have to admit though that the young hireling of the anti-healthcare reform lobby the other day was attractive. No one could claim that she didn’t get her exercise anyway.
Never mind.
29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limited to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken care to put them into their work-boxes,--the concern they feel at the unsympathizing gayety of their companions,--or perhaps the disappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach,--(for I will not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected by any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like worldliness),--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might be represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can assure my fair little lady friends,--if I still have any,--that whatever a young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious consolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the pains to think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never says anything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing it; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His Cross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers, whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and violently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding the meaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of didactic--deceptive and illusory.
--from Ariadne, by John Ruskin, 1872
That was another possible response.
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