The Charlotte News

Monday, August 31, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page tells accurately of the continuing Allied success, led by the Australians, in repelling the invasion by the Japanese after it had been accomplished the previous Wednesday at Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea.

A by-lined piece by Walter Clausen tells of the friendly concordance between the Allies operating in New Guinea and the cannibals, positing in the pre-heading the possible alternative reasons for the cooperative arrangement without one becoming inexorably the dinner for the other.

Perhaps, there was a third alternative, that being that the Japanese would have eaten the cannibals had the cannibals not cooperated with the Allies and refused the delectable temptation of white meat. That, anyway, judging by the reports then and later of the savagery afoot.

Well, as we have said, perhaps it was the original Land of 1000 Dances, perspiration emanating therefrom and all.

On the editorial page, a piece by Joseph Baird speaks to his perception that relative apathy was besetting the country when compared to the reaction to reports of World War I, especially reports of atrocities committed in that war in Belgium and France. He posits that the possible reason for such yawning ennui to contemporary reports of atrocities, as well the relative paucity of reports in that regard, was that, after the Great War, reports of atrocities were often found wanting of corroboration and in some cases were actually shown to have been the creation of fanciful propagandists; thus, the tendency, post-war, by journalists to debunk generally as myth the picture of the bloodthirsty, barbaric Hun, not so much atavistic of Attila’s attempts against Theodoric but rather bespeaking the presence of better propagandists for the Allies than for the bloodthirsty, barbaric Hun. (Indeed, Hitler, in Mein Kampf, posited just that line.)

For its tendency to work itself out thusly, Mr. Baird bemoans the fate of those under the Nazi bootheel, even if not fully comprehending, himself, at the time the extent of the atrocities at work by now in the death camps in the wake of the Heydrich plan put into action in January at the Wannsee Conference toward effecting the Final Solution. The full extent of those atrocities, of which only some hint was being provided Western journalists during the war, was not known in its full ghastly presence, until war’s end when the Allies entered the death camps and saw the evidence for themselves.

Some idiots of course to this day still persist in denial—because, at heart, they are Nazis themselves. Nazis always dodge and refuse to see truth; it is their hallmark and founding principle, obscurantism, perpetuated by the Big Lie.

In any event, with only few exceptions, most of the Nazi torturers and executioners, as recommended by Mr. Baird, would be brought to justice at the end of the war, that is if they did not first beat the hangman to the thrust. Some few sought and obtained safe haven in such places as Brazil and Argentina after the war, only to be ferreted out later, sometimes decades later.

A letter writer suggests that the RAF bombing campaign, now being joined by American pilots, against Germany and German emplacements in France, be called the "Battle of Germany", to convey positively cheering mirror imagery inapposite to that which the Battle of Britain in 1940-41 conveyed to the Allies.

But, to term the bombing raids the "Battle of Germany" might have provided disservice psychologically to the Allies, instead provoking images of that which occurred in the Battle of Britain among the bombed--a stalwart people maintaing their stiff upper lips and going about their daily routines largely without visible concern for the bombs dropping nearly every night in their midst, becoming inured quickly to the nerve-shatter, as surely as one may adapt to virtually any loud noise and vibration, as surely as one adapts over time to crashing, heavy rolling thunder overhead, when persistent enough on a regular basis within one’s environment. The human mind learns quickly for survival to blot it out, no matter how hard the little savages attempt to the contrary to block the inhibitors and neurons which precipitate such natural human response patterns.

Moreover, such a moniker might have equated the two battles, the one waged by Germany, intended largely to demoralize the civilian population of Great Britain by targeting residential housing, with that of the Allied campaign, which squared its focus on military and industrial targets, even if inevitably, with military and industrial facilities existing close by civilian population centers, inflicting its toll on the latter as well.

Third, the Battle of Britain was won by Britain by virtue of having survived it and living to inflict the countermeasures.

Thus, calling the bombing campaign the "Battle of Germany" was probably a bad idea, even if the letter writer surely meant well in the suggestion. It was, on the long view, the softening up of the German populace and military production and supply lines, in advance of D-Day.

"The Magic Date" waxes prophetic in suggesting that the end of the war would come when Winston Chruchill finished smoking his foot-long cigar given him by King Farouk of Egypt.

We don’t know when the Prime Minister finished smoking that cigar, but would imagine, given the length of the average Churchill, about six to eight inches, capable of being consumed in the space of about an hour, that Sir Winston managed the foot-long within the course of about a day.

The editorialist, obviously, was no cigar smoker himself. We would imagine that Winnie consumed many hundreds of his namesakes before war’s end, even if that was the only foot-long.

But, perhaps, as with the pyramids, there were cryptically hidden attributes bound up in the wrappers and fillers of Egyptian cigars rendering them mysteriously slow-smoking.

"Victory Fever", by contrast, reads as a piece written after the war, accurately telling the entire arc of the thing once done.

We have to pause to wonder, incidentally, given that the King and Queen were feted by the Roosevelts at Hyde Park back in June, 1939 with that traditional American favorite, hot dogs, just why it is that there was some apparent penchant abroad the world among their allies for treating the British with gifts of such objects, foreshadowing the shape of things no doubt to come.

For, whatever the reason then, in America, in 1968, Richard Nixon was elected President.

He withdrew from the Oval Office, however, at the White House, a few days after the Articles of Impeachment were returned against him by action of Congress, that being after the "smoking gun" came to light, that is the attempt at shielding the intercourse between the White House and the Plumbers Unit in its infiltration at the Watergate by using the CIA to intercede with the ongoing FBI investigation on grounds of national security because it might otherwise resurrect the whole Bay of Pigs affair.

He was going home by helicopter, ten years after.

322, VVV.