The Charlotte News

Tuesday, September 1, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Last night, we came upon some interesting notions. And, it being precisely today the 70th anniversary of the official beginning of World War II in Europe, that period representing the full passage since of 25,568 complete earth rotations round its axis, meaning that a person standing fixedly at one location on the equator since that time has travelled 636,681,552 miles, that nearly two-thirds of a billion miles--which equates to nearly three and a half round trips to the sun, a mere 93 million miles away--, we thought we would share with you, for your edification, especially should you be one of those who have traversed all of that time and distance since 1939, the following:

If one adds 1,335 days, that number from Daniel 12:12 of which we have made mention before, to June 5, 1944, the original date scheduled for D-Day, one arrives, magically, inclusive of June 5, at January 30, 1948—the date on which Mohandas K. Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi by another Hindu, Nathu Ram Godse, who was, in his first five years of life, because his mother feared a curse on male children in India, raised as a girl, hence being supplied a nose ring and, accordingly, acquiring the nickname "Nathu Ram", meaning "ram with a nose ring".

Gandhi’s last words, reputedly, according to one eyewitness of his assassination--disputed by another who claimed he died in silence--were "Ram-Ram", meaning "God-God", or, in variance, by yet another, "Hai, Ram", or "Oh, God".

Two days earlier, Gandhi had stated that if he were to be shot, he should pass away, not angry, but rather smiling with God in his heart and upon his lips.

Thus, at time of death, Gandhi, there in New Delhi, may actually instead have been ordering a salami on pumpernickel bread.

Sorry.

Think about it.

Nathu Ram Godse, or, as we prefer simply, Ringo, was executed for the crime on November 15, 1949.

Seven others were accused of plotting the assassination. One of the alleged conspirators, Digambar Badge, the badge-man of the crew, turned state’s evidence for the prosecution against the others. Their fates varied:

One, Narayan Dattatraya Apte, was executed with Godse, he having been the only one of the alleged co-conspirators present with Godse at the time of the shooting of Gandhi. Apte believed himself capable of divine prophecy based on an accurate read of the stars, thinking thereby that the assassination would reunite India with Pakistan, the region separated at independence from Great Britain, accomplished to resolve the issue between Muslims and Hindus threatening civil war in the country—one of the primarily nagging issues for the British not wishing in 1942 to grant India immediate sovereignty, for the inevitable resultant weakening, inviting in turn the Japanese to capitalize with another quick thrust and conquering from within, Nazi-style, much as became the fate of the Burmese during the first three months of the year.

Godse’s brother received 18 years in prison. Four others were sentenced to life, one of whom had his conviction overturned by the higher court. One was acquitted at trial.

In addition to that peculiar calculation of days from D-Day to the assassination of Gandhi, one may calculate 5 times 1,335, starting at August 14, 1945, the date of the official Japanese surrender to the Allies, the official conclusion of World War II, that is on the Western side of the date line, inclusive of that date and the final date. Doing so, you will find yourself, smack dab, landing on November 22, 1963.

That is, 5 x 1,335 days = 6,675 days.

So, calculating the 18 intervening years, including the leaping years, those latter being American presidential election years (with the exception made in 1900 to compensate for the sidereal adjustment of the earth’s rotation around the sun, actually taking a little less than 365.25 days per wobbly circuit through the Tulgy wood), one thus adding one day per year for each of 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960, forms the calculation, 18 x 365 days = 6,570 days, adding then the aforementioned four days, one for each leap, and you have that small step for man, at 6,574 days. That brings you face to face, tête à tête, with August 13, 1963.

Adding 101 days to that date, the difference between 5 x 1,335 or 6,675 days and 6,574 days, you come precisely to November 22, again, using the somewhat unusual convention, that is to say not the legal convention, of adding both the first and last days in the calculation, thus not counting the hours from the start, you see, of the convention.

For, for instance, were we to begin at 7:52 a.m., Hawaiian Department Time, on December 7, 1941, it is 24 hours, precisely so, by the atomic clocks not yet invented in 1941, but by some sort of more primitive chronometer in the village of Greenwich, that is one little day, until 7:52 a.m. on December 8, unless one were on the other side of that mysteriously tripping date line, in which case it would be some sort of funny time on December 9, Little Empress Time.

Now, with that understood, Alice, we should not hesitate to say that Highway 101 runs through San Francisco, from whose Bay Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders departed April 2, 1942, having left the slips at Alameda Naval Air Station, to begin their long transmutating journey from there to their base in Shangri-La from whence they departed on the morning of April 18, 1942 to transept the skies over Japan.

The Gulf of Tonkin, incidentally, means in Chinese the Gulf of the Capital in the East, derived from the Chinese transliteration to English, Dong Kinh. In Japanese transliteration to English, Tokio, more usually provided as Tokyo, means the same thing, capital in the East.

Well, that understood, we add that the number of days between July 19, 1967, the date of that strange plane crash over Hendersonville, North Carolina--wherein incidentally resides the Angel in a cemetery there which, putatively anyway, for its having come from the shop of William O. Wolfe, inspired the title for Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, the line being thereon engraved at the base of the Angel in the cemetery--, and June 5, 1968, inclusive of the latter date only, is, quite strangely, 322 days.

We didn’t dream this up. So, don’t blame us. It happened.

But, in this regard, we have to ask at least two questions:

First, what happened to the missing eleven days, those stuck awkwardly between August 2 and August 14, 1945, non-inclusive of either the first or last day, each already included in the former calculations?

Well, we assume, that was relegated to the peculiar period existing within the vacuum of time, the mystical end times, the Armageddon times, the times of Decision, the times during which, on the 6th and 9th, the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, quickly then leading the Empress to invoke her genuflection to the Supreme Being in her annular rings and submit and capitulate and provide the Samurai sword in surrender unto her conquerors.

Enough beheadings for one life, right deary?

Second, we have to wonder why the 5 factor came into play subsequent to these times.

Perhaps it was contained in that mysterious passage of Daniel 12:5, anent the man on the one side of the river looking unto the other side, reminiscent of the Pearl story in Oriental and Occidental cultures, or the mysterious reference to "time, times and an half" in 12:7 of the same Book, or a combination thereof.

Perhaps someone fathomed, quite mysteriously, that "time, times and an half" meant 2 x 2.5. But where they got then the founding premise that the proper factor of time is two, we have no idea. Probably from their annular rings.

Or, maybe they just counted the digits on one of their hands and deciphered, aboriginally, that a hand so contains five fingers, and so the proper factor must be five, at least looking only at the "Keep Right" sign. (For, one cannot exit the freeway, after all, on the left. That’d be a bit daft, wouldn’t it?)

Or, maybe they simply counted their piggies on one foot or the other, as they did the hop.

But, we do recognize that twice eleven is twenty-two. No one may doubt it, except in the mirror. Then it becomes something else altogether, you see, Alice, at least turned wrong side up, as with the Lindy, (or as the bread sopped with the even more abstruse Corrigan).

It becomes the year before the year of the Hound Dog. (It was the year also in which Albert Einstein passed away.)

Thus, we have to posit further that it was some little hare of the dog that bit us which dreamed it up, climbing down the rabbit hole, as ‘twere, trying to obtain the top of the ladder, missing along the way a few of the rungs upon which most of us first must lay our little piggies; playing without the Jack and the Ace, you might say, thinking that they were perhaps therefore endowed by some mystical impression of the divine in nature, blessed vision be it there no doubt nonetheless in one degree or another, encompassing their whole annular rings, seeking thereby a coo, co, coo in the bright sunshine of Dallas, Texas at thirty minutes past High Noon, even if intended for about seven minutes before, give or take, frustrated in that by the friendliness of the President to those greeting him along the route of the motorcade through the burg from the airport, the name of which, as well the streets along the route, we all recall.

In any event, so sorry to have put a hole in your floor, little hare, Mein Herress in the wood.

You were so positively evanescent, though, while it lasted, weren’t you, dear? there in your little polka-dot dress, so pretty as you were, twirling about, vivacious nearly to a fault, outside the Ambassador’s ball, weren’t you now? Oh, we recall it so vividly.

Where’d you get your aboriginal information? Some cannibal from New Guinea dancing the jig across the land with you?

Or, was it that you saw the "face of God" in your "high flight"?

Was that your litmus test?

Oh, we forgot. One more thing. Add sixty-two days to April 4, 1968 and you come, of course, to June 5 again, that being, incidentally, the 24th anniversary of the originally scheduled date for The Longest Day, transposed one day because of bad weather on the 5th.

Kooky-spooky, huh?

Lend us your comb. We must part our hair, right down the middle.

Well, we are certain that there are other rather fascinating calculations of this stripe and strip to be made and we might make them ourselves in short order, but for today, those are enough for this September 1. So, get about your studies, now.

The front page today reports, among other things, that the IRA in Belfast had been planning an attack upon the U.S. and British troops stationed in Northern Island, as evidenced by the finding of a cache of weapons protected by a man wielding a tommy-gun in protection of it. The police became aware of the purpose of the cache through a manifesto declaring that the presence of American troops in the country was an affront to Irish independence. Just how the police came to be certain of the origin of this "manifesto", that it actually stated a truthful, if quite irrational, purpose of the IRA, as opposed to some inimical group or person to the IRA putting out a statement in its name to garner to them the attention of the police, is not provided. Perhaps, later information will make it clear. That could take awhile though, so don’t hold your breath.

Have your picnic with deviled eggs on Tuesday.

In Egypt, the Nazis under Rommel had pierced an eight-mile line into the minefields to the south of the British Eighth Army flank at El Alamein, north of the impenetrable and protective Qatarra Depression. Just how the Nazi panzers got through the Allied minefields is not explained. But we might guess that there were a lot of expendable personnel, mostly hapless Italians, being employed to trip the mines in advance of Rommel’s columns.

In any event, Generals Montgomery and Alexander were not caught flat-footed and immediately responded to the eight-mile deep offensive action north of the Depression.

According to Nazi reports, however, everything but hell itself was being invaded and was coming loose at the foundation pins resisting impotently the resistless Nazi onslaught, from the fires allegedly set at Archangel in the north to van advances to within 15 miles of Stalingrad in the south to control of the port of Anapa on the Black Sea below the Kuban River in the Caucasus to the striking of Allied airfields below Alexandria in Egypt.

Right. They had quite an active weekend, those Nazis.

Looks as if the war is almost done and the Allies washed up. Stalingrad is about to fall. Alexandria once again is coming closer to the end and with it the vital Suez Canal. India is in near internal civil revolt and slowly being softened for the Tiger’s grip and jowly feast to the East. Soon, the claws of the pincers will wrap and sever forces in twain. Better luck next time, Yanks, Tommies, Aussies, Reds, Chinks, Canucks, Spics, and Free Frogs. Soon, the swastika will be flying all over both London and Washington, just as intended by the stars and divinations provided from the annular rings within the Southern Cross, even the Red Cross having had the sense not to mix fine Aryan blood with that of the inferior races, as foretold at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. That is where things went terribly wrong, by allowing the inferior races to enter the ranks as near equals within the forces of arms. Those meant to be enslaved must be treated thusly. So sorry. The Reich reigns for its Thousand Years on the banks of the Rhine.

What’s that?

Oh dear.

Nevertheless, a Blease lost in South Carolina, even if narrowly.

You must excuse as duty calls elsewhere. Enjoy your cognac. There will be more, much more, once Stalingrad is taken in a couple of weeks, Alexandria soon to follow in no more than a month. Rommel, you know, is our best fighting man.

The editorial page begins with a summation of the tide of war sweeping over the land on the third aniversary of the beginning of the war in Europe. It concludes, "We’re getting ready to roll." And, it was right.

"Sabotage Within" recommends, in keeping with tough editorials of the previous three months, the penalty for the two War Production Board members of the Used Tools Section, Rhoads and Glaser, who had been indicted, according to a piece on the previous day’s front page, for selling tools to a particular manufacturer de hors their official capacity while depriving other war manufacturers of tools in the bargain: a stretch of their necks.

Ouch.

They were only used tools, mate. They couldn’t help themselves.

"Lost Americans" conveys the problem in establishing abroad the land a fit clarion call to attract qualified mechanics so vital especially to the Air Forces of the Army and Navy: the promise of a wage of only $50 per month plus board. The average mechanic in private industry, it says, was receiving twice that and able to stay out of the armed forces by virtue of his critical service to private war industry.

Thus, recruitment of mechanics had run into the proverbial Catch-22: those who were clever enough to wield the monkey wrench were not so unclever as to half their pay to accede to the call of Uncle Sam, patriotic duty being fulfilled in either capacity, private war industry or military service; those who were unclever enough to volunteer in the military service probably were least attractive to private war industry as monkey wrench wielders.

Regardless, somehow, the planes got serviced and went on their way and, eventually, with a little help from their friends down below and on the sea, won the war.

"Bars and Stripes" immediately appears to run counter to the punitive nature of the opinion established in "Sabotage Within" by suggesting that the inmates’ plan for volunteering for military service in lieu of sentence should not be negated for its being distasteful to the public’s sense of retribution for crime generally.

But, what if Rhoads and Glaser were convicted and, instead of the rope, as probabilities would have it for such a crime, they were instead sentenced to Federal prison and, to beat the term, thereupon volunteered to join the Army?

In any event, we think that we may have heard of that unit. They called it, we believe, "The Dirty Dozen".

But they were good eggs.

A piece from The Baltimore Sun remarks, in a bit of non sequitur, on the 75th anniversary of the publication in August, 1867 of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, suggesting its importance in influence upon both political and sociological thought through time as few other works of its age had so persistently.

The essential operating premise of the work is that capitalism by its inherent nature of competition resolves itself ultimately into the paradoxical end whereby the great measure of society’s wealth winds up concentrated in a few wealthy industrialists at the top as the big fish incessantly eat the little fish, with the vast remainder of society, the proletariat or working class, populating the bottom with few resources distributed among them to sustain more than subsistence living, thereby perpetuating an underclass of workmen for the wealthy capitalists driving the engine of commerce, resulting, about every 40 years, in a depression in which resources are systemically redistributed to sustain the society against revolt. Ultimately, however, the work reasons, the capitalist society will logically wind up in revolt as fewer and fewer resources were left to the proletariat, thereby shrinking even further the ruling class, and the system of redistribution of resources among the proletarians eventually having failed to neutralize the inherent forces eventuating toward freedom, there is finally impelled by it a revolt among the workers against the few capitalist bosses.

In the 1930’s, of course, as worldwide depression came to be, many thought the work entirely prophetic and its dark predictions for capitalism becoming realized.

The New Deal’s redistribution of wealth, even if accomplished on a modified socialistic plan, and the victory by the Allies in the war and its consequent tendency in the 1950’s and 1960’s toward creation of a large American middle class, as consumerism thrived after two decades of economic and war sacrifice, all served, however, to debunk the theory by tamping down its inherent forces engendered by economic deprivation and the consequent brotherhood among men instilled thereby.

Then came the Vietnam War, the social unrest at home as expectations in the ghetto for economic improvement, with the acquisition of equal opportunity and civil rights, failed to work to keep pace immediately with realization of acquisition of material resources--and then, to fix it all, to diffuse the fixed focus within the ghetto, and re-establish "law and order" in society at large, to give voice to the "Silent Majority", i.e. middle-class white people fleeing to the suburbs from Niggerville in the cities, came Nixon, the One. And, then, a little over a year into it, Kent State, and Jackson State. Voila!

Marx again gained vast favor fast on college campuses abroad the land, with the avowed goal as its New Corollary to overthrow Nixonian politics, those of Division, once and for all.

Revolution, sure enough, was now in the air, worse than ever, thanks to Richard Nixon and the Silent Majority of Niggerville Fleers who couldn’t see beyond the ends of their collective powdered noses or beyond the hood ornaments on their dyno-soaring, chromium-encrusted automobiles and little pink houses on the hillside, merely to count themselves Americans along with the rest living unitedly under one Constitution.

A Bulletin from Britain reminds of the even stricter rationing going on there than in America, and for the entirety of the previous three years, not just for the previous nine months. The bulletin suggests that the single egg per person per week should be enjoyed not on Monday, for its being too early in the week to enable enough time to prepare the palate for the feast, but also not on Wednesday, for its being potentially too late, by the bomb’s fortuitous supervention, to permit enjoyment of the ovate-shaped curiosity without ceiling on which a chicken spent a substantial enough part of its life to lay just so that the laying art’s patron might enjoy its product, and, instead, in compromise between the extremities, fixes on stupid, bloody Tuesday for partaking of the single, magnificent egg’s esoteric delights.

Alexandra even could not have been so sensitive to the bejewelled qualities such a proletarian’s appreciation perceived each such Tuesday, rubefacient however it became by Thursday night in the aftermath of consumption of the also rationed and therefore equally precious prunes.

It’s too bad that Nixon and the most determined Niggerville Fleers he led didn’t find it reasonable to compromise accordingly.

Some still persist to this day.

We add today a bonus page for your perusal. Why? It just caught our eye as the film magically went whizzing past. In any event, don’t forget, now, sugar and gas rationing, for their being in such demand, have moved from the second floor to the first floor. You would not wish to wind up on an empty floor seeking your gas or sugar rationing card, now would you?

Also, we do have to wonder how Bridges crept into the matter from somewhere. We thought it was Dickson all along, only to find out that it was Bridges. That is rather mysterious, isn’t it?

It’s somewhat reminiscent of a bridge over troubled water.

Remember it, Alice, when the Gatekeeper should ask you for the secret word in order to gain passage over the immensely deep crevass, the bottom of which no eye has ever lived to see, nor would wish to do anyway, that is should he not first cut from out your tenuously obtaining feet, interfacing superficially the surfeit of surface imperfections, the ropes by which are attached your cords to gravity, in turn, when chopped, shall then and there be instanter consigned, without liberty from restraint, into the depths below, and that regardless, upon your hesitancy to answer forthrightly or upon your stumbling into the miscue expressing doubt of your inherent certainty and rectitude of memory in recitation with perfection your proper, concise, and irrefutably credentialed lines possessed of substantial, and, by their very perfect utterance, substantiated, veritas.

By the way, we discovered also last night that General McNaughton, inventor of the cathode ray radar scope, the rights to which he sold the Canadian government for but a dollar, had made the cover of Life on the issue dated December 18, 1939. So, for your edification, here a facsimile image of that, reduced, of course, from its original size, which was quite a bit larger:

Now, it being Tuesday, we might have our delectable egg.

Having done so and thought about it a bit, perhaps the 5 factor comes off the Lincoln, which, after all, bears upon its Lincoln green face, the sentence, "In God We Trust." Perhaps that in combination with our previous hypothesis.

But that still leaves the missing interval of eleven days for which to account. Where did that go? Shangri-La?

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