The Charlotte News

Friday, September 25, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The Imperial High Command in Tokyo, according to the front page, reported that Japanese naval units were now actively engaged with the Axis in Atlantic operations. There appeared, however, on closer examination of the communique, actually only one lone Japanese submarine mentioned as plying the Atlantic waters. The British discounted the report as so much bluster, that any surface naval operation would be easily determined with the proliferation of Allied patrols on that ocean, far more narrowly confined in its tub than the Pacific, and that submarine operations of the Japanese were too preoccupied in the East to lend any extensive assistance in the West.

A Navy lieutenant from Charlotte, W. A. Thomason, Jr., was putting his knowledge in textiles management, newly acquired from N.C. State, to good use in India, having implemented the concept of local manufacture of military uniforms. Making uniforms at the destination, utilizing locally procured raw materials, was far cheaper than transporting the finished product, manufactured in the United States, nearly half way around the globe, while offering the added advantage of freeing space in already-taxed cargo planes.

Lieutenant Thomason's digs at a Maharaja's palace, replete with a personal servant, apparently had been conducive to clarity of thought, voiding the mind of all unnecessary dissonance and anti-ductile counterflow, that is to say inducing the transcendental.

Dr. J. S. Dorton, chairman of the State Fair (and whose namesake was eventually Dorton Arena in Raleigh), announced from his hometown of Shelby that the Southern States Fair, after the same fate already determined for the State Fair and Cleveland County Fair, would be canceled for the duration of the war. The strict curtailment of rubber and gas supplies made the fairs an unnecessary luxury for the times.

Ah, to be back in the times when fall meant fairs, not fighting.

Fierce combat continued within and around Stalingrad, as the Russian salvation of winter slowly again approached, as the days gradually became shorter, the nights longer, the fires brighter, and the mounds of corpses on both sides of the barricades mounted higher.

"Double Play" on the editorial page gives both praise and condemnation to the War Department's sponsorship of the upcoming boxing match between Joe Louis and Billy Conn. While the fight between the two Army volunteers was billed as being for the benefit of Army relief, in fact, $135,000 of the purse was earmarked first for the two fighters, to pay their personal debts. The matter had become especially controversial in Congress when it became known that a large part of the gate provided Joe Louis would go to King Jacobs, his promoter and arranger of the match.

The speakers in Congress had made ostensibly a valid point, that if these two well-known fighters were to be permitted to pay personal debts out of armed forces duty, then so might the Army expect others with valuable skills to demand similar treatment.

Wouldn't doctors and nurses, for instance, serving in the medical evacuation unit from Charlotte, likewise have reason to want to pay their personal debts from their time volunteered in the service of their country? Maybe charge a little extra on the side to treat that wound, soldier? Or charge others to watch the bloody surgery?

Well, whatever reason determines the trait, men will pay good money to watch a slambang beat 'em up fistfight. (According to Tim Pridgen, even a game cockfight.) But, not too many people would pay to watch doctors perform their duties with a stethoscope, tongue depressor, or otherwise a-scope, or masons lay bricks, or carpenters build barracks, or mechanics repair a jeep.

So, perhaps the argument, having merit on its face, when reduced to cases, was a bit specious. If two well-known fighters were to raise a large amount of money in one afternoon for Army relief, then it was probably only fitting that they be permitted to pocket some of the booty, even if it meant the unseemly appearance of the War Department becoming engaged in the fight trade. But that reasoning, itself, devolved to absurdity. For the War Department was already engaged for the past ten months in the fight trade, wasn't it? Indeed, even since fall, 1940 and the supplying of the fifty old destroyers to England, and the Congressionally-approved beginning of Lend-Lease in the spring of 1941. Pray tell, what was the difference between promoting pugilism in the referee-controlled ring or out on the battlefields of the world, where the only referee was the whizzing of a bullet to stop you cold in your tracks, the only count, the time interval between the stop of the bomb's whistle and the sound of the explosion somewhere away from you, instantly laying waste to your relief with the recognition that someone else received the bomb's indiscriminate retribution for unseen crimes of another's hand, in another land, in another time?

Make your pick, lay your bets, gentlemen. The fight is about to begin, and unto gladiatorial death this time.

In any event, as pointed out previously, by the 1960's, Joe Louis was reduced to refereeing boxing and wrestling matches in order to stave off poverty, having given away a large portion of his prize money collected through time. He gave up his lucrative boxing career to enter the Army in January, 1942 and asked for no special consideration in the process, donating to national defense the proceeds of his last regularly scheduled match before entering the service.

Whether from Mr. Louis's announced intention to enter the Army, King Jacobs saw an angle other than patriotism, one ripe for personal exploitation to augment his and his best prize fighter's fortunes, is subject to speculation.

"Sacrifice" tells of such rationing in England that fuel conservation measures were even afoot, or half a foot, on the part of King George and His Royal Family. Among the houses of Windsor, there was to be poured no more than five inches of water in the tub, unnecessary lights extinguished. No doubt, the trade of chandlery took then a royal boost, the stock of available tapers diminished commensurately by the rain.

As to that, as well the remainder of the page, we take the editorial's challenge, 67 years on: