The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 26, 1943

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Russians had moved one-third of the 255-mile distance between Kharkov and Kiev, to within about 170 miles of the Ukrainian capital, after capturing Zenkov in the face of an attempted German stand.

German troops fired into a crowd in Copenhagen as the general strike spread to harbor cities, Helsingor and Vejle, bringing the Danish shipbuilding industry to a halt. Some 6,000 workers were reported to have struck at the Burmeister works in Copenhagen, manufacturer of key components for U-boats and German war ships.

While no figures were available on casualties in the most recent shooting incident, some 80 persons had been reported killed by German soldiers during the previous ten days of the Danish unrest, and another 150 injured. Earlier reports that as many as 40,000 German troops had been moved to Copenhagen were corrected by more recent information reducing the number to about 10,000.

Frightened Berliners, even before Monday night's 2,000-ton bombing raid on the city, were reported by a German newspaper to have fled to the forests in droves. A million children had left the city and residents were cramming trains with personal belongings in an effort to evacuate, so much so that furniture shipments had to be banned. Wealthy residents moved up to three hours distance each night from Berlin while less well-heeled night refugees settled on shorter distances.

Meanwhile, RAF mosquitoes flew a third bombing raid in three nights against the city the night before.

For the first time in the Italian theater, American Lightning fighter planes flew at treetop level 440 miles to Foggia, in advance of Flying Fortresses and Liberators which bombed the railway facilities around the city southeast of Naples. As the Lightnings flew in, the crews reported welcoming crews of waving Italians. The Italian and German defenses were caught off guard by the low-flying raid.

A map on the inside page shows Northern Italy, where the Germans were believed to be concentrating their defenses.

Americans and Australians were reported to have arrived at Kennedy's Crossing, a mile from the Salamaua airdrome on New Guinea.

Swedish sources reported that three German destroyers sank two Swedish boats in the North Sea off Demark the previous night, in violation of Swedish neutrality. If confirmed, the Swedish Government was said to be regarding the matter as "extremely serious".

A piece tells of the valiant effort on July 14 of a pilot hailing from Concord, N.C., bringing his battered Flying Fortress home on one engine, somewhere in England, after completing a bombing mission over France.

And, sign of the times, the University of Alabama had to give up its football program for the duration of the war because of the decision by the Army not to allow its trainees in college to participate in intercollegiate athletics.

On the editorial page, "Youth and Age" laments the loss of Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in the power-jousting match between with Secretary Hull. The outmoded ideas of Hull, says the piece, were the ones which should have been put outdoors, not the progressive outlook which Welles lent the Department.

Hull stood for the coddling of the French Fascists in North Africa; Welles had taken the more modern approach, insisting on democratic government.

If left to the devices of Mr. Hull, predicts the piece, the seeds of the next war would be sowed before the end of the present one.

"Just Desert" expresses approbation at the award of the conspicuous service medal to Federal District Court Judge John J. Parker by the American Bar Association.

The jurist had been nominated in 1930 for the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover, but the nomination was withdrawn on the basis of claims that Judge Parker had racist tendencies and was opposed to Labor.

"The Women" describes the National Catholic Women's Union objection to the "sensual allure" being adumbrated by women's fashion of late since Pearl Harbor.

Shamelessly high skirts and too tight fabrics showing far too much, in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, cried the Union. Jezebel and Babylon the Harlot had arrived on the scene simultaneously--probably knitting a bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sat at the head of the Chamber of Commerce

Whether any of the offended ladies of the Union lived to see the fashions of the 1960's is not foretold by the piece; should they have, they probably died from the vision extant by that time, making the 1943 fashions tame and decorous by comparison.

Claims that the briefer clothes were saving much needed fabric for military uses and thus was patriotic were met with a flick of a derisive wrist and due warning of awaiting perdition, that such rationalizations by some near-naked harlot were little more than the traitorous ramblings of a tramp in skintight clothing showing all of the things God meant to conceal--being why every church-going lady is born fully clothed.

The editorial finds the matter not worth the stir, same song as yesteryear in refrain.

"Outside the Law" looks at another version of anything goes--the 1943 college football season in which all semblance of eligibility rules had been abandoned. The larger schools in the Southern Conference would have the lopsided advantage with Navy and Marine personnel strolling the campus while the smaller schools without that All-American lot from which to draw would be reliant on walk-ons with little or no football experience at all.

Burke Davis bids the fans stay away, that the contests would hardly be any.

Drew Pearson reports of Secretary of State Hull's new right-hand man in tow at the Quebec conference, Jimmy Dunn, a man sympathetic with the Secretary’s expedient view of relations with the world, especially suspicious of Russia.

Dorothy Thompson takes issue with the President's recent statement that the same kind of planning which had produced the recent victories in the war would ultimately make peace a lasting reality after the war. She indicates that military planning is an authoritarian exercise; planning for peace, a political matter in which the people’s voice must be heard.

And the concepts thus far being put forward for the peace, with military occupation governments, she counsels, violated the basic precepts of this notion. She asserts that American-British policy in this regard was causing disturbance among the peoples of the other Allied nations, as well the democrats in the occupied countries.

She addresses a series of probing questions, some dovetailing Drew Pearson’s piece on the outmoded policies espoused by Jimmy Dunn, to which she believes responses ought be made by the Americans and British forthwith.

She predicts, on the current course, after the war, the world would see only the Ugly American.

Raymond Clapper addresses many of the same questions posed by Ms. Thompson, counseling again that Congress take up these issues and provide answers. Should Axis aggressors be disarmed and remain disarmed. Should Hitler and Mussolini be shot? Should there be close collaboration with Britain after the war? With Russia? Should America join other nations to use force against aggressor nations? These were among the foremost questions, he posits, that Congress should answer.

Samuel Grafton again comments on his visit to Rushville, Indiana to interview once and potentially future Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. This time, he quotes some local farmers as favoring the reading of the chapter in Willkie’s popular book published in May, One World, on collective farms in Russia. They vowed that they were not isolationist farmers and wanted to join with brother farmers of other nations, whether in Russia or elsewhere, to adopt the best methods of farming. And the farming collective suggested some novel and interesting ideas to them.