The Charlotte News

Wednesday, November 19, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Camera!" tells the story of some Russkies chasing Fritz through the streets of Tula, gunning his blackjack bin to biopical blunder fair. We won't rhyme it and spoil it for you.

Somehow though, having just tonight watched the recent film "Tropic Thunder", it all fits--and eerily so. Incidentally, if you like war movies, you'll love this one. And probably, even should you hate them. But caveat emptor: it's not for the faint of heart--or mind (or children). When they asked back there, "Who'll stop the rain?" this movie answered.

"Danger" reminds that with all the horrors of war, an average month tooling around the two-lane asphalt jungles of North Carolina in 1941 was even more dangerous, especially when tooling into the maneuver areas at night with the Army trucks on black-out. We explained once before that they didn't think it the Sea of Verrazano for no reason.

War is Hell.

Ask anyone with a blue roadster--or anyone who survived riding in it without suffering from PTS.

Mr. Straley, in "Our Dead", we suggest, may have culled a couple of lines from Dr. McCrae back there in 1915. But such is poetry, free for the taking, we suppose. It was in homage, no doubt.

The torch has now been passed to a new generation, born in this century, tempered by a soft and sweetened piece of candy, not knowing war, not knowing hardship, only video games. Pick it up and run with it, if, that is, you can walk yet. If not, Senator ("Hot") Wheeler will entertain you in the meantime.

Hugh Johnson tries to blow holes in the copper shortage announced by the Administration. Copper, as the column had previously elucidated, was useful in making bullets. General Johnson perhaps forgot that more bullets were being used in 1941 than in 1918, especially in China and Russia, and maybe even more especially in Hollywood.

And, the little piece from The Daily Mail indicates that some of the most powerful bombs of all being dropped on Germany by the RAF boys in fall, 1941 were labeled Guinness, Bass, and maybe a return or two of some Heinekens. It gives a whole new blush to "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall".

As we said, war is Hell. But if you are incapable of laughing at the folly of the Devil, then to Hell with you.

"Extraordinary. Superbly finessed. That was one witchin'-bitchin' war movie, dude. Mr. Kurusu like it, too." --Johann Wolfgang ("die Wolfman") von Goethe, Der Übermenschlichkeit Zeitung.