The Charlotte News

Monday, August 4, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Ruse?" questioning the seriousness of the suggested plans of Churchill for a British Northern offensive in what little time there was left of summer weather, and decrying, if so, the wisdom of such a move in light of the opportunity to continue to bombard little-defended German cities, also suggests in its last paragraph another reason why the Japanese would move south while simultaneously delivering a crippling blow to the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor: to attempt to aid Hitler against a freshly-supplied Great Britain via Lend-Lease by spreading the war to another front, diluting the capability of America to come further to the aid of Britain, at least for the nonce. It was so because the United States would then be forced either to rebuild its crippled Fleet or capitulate to terms of peace with Japan and restore the trade of the necessary oil, thus further spreading Britain's naval forces to defend Australia and the British positions in and around the China Sea, as well as India. Thus, would the house of cards drop as fall leaves in quick succession. But the plan had a flaw.

"One-Way Tanks" displays, two-fold, opinions which would likely raise hackles of readers today were they to appear in contemporary print. Indeed, the policy to which the editorial lends favor would, even in the most dire of emergencies, likely not pass EPA muster today. Then, again, they do continue to fly the Space Shuttle, which is little more than a flying bomb, akin to those floating gasoline tanks to be sent to Britain emergently. As to the Indians down in Mississippi after the Revolution, it becomes somewhat problematic to analogize their lot to Hitler, as if they were the aggressor on the land of the pale-face. We think the analogy is rather backwards. In any event, that's where all those Indian names came from down that way, such as Tallahatchie, or Mobile.

Hugh Johnson explains why it is that there was a fuel shortage in the Eastern United States, necessitating limited hours of operation for service stations, and soon, gas rationing. It was not the shortage per se of gasoline, but rather the shortage of tankers, resulting from their having been provided Great Britain through Lend-Lease, causing transportation of the gasoline supply from shore to shore, this being in days before the contemplated Gulf to Greensboro or Norfolk pipeline subsequently built, to be missing key components ordinarily in place.

And, if in "Fill 'Er Up", you should betray your youth, or your advancing age without memory, by not recognizing what the little orange bubble on top of the pump was all about, you may view one of those dinosaurs here. In those days, they wanted you to see your gas as the attendant pumped it--no one ever pumped it themselves--and, we suppose, it provided strange and wonderful entertainment for some of the little tykes in the backseat to have something to observe while the Man with the Star pumped the family's newest tankful.

In our case, we recall the several times when the fellow doing the pumping through the little percolating bubble incurred the considerable ire of our papa, who was ordinarily slow to blow ire on strangers, as the pumper, dumbfounded with sudden contrition, came 'round to the window to show our papa the result of his strenuous and daring Herculean labors on our 1952 Lincoln, trying assiduously to find the gas cap underneath the taillight, the while during his determined task not realizing that, unlike the similar vintage Cadillac, the gas cap was underneath the license plate, not the flipside of the taillight lens, the one now carried by the attendant sheepishly and plaintively in his ruddied hands, as if a newborn infant for our father to see.

"Uh, sir, I believe I made a mistake here. Could you please tell me where your gas tank is?"

"For crying out loud. What on earth have you done?"

Once, thinking maybe that he got the wrong side, one of these misbegotten became suddenly so independently industrious that he pulled the other one off as well.

This scene repeated itself so many times through the years that the remedial putty surrounding the replaced lenses was finally so carelessly slung down, from the recognition that the cycle would soon repeat, that it eventually took so little effort to remove them that one good grip from ourselves as a little tyke could muster sufficiently ample force to pull one right off, and with our hands still quite as unruffled as if we were stroking eiderdown. Or, maybe we were just getting stronger as the years rolled along.

In any event, such vagaries in expected service may have ultimately been responsible for the trend away from helpful attendants.

The re-printed letter to the editor to the Orlando Sentinel tells a little-heard story from the war: born American citizens of German parents having volunteered in Hitler's army. Here, the mother of two such men decries their having listened too closely to Bundist propaganda and rhetoric, beckoning them to the Mephisto. Just how many followed suit, and the eventual individual outcome of their endeavors, we don't know. It is a fair guess, however, that by 1943 or so, they would have wished, as did their mother, that they had remained loyal to their native country.

And if you'd like, you may continue reading War and Peace.

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