The SS gave the Roman Jewish community 36 hours to make payments to the German occupiers. Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli appealed to the Vatican regarding the monetary shortfalls, and which the Vatican did. As the payments were to be i gold, it is thought that religious vessels were melted to make the payment.
Isreal Zolli.
Rabbi Zolli would survive the war, but with a dramatic turn of events. On Yom Kippur in 1944 he experienced a vision of Jesus while celebrating a religious service and felt himself to have experienced the words "You are here for the last time". On February 13, 1945, he, his second wife (his first had died) and his daughters were received into Catholicism. He died on March 2, 1956 after having received Communion. He was ill at the time, but had told a nun at the hospital at which he was located the date and hour of his death before it arrived.
The Free French occupied Ghisonaccia on Corsica.
The multinational (not including Americans) Z Special Unit raided Japanese shipping at Singapore. The Japanese, in New Guinea, launched an unsuccessful counterattack on the Australians at Finschafen.
The Catholic blogosphere has been having a war over G. K. Chesterton, the late English writer and polymath. Some of it, were I not so tired and worn out, would be heartbreaking, as former fans of his, particularly converts, have discovered his anti-Semitic views and come around to condemning him. At the same time, hard right wing Catholics, whom are I supposing a separate interlocking circle that crosses over into the Trads and Rad Trads, but don't include all of those bodies by any means (I suspect most of them do not know who Chesterton is) may be over adopting him.
All this exists, moreover, in the bizarre context of our times in which the left doesn't see a biological or social construct that it doesn't want to attack, which makes in some ways Chesterton a perfect man for our times, as he warned of so much of this. That's why, to our recent surprise, we saw, and it caused a lot of comment, Giorgia Meloni quote the English writer to the effect:
Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
She stated that in support of her hard right conservative views.
A lot of this debate over Chesterton, both from the right and the left, really misses the point, in my view.
Whenever dealing with a great man, we have to ask ourselves a series of questions. Ironically, in some ways, we have to ask one that has been recently examined by the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom. "Was he a saint?" But beyond that, do we require great mean with huge thoughts to be saints? And do we always require them to be right in order to consider these ideas?
In some ways, this is frankly why ancient philosophers get so much more of a pass than modern ones. We don't even think much of their private lives, really. We know that Socrates was married at least once, to Xanthippe, and might have had a second wife as well. We also know that Xanthippe might have been 40 years younger than Socrates, which would cause all sorts of Twitter twittering today, but we just don't think of it. And he's a philosopher that we know a lot about.
Chesterton, on the other hand, we know boatloads about, as he's a relatively recent figure. His cause for canonization, which failed, resulted in all sorts of commentary about him in various forms, including some people who claimed he couldn't be a saint as he was fat, so therefore he must be a glutton, and an "alcoholic", based on his exhibiting the typical English pub culture of the time. Much more serious, however, are his anti-Semitic utterances.
So let's start there.
They exist.
Now, I'm not able to really go into detail on them, as unlike true Chestertonians, I've read very little of Chesterton. Like a lot of people who fit broadly into his fan base, so to speak, I've read the various pithy quotes you are able to find, and up until a recent bizarre Twitter episode, I hadn't read any of the anti-Semitic ones. I'd heard them referenced, and excused, but I'm not going to try to do that as they seem to go beyond what we might expect, although at the same time a person can't really deny that there is evidence that cuts the other way as well. The year following his death, for example, you find American Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise, making this comment:
Indeed, I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton. Apart from his delightful art and his genius in many directions, he was, as you know, a great religionist . . . I deeply respected him. When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his memory!
That's hard to square with the claim that Chesterton was an unabashed anti Semite. In contrast, some point out that Chesterton said something like there was some good in Hitlerism and some of that was in Hitler himself. He both condemned Nazism while saying that part of the reason that it came about was because of a "Jewish problem", a fairly astounding claim from an educated man who should have known better, although that was a fairly widespread belief in Europe at the time, and it surprisingly still has much more retention in Europe today, in spite of everything, than it should. In some ways, Chesterton on this topic gives us a really odd example of a person really forcibly trying to take the middle ground by advocating both sides of it, on a topic in which there really is no middle ground.
But here's the thing.
Having bad, even horrible, views, doesn't discredit your other views which are not so tainted, and they don't define the person unless the person adopts them to the extent that they do.
Hitler was a tremendous opponent of smoking. He hated it. He was right to hate it, but beyond anything else, he hated cultures that he regarded as non-Germanic, with the Jews, followed by the Slavs hated to the point of murder. That's why Hitler and his followers are defined by their murderous beliefs, and not by their opposition to tobacco or their construction of the autobahn.
In contrast, I suppose, Thomas Jefferson wrote profoundly on the rights of man. At the same time, he was shacked up with his dead wife's half sister, who was an enslaved black woman. The relationship started, following his wife's death, when the slave was quite young, probably still in her teens. That's really icky. The children of that illicit union, we'd note, were held in bondage as well, which is exceedingly weird.
That latter example gives us an example closer to what we find with Chesterton. Jefferson was a brilliant man, and wrote in opposition to slavery, none of which kept him from having an illicit unmarried long-lasting and deeply strange relationship to his sister-in-law. Should we discount his writings?
Probably not.
And here I guess is the uneasy measure. People are full of vices, some of them exceedingly serious. Some people let their hatreds and vices define them. That is what they come to stand for, by their own actions. Hitler's perverted view of German superiority defined his political party and what it stood for, and came to define what Germany of the 30s and 40s stood for. Lenin and Stalin's malevolent view of the "class struggle", which lead to mass murder, came to define them.
Franklin Roosevelt's long-lasting extramarital affair did not come to define him, however. And while he's not now regarded as a good President, Warren G. Harding's two affairs have not come to define him. Actor Pat Morita's alcoholism did not define him. Jimi Hendrix's drug consumption, which helped kill him, didn't define him. Caravaggio's murdering a man over a tennis match has not come to define him. Django Reinhardt's alcohol consumption diminished his abilities over his lifetime, but that has not come to define him, nor has Richard Burton's alcoholism defined him. Churchill was known to have made utterances sympathetic to Mussolini prior to World War Two, and even after World War Two Churchill made a surprising remark about the rise of Hitler, which he warned against, having made sense in the context of desperate Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
It's problematic, of course, when we are faced with a character like Chesterton, who serous failing was in print and therefore not really possible to ignore and not legitimately subject to being excused. Nor are that a self-destructive personal vice, like alcoholism. It's much closer to Jefferson's bedroom hypocrisy. It's different from that, of course, in that Chesterton's views were openly stated, whereas Jefferson's actions were kept hidden. A person could debate which was worse, I suppose, in that context, but for a brilliant writer, that's all the more problematic.
Some of it was the context of the times and culture, to be sure. Anti-Semitism is deeply ingrained in European culture and remains pretty potent today. But Chesterton actually stood principally against his culture, which makes this failing more difficult to accept.
So where to land?
Like Caravaggio's paintings, his works are too valuable to ignore. The adoption of them by fringe elements of the far right today, including the far right in religious circles, does not change that, and indeed chances are high that Chesterton would levy his sharp tongue against many of them today. It means, however, that he's a flawed hero, and in at least one serious way, which makes him a pretty typical hero at that. There are, to my layman's eyes, reasons not to canonize him which are both theological and political, none of which is to say that he did not find salvation. Indeed, we ought to be careful about our own souls, with many of the critics and readers of all kinds no doubt, like Jefferson, harboring secret or open vices.
So the troubling writings should not be excused or diminished. Not everything the man said or did was right. But by the same token, the writings of Jefferson's pen in aid of the infant United States are not rendered a nullity by his long-running bizarre home behavior. The character of the works must be measured in the main, with those that fail being noted as failures, even evil failures, which does not mean that the rest cannot be considered. It also does not mean that the man can be adopted in the main, safely, for those with modern radical causes.
The key may be the question whether the failings define the man, or are a horrific exception to his definition. Hitler's failings defined him. Jefferson's did not. Chesterton's, serious though they were, do not seem to define him either, which is not to excuse them.
The Germans completed the liquidation of the Lwów Ghetto in Poland. The city, which once contained a population of 160,000 Jewish Poles, is now in Ukraine and known as Lviv. It had been contested for in the Polish Ukrainian War. During that battle, the Jewish population of the town had formed its own militia.
Sarah Sundin notes in her blog:
Today in World War II History—June 2, 1943: Combat debut of US 99th Fighter Squadron, the first Black unit in the Army Air Force (“Tuskegee Airmen”), in a Twelfth Air Force mission to Pantelleria.
In the abortion debate in Wyoming, one of the plaintiffs has asserted that Judaism mandates abortion in some circumstances.
That struck me as flat out absurd, and a local Jewish figure did publish an article flatly rejecting that. It keeps coming up, however.
Judaism has lacked, since the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, a central religious body, so perhaps more than any other major religion, it relies extremely heavily on conveyed tradition. Islam, FWIW, tends to as well. Interestingly, the body that split away from Judaism around AD30, but which remained mixed within it at the time, Catholicism, retains a highly central organization the way that Judaism did at the time of its founding.
Anyhow, it's interesting to see what actual orthodox (small o) Jews think of this effort. An article in Newsweek let's us know. It's entitled:
Judaism's Stance on Gender Is Clear, Despite Attempts To Rewrite Torah | Opinion
Well worth reading.
The takeaway? Judaism doesn't sanction abortion. People who claim otherwise, really, are trying to co opt the religion.
Jewish women in Paris, 1942. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0619-506 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5367011
Germany began deportation of 4,000 Jews from occupied France. They were sent to Sobibor, where only five of them would survive.
The initial deportation of 4,000 was shortly followed by an additional 1,000.
The Germans also began to deport Yugoslavian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.
The Germans made the first executions of Gypsies at Auschwitz.
The Waffen SS attacked and destroyed Khatyn, Byelorussia in retaliation for the killing of four German officers, including Hans-Otto Woellke of the Order Police. Woelke had been an Olympic shot putter.
Sarah Sundin notes:
Today in World War II History—March 22, 1943: Nazis extend work week in the occupied Netherlands to 54 hours. US II Corps under Lt. Gen. George Patton occupies Maknassy, Tunisia.
Sundin also has a very interesting photograph on her blog, of troops in Maknassy. I wouldn't normally repost it, but the details are quite interesting.
The quality of the photograph isn't fantastic, but the details are really interesting as noted. All of the soldiers except the one on the far right are wearing coveralls, suggesting they're armored vehicle crewmen. They are armed, left to right, as follows: M1903 Springfield, M1 Carbine, M1903 Springfield, M1903 Springfield, unclear, unclear.
British Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett DSO, parliamentarian, British Army officer, and big game hunter was killed in action during the fighting in Tunisia as a colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps.
The U-524 and U-665 were sunk by Allied aircraft in the Atlantic.
The Allesandro Volta (Italy) exploded in port, devasting the harbor, after being hit by bombs from a B-24. The same raid took out the Franco M, the Labor, the Lentini, the Manzoni, the Maria Louisa, the Modena, the Mondovi, hte Moni, the Renato, the Rosa and the Trentino.
It was a bad day for Italian shipping.
The German tanker Eurosee sank in an air raid on Wilhelmshaven.
The British Harbour Defense Motor Launches HMML 1157 and HMML 1212 sank in an air raid in Portugal.
The Imperial Japanese Army (yes, army) auxiliary transport ship Meigan Maru was sunk off of Java by the USS Gudgeon.
Clark Gable appeared on the cover of Look magazine in his airman attire.
The Battle of the Bismarck Seas started on this day in 1943, in which aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea,
The Japanese knew that the convoy run was risky, but considered it worthwhile as it stood to be more effective than marching the troops overland. The Allies had detected preparations for the convoy, and then deciphered Japanese communications regarding it so that the details concerning it were well known.
Around 2,900 Japanese servicemen lost their lives in the battle. Thirteen Allied airmen were killed. All eight Japanese transport vessels went down, and four of the eight destroyer escorts over a two day period.
1,500 Jewish residents of Berlin were deported to Auschwitz, with 1,350 of them being murdered immediately upon arrival there.
The Honouliuli Internment Camp opened in Waipahu, Ohau, Hawaii. Hawaiian Nisei are sometimes mistakenly believed to have escaped internment. It was not as widespread as it was on the North American Pacific coast, but it did occur.
Built to house 3,000 people, it initially held 160 Japanese Americans and 69 Japanese citizens. Ultimately it came to house more than 4,000 Okinawans, Italians, German Americans, Koreans, and Taiwanese civilians.
A fire occurred in Douglas:
Today In Wyoming's History: March 2:1943 The Pepsi Cola bottling plant in Douglas was damaged by fire. While soft drink bottling plant operations are not unknown in the state now, at that time smaller ones were more common. Casper had a Coca Cola bottling plant.
Joseph Stalin, caught in tape commenting to Molotov.
I don't pay any attention to the Grammy's anymore. I never much did. Anymore, however, nobody pays much attention to them. The same has become true of all the other big awards in entertainment that once meant so much. Now, heavily politicized in a PC fashion, they're really not very interesting and people pretty much ignore them.
Therefore, I ignored the flap over Sam Smith's performance when it came out, even though with Douthat commented on it I started to take a little note. But then I noticed something else.
It's no secret that a certain segment of Western, liberal, society is at war with our existential nature, which calls into mind, for a believer, Stalin's quote. And well it should. Communism claimed at first to act in accordance with man's nature, but soon saw it that it couldn't force the nature that it wished for, so it decided to make a new Communist man that was the antithesis to real men in some ways. It failed.
That's what we have going on now.
Sam Smith is a homosexual. While Pope Francis is certainly correct that making homosexuality illegal, as it actually is in much of the world, is wrong, celebrating it is nonsensical, just as celebrating hetrosexuality would also be. It is a deviation from the genetic norm. In spite of that, however, and particularly post Obergefel, now a person can hardly even point that out.
And as people who were well attune to development and trends pointed out, the Obergefel decision was going to inevitably lead to a full scale assault on normality and nature itself, which has busted out in the transgenderism craze. It was claimed that this would not occur, but with the guardrails down, it pretty much had to. Not surprisingly, he collaborates with German songwriter Tim Petras, a man who was chemically and probably surgically mutilated as a very early teen, and who goes by the name of Kim Petras and affects a female appearance.
In Smith's performance, he affected a Satanic visage and gave what can only be called an open embrace of what that entails. Perhaps fully unwitting, Smith has exposed openly what most in his camp have hidden, perhaps for the better.
And by so doing, he joins Stalin in that category. For all his defects, Stalin was a genius and his comment was not only open, I don't believe it to be metaphorical. At least he had the courage to admit what he was up to.
Of course, like all such efforts, it failed.
It's worth noting that this argument still prevails even for those who claim not to believe or doubt. Most of the general fundamentals of Christianity in regard to men, women, and what they do and interact, are not only Christian principles, they're principles of every religion, and exhibited in every natural society. That's why, we'd note, that Communism works no better in North Korea than East Germany. It's contrary to human nature, as is what these performers are exhibiting.
You can be at war with nature, but you won't win.
It's interesting to note. . .
Related to the above, that in the commentary in Playboy documentary that aired one of the models flat out stated that she believed Hugh Hefner to be possessed, and that a girl who was a centerfold or "bunny", I can't recall which painted something essentially stating the same thing prior to her committing suicide.
It was really Kinsey, and his bogus report, that started us down this road, although I've blamed Hugh Hefner, justifiably, a lot.
During World War Two, Alfred Kinsey, with colleagues, was busy studying the sexual habits of perverts who were incarcerated, resulting in a text entitled Sexual Behavior In The Human Male, which would have been better entitled Sexual Habits of Incarcerated Perverts Who Couldn't Be Drafted. It's one of two examples of 1940s "studies" being really results driven. I.e, a report that isn't a study, but a conclusion being justified subsequently by a report, the other being SLAM Marshall's Men Under Fire.
Both texts have done a lot of damage.
Taken objectively, it turns out that really gross perverts act perversely, which didn't stop Kinsey and his associates from actually arranging some acts that should be regarded as solicitation, or prostitution, or just weird. Anyhow, their conclusions were erroneous, as is now well known, but so damaging and influential, they're still regarded as persuasive.
In reality, the overwhelming majority of men and women actually had very limited numbers of, as we like to say now, "partners". Most men and women had no sexual experience at all of the really intimate type until they were married, and it was universally regarded, irrespective of not everyone keeping the standard, that sex outside of marriage was morally wrong.
Enter perversion fan Kinsey and this began to weaken, followed by Hugh Hefner. Not too surprisingly, we are at where we now are, at war with nature.
99 Luftballons
The entire Chinese balloon flap has been very interesting. I'm sure that we're not going to know the truth of it for many years.
What we know is only the basics. The Chinese have been flying spy balloons over the United States, and in this case, although barely noted, over Canada as well. The choice of the two nations together may be simply atmospheric, perhaps that's how you get a balloon over the continental US, or it may be strategic, that flies it over and through NORAD.
It would not appear that the NORAD, American or Canadian response has been stellar. This was apparently, if we're being told the truthy, and we very well might not be, the first time a PRC spy balloon was detected, which if true is a shocking admission of a major NORAD failure. And the entire story of waiting it so long to shoot it down doesn't pass the smell test at all. This thing could have been dropped anywhere from the Aleutians to Wyoming harmlessly, but wasn't. The story about not wanting to damage stuff on the ground simply isn't credible. They were probably more likely to hit a boater where they took it down than they were to hit a human over much of its course.
Which means somebody is probably fibbing.
We now know that U2s accompanied the balloon nearly its entire route over the US. The high altitude spy plane was spying on the balloon, likely picking up anything it emitted, and perhaps messing with its own emissions. That alone may be sufficient justification, justification that can't be admitted, for not dropping it until we did.
Chances are good, I'd note, that U2s are flying near the one now in the Southern Hemisphere.
The big question is why are the Chinese doing this?
Well, one reason is that they got away with it so far, and it did a good job of testing NORAD. We overflew quite a few places with U2s until we simply couldn't, and it was never our intent to test air responses in doing it. We probably also intruded on Soviet waters with submarines for various spying reasons, and the Soviets and Russians probably still do that in some locations.
Nations spy.
But spying in this manner is really interesting.
They may have been able to pick up a lot of electronic data from the ground that a satellite simply couldn't. And, importantly for a nation that is preparing for war with the United States, and it is, testing NORAD made sense.
A new Cold War?
This question came up on all the weekend shows. Are we in a new Cold War. Nobody would say yes.
Well, we obviously are.
One analysis, that the level of trade was too high to support that claim, is nonsense. We didn't have a lot of trade with the Eastern Bloc countries, as they had nothing we really wanted to buy at the time. China has been different, and intentionally so. The real model is the trade level between the Western combatants in World War One, prior to the war. It was enormous, none of which kept the war from happening.
And this war will go hot.
Are the Chinese going to attack Taiwan?
Probably.
Well, rather, they will probably try.
I'd give it about 70% chance of happening by mid-decade. I.e., we're close.
It'll also be an epic fail.
Crossing the Taiwan Strait will prove beyond them, their casualties will be massive, and their government will fall.
Liars.
Fox news crew with the network.
To nobody's really surprise, unless they chose to be completely self-deluded, Fox News personnel privately acknowledged that they knew Trump hadn't won the 2020 election. Indeed, privately, some, notably Tucker Carlson, blasted him.
In spite of this, they just keep on keeping on. If Fox had any honor, all of these people would go, and go right now.
But they won't. And they'll just keep shoving the crap they're shoveling.
Lying about being Jewish
It's interesting that there is now some political cache, apparently, to being Jewish.
We've long had Jewish politicians in the United States, and even before that. Francis Salvador, for example, served in the South Carolina provincial legislature at the time of the Revolution and hew as Jewish. But it can't be doubted, additionally, that being Jewish was once a serious hindrance to obtaining higher office. While Salvador was undoubtedly an exception, by and large successful 19th Century Jewish politicians in the US, and there were some, came from districts where their constituents at least partially had the some background.
Exceptions started in the 19th Century, however. Portland, Oregon had back to back Jewish mayors starting in 1869. Washington Bartlett was the Jewish Governor of California starting in 1887. And so on.
Be that as it may, Jewish Americans being quiet about their religious identity, in some instances, was pretty common well into the 20th Century. Indeed, most Jewish actors in American films changed their names, if they had a name that might identify them as being Jewish.
Now that's changed so much that we apparently have two freshman members of Congress claiming Jewish identify when they have none. George Santos is one, and now Anna Paulina Luna is another. Luna claimed to be raised as a Messianic Jew and that she’s part Ashkenazi Jewish, but has now converted fully to Christianity.
In actuality, she's always been a Christian and one of her grandfathers, a German immigrant, served i the German Army during World War Two.
She was executed by way of an injection of phenol into her heart, shortly after Whilem Brasse photographed her. Her murder occurred at Auschwitz.
The way that this is noted, when it is, is that "next to Jews", Poles were the second biggest victims of the Holocaust, which tends to put aside the fact that many of the Jews killed by the Germans were Polish Jews, and therefore Poles. Poland was the center of Jewish European culture prior to the Second World War and the Germans destroyed it. Not to diminish that, however, is the fact that millions of Poles who were not Jews were also murdered for simply being Poles. Ms. Kwoka was probably murdered as she was 14 and deemed incapable of providing useful work. Her mother had been murdered some day prior, likely because she was also deemed incapable of useful work. Huge numbers of Poles would be shot, gas and starved for that reason, and for the reason that the Germans sought to eliminate the Poles.
Next to the Poles were the Belorussians, which also sets aside that many Jewish Belorussians were killed as Jews. Likewise, Ukrainian and Jewish Ukrainians were murdered in huge numbers, all for the crime of being Slavs or Jewish. And we have to add to that the huge number of Red Army prisoners of war starved to death by the Germans for being, once again, Slavs.
It's unimaginable due to its scale.
And on this day, Czeslawa Kwoka was one of them.
On the same day, Joseph Goebbels went on the radio and called for "Total War". Hitler had already decreed that this was to take place and had ordered the mobilization of German women within a certain age range.
Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance movement at the University of Munich were arrested. They'd be convicted of treason four days later.
The Japanese extended the ghetto system to Shanghai, creating a Jewish ghetto there made up of those who had fled Europe. 20,000 people were confined to two square miles.
Soong Mei-link, Chiang Kai-shek's wife, became the first private citizen to address the U.S. Congress. She was also the second woman to do so. She made the following statement:
Mr. Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives of the United States:
At any time it would be a privilege for me to address Congress, more especially this present august body which will have so much to do in shaping the destiny of the world. In speaking to Congress I am literally speaking to the American people. The Seventy-seventh Congress, as their representatives, fulfilled the obligations and responsibilities of its trust by declaring war on the aggressors. That part of the duty of the people’s representatives was discharged in 1941. The task now confronting you is to help win the war and to create and uphold a lasting peace which will justify the sacrifices and sufferings of the victims of aggression.
Before enlarging on this subject, I should like to tell you a little about my long and vividly interesting trip to your country from my own land which has bled and borne unflinchingly the burden of war for more than 5 1/2 years. I shall not dwell, however, upon the part China has played in our united effort to free mankind from brutality and violence. I shall try to convey to you, however imperfectly, the impressions gained during the trip.
First of all, I want to assure you that the American people have every right to be proud of their fighting men in so many parts of the world. I am particularly thinking of those of your boys in the far-flung, ut-of-the-way stations and areas where life is attended by dreary drabness—this because their duty is not one of spectacular performance and they are not buoyed up by excitement of battle. They are called upon, day after colorless day, to perform routine duties such as safeguarding defenses and preparing for possible enemy action. It has been said, and I find it true from personal experience, that it is easier to risk one’s life on the battlefield than it is to perform customary humble and humdrum duties which, however, are just as necessary to winning the war. Some of your troops are stationed in isolated spots quite out of reach of ordinary communications. Some of your boys have had to fly hundreds of hours over the sea from an improvised airfield in quests often disappointingly fruitless, of enemy submarines.
They, and others, have to stand the monotony of waiting—just waiting. But, as I told them, true patriotism lies in possessing the morale and physical stamina to perform faithfully and conscientiously the daily tasks so that in the sum total the weakest link is the strongest.
Your soldiers have shown conclusively that they are able stoically to endure homesickness, the glaring dryness, and scorching heat of the Tropics, and keep themselves fit and in excellent fighting trim. They are amongst the unsung heroes of this war, and everything possible to lighten their tedium and buoy up their morale should be done. That sacred duty is yours. The American Army is better fed than any army in the world. This does not mean, however, that they can live indefinitely on canned food without having the effects tell on them. These admittedly are the minor hardships of war, especially when we pause to consider that in many parts of the world, starvation prevails. But peculiarly enough, oftentimes it is not the major problems of existence which irk a man’s soul; it is rather the pin pricks, especially those incidental to a life of deadly sameness, with tempers frayed out and nervous systems torn to shreds.
The second impression of my trip is that America is not only the cauldron of democracy, but the incubator of democratic principles. At some of the places I visited, I met the crews of your air bases. There I found first generation Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, Czechoslovakians, and other nationals. Some of them had accents so thick that, if such a thing were possible, one could not cut them with a butter knife. But there they were—all Americans, all devoted to the same ideals, all working for the same cause and united by the same high purpose. No suspicion or rivalry existed between them. This increased my belief and faith that devotion to common principles eliminates differences in race, and that identity of ideals is the strongest possible solvent of racial dissimilarities.
I have reached your country, therefore, with no misgivings, but with my belief that the American people are building and carrying out a true pattern of the Nation conceived by your forebears, strengthened and confirmed. You, as epresentatives of the American people, have before you the glorious opportunity of carrying on the pioneer work of your ancestors, beyond the frontiers of physical and geographical limitations. Their brawn and thews braved undauntedly almost unbelievable hardships to open up a new continent. The modern world lauds them for their vigor and intensity of purpose, and for their accomplishment. Your have today before you the immeasurably greater opportunity to implement these same ideals and to help bring about the liberation of man’s spirit in every part of the world. In order to accomplish this purpose, we of the United Nations must now so prosecute the war that victory will be ours decisively and with all good speed.
Sun-tse, the well-known Chinese strategist said, “In order to win, know thyself and thy enemy.” We have also the saying: “It takes little effort to watch the other fellow carry the load.”
In spite of these teachings from a wise old past, which are shared by every nation, there has been a tendency to belittle the strength of our opponents.
When Japan thrust total war on China in 1937 military experts of every nation did not give China even a ghost of a chance. But when Japan failed to bring China cringing to her knees as she vaunted, the world took solace in this phenomenon by declaring that they had overestimated Japan’s military might.
Nevertheless, when the greedy flames of war inexorably spread in the Pacific following the perfidious attack on Pearl Harbor, Malaya, and lands in and around the China Sea, and one after another of these places fell, the pendulum swung to the other extreme. Doubts and fears lifted their ugly heads and the world began to think that the Japanese were Nietzschean supermen, superior in intellect and physical prowess, a belief which the Gobineaus and the Houston Chamberlains and their apt pupils, the Nazi racists, had propounded about the Nordics.
Again, now the prevailing opinion seems to consider the defeat of the Japanese as of relative unimportance and that Hitler is our first concern. This is not borne out by actual facts, nor is it to the interests of the United Nations as a whole to allow Japan to continue not only as a vital potential threat but as a waiting sword of Damocles, ready to descend at a moment’s notice.
Let us not forget that Japan in her occupied areas today has greater resources at her command than Germany.
Let us not forget that the longer Japan is left in undisputed possession of these resources, the stronger she must become. Each passing day takes more toll in lives of both Americans and Chinese.
Let us not forget that the Japanese are an intransigent people.
Let us not forget that during the first 4 1/2 years of total aggression China has borne Japan’s sadistic fury unaided and alone.
The victories won by the United Sates Navy at Midway and the Coral Sea are doubtless steps in the right direction—they are merely steps in the right direction—for the magnificent fight that was waged at Guadalcanal during the past 6 months attests to the fact that the defeat of the forces of evil though long and arduous will finally come to pass. For have we not on the side of righteousness and justice staunch allies in Great Britain, Russia, and other brave and indomitable peoples? Meanwhile the peril of the Japanese juggernaut remains. Japanese military might must be decimated as a fighting force before its threat to civilization is removed.
When the Seventy-seventh Congress declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy, Congress for the moment had done its work. It now remains for you, the present Representatives of the American people, to point the way to win the war, to help construct a world in which all peoples may henceforth live in harmony and peace.
May I not hope that it is the resolve of Congress to devote itself to the creation of the post-war world? To dedicate itself to the preparation for the brighter future that a stricken world so eagerly awaits?
We of this generation who are privileged to help make a better world for ourselves and for posterity should remember that, while we must not be visionary, we must have vision so that peace should not be punitive in spirit and should not be provincial or nationalistic or even continental in concept, but universal in scope and humanitarian in action, for modern science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of necessity affect all other peoples.
The term “hands and feet” is often used in China to signify the relationship between brothers. Since international interdependence is now so universally recognized, can we not also say that all nations should become members of one corporate body?
The 160 years of traditional friendship between our two great peoples, China and America,which has never been marred by misunderstandings, is unsurpassed in the annals of the world.
I can also assure you that China is eager and ready to cooperate with you and other peoples to lay a true and lasting foundation for a sane and progressive world society which would make it impossible for any arrogant or predatory neighbor to plunge future generations into another orgy of blood. In the past China has not computed the cost to her manpower in her fight against aggression, although she well realized that manpower is the real wealth of a nation and it takes generations to grow it. She has been soberly conscious of her responsibilities and has not concerned herself with privileges and gains which she might have obtained through compromise of principles. Nor will she demean herself and all she holds dear to the practice of the market place.
We in China, like you, want a better world, not for ourselves alone, but for all mankind, and we must have it. It is not enough, however, to proclaim our ideals or even to be convinced that we have them. In order to preserve, uphold, and maintain them, there are times when we should throw all we cherish into our effort to fulfill these ideals even at the risk of failure.
The teachings drwn from our late leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, have given our people the fortitude to carry on. From 5 1/2 years of experience we in China are convinced that it is the better part of wisdom not to accept failure ignominiously, but to risk it gloriously. We shall have faith that, at the writing of peace, American and our other gallant allies will not be obtunded by the mirage of contingent reasons of expediency.
Man’s mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true of the soul of a nation.
At this point, a committee appointed by the U.S. Government entered, and the following additional address was made.
The VICE PRESIDENT. Senators, distinguished guests, Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Generalissimo of the armies of China, will now address you.
Mr. President, Members of the Senate of the United States, ladies and gentlemen, I am overwhelmed by the warmth and spontaneity of the welcome of the American people, of whom you are the representatives. I did not know that I was to speak to you today at the Senate except to say, “How do you do? I am so very glad to see you,” and to bring the greetings to my people
to the people of America. However, just before coming here, the Vice President told me that he would like to have me say a few words to you.
I am not a very good extemporaneous speaker; in fact, I am no speaker at all; but I am not so very much discouraged, because a few days ago I was at Hyde Park, and went to the President’s library. Something I saw there encouraged me, and made me feel that perhaps you will not expect overmuch of me in speaking to you extemporaneously. What do you think I saw there? I saw
many things. But the one thing which interested me most of all was that in a glass case there was the first draft of tone of the President’s speeches, a second draft, and on and on up to the sixth draft. Yesterday I happened to mention this fact to the President, and told him that I was extremely glad that he had to write so many drafts when he is such a well-known and acknowledgedly fine speaker. His reply to me was that sometimes he writes 12 drafts of a speech. So, my remarks here today, being extemporaneous, I am sure you will make allowances for me.
The traditional friendship between your country and mine has a history of 160 years. I feel, and I believe that I am now the only one who feels this way, that there are a great many similarities between your people and mine, and that these similarities are the basis of our friendship.
I should like to tell you a little story which will illustrate this belief. When General Doolittle and his men went to bomb Tokyo, on their return some of your boys had to bail out in the interior of China. One of them later told me that he had to mail out of his ship. And that when he landed on Chinese soil and saw the populace running toward him, he just waved his arm and shouted the only Chinese word he knew, “Mei-kuo, Mei-kuo,” which means “America,” [Applause.] Literally translated from the Chinese it means “Beautiful country.” This boy said that our people laughed and almost hugged him, and greeted him like a long lost brother. He further told me that the thought that he had come home when he saw our people; and that was the first time he had ever been to China. [Applause.]
I came to your country as a little girl. I know your people. I have lived with them. I spent the formative years of my life amongst your people. I speak your language, not only the language of your hearts, but also your tongue. So coming here today I feel that I am also coming home. [Applause.]
I believe, however, that it is not only I who am coming home; I feel that if the Chinese people could speak to you in your own tongue, or if you could understand our tongue, they would tell you that basically and fundamentally we are fighting for the same cause [great applause]; that we have identity of ideals’ that the “four freedoms,” which your President proclaimed to the world, resound throughout our vast land as the gong of freedom, the gong of freedom of the United Nations, and the death knell of the aggressors. [Applause.]
I assure you that our people are willing and eager to cooperate with you in the realization of these ideals, because we want to see to it that they do not echo as empty phrases, but become realities for ourselves, for your children, for our children’s children, and for all mankind. [Applause.]
How are we going to realize these ideals? I think I shall tell you a little story which just came to my mind. As you know, China is a very old nation. We have a history of 5,000 years. When we were obliged to evacuate Hankow and go into the hinterland to carry on and continue our resistance against aggression, the Generalissimo and I passed one of our fronts, the Changsha front. One day we went in to the Heng-yang Mountains, where there are traces of a famous pavilion called “Rub-the-mirror” pavilion, which perhaps interest you to hear the story of that pavilion.
Two thousand years ago near that spot was an old Buddhist temple. One of the young monks went there , and all day long he sat cross-legged, with his hands clasped before him in and attitude of prayer, and murmured “Amita-Buddha! Amita-Buddha! Amita-Buddha!” He murmured and chanted day after day, because he hoped that he would acquire grace.
The Father Prior of that temple took a piece of brick and rubbed it against a stone hour after hour, day after day, and week after week. The little acolyte, being very young, sometimes cast his eyes around to see what the old Father Prior was doing. The old Father Prior just kept on this work of rubbing the brick against the stone. So one day the young acolyte said to him, “Father Prior, what are you doing day after day rubbing this brick of stone?” The Father Prior replied, “I am trying to make a mirror out of this brick.” The young acolyte said, “But it is impossible to make a mirror out of a brick, Father Prior.” “Yes,” said the Father Prior, “and it is just as impossible for you to acquire grace by doing nothing except murmur ‘Amita-Buddha’ all day long, day in and day out.” [Applause.]
So my friends, I feel that it is necessary for us not only to have ideals and to proclaim that we have them, it is necessary that we act to implement them. [Applause.] And so to you, gentlemen of the Senate, and to you ladies and gentleman in the galleries, I say that without the active help of all of us, our leaders cannot implement these ideals. It’s up to you and to me to take to heart the lesson of “Rub-the-Mirror” pavilion.
I thank you.
Normally referred to as Madame Chiang Kai-shek in the west, she was the daughter of a Chinese Methodist missionary and was a Methodist herself. Indeed, her family had opposed her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek on the basis that he was a married Buddhist, and he provided proof of his divorce and conversion to Christianity prior to the marriage. In fact, his marital history was problematic as he had two prior wives and a concubine, the latter not unusual in China at the time, prior to marrying Soong Mei-link.
The groundbreaking for the nuclear production facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee took place.
Today In Wyoming's History: February 18: 1943 Converse County woman collected furs to be used for vests for merchant marines. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society
Joseph Stalin publically announced that the Red Army's winter offensive had destroyed 102 German divisions and captured 200,000 POWs.
On the same day the Germans rounded up 1,200 Jews in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and deported them to concentration camps. As German fortunes faded, it's already murderous treatment of the Jews hardened into a campaign of absolute extermination.
Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, age 55, died of starvation in a Soviet labor camp, his crime being that of so many other Russians of simply falling out of favor with Stalin, but dressed as espionage.
He was a late Stalin victim, having only been arrested in August 1940.
News broke on the just held Casablanca Conference.
I earlier posted this item regarding certain people who profess to be Christians who are sitting in our legislature:
Lex Anteinternet: Hypocrisy?: Hypocrisy? Or just not really thinking things through? As noted here before, although it might not always be very obvious, I'm conservat...
I addressed in that, the bill to extend Medicaid, noting:
Now, I learn from the Casper Star Tribune, that Ms. Ward stated the following:
“Arguing that if you’re pro-life you have to be for the expansion of entitlement programs does not follow,” Ward said. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”
Yes, Ms. Ward, you are your brother's keeper. That was the very point, and to a significant degree, of the entire Christian Gospel. And in terms of the Torah, that was actually the point of the lesson. Cain was Able's keeper. That was his obligation, not merely not killing him.
If you cannot grasp that, you've missed the message of the New Testament. If you cannot be your brother's keeper, at least on occasion, you're claiming a crown that may well be beyond your grasp, if that is truly what you believe.1
Truly, this is such a shocking position, that a person would have to be either blisteringly ignorant of the entire point of Christianity, or such a flaming Calvinist that even John Calvin would find your position abhorrent.
Appalling.
And a calling to repent.
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’
He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’
And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Matthew, Chapter 25.
Footnotes
1. Indeed, there has been in recent years a Catholic Bishop, perhaps still living, who took his obligation to the poor so seriously that he always carried money so as to give to every beggar. When asked why, he replied "How am I to know which one is not Christ?", recalling the Gospel line that Christ would recall that whenever you gave to the least, you gave to him.
Attila Peschauer, Hungarian Olympic fencer and gold medalist in 1928 and 1932, is commonly thought to have died in the Davidovka concentration camp in Ukraine where Hungarian Jews had been deported by Nazi Germany, an act which required cooperation of Hungary.
It's commonly misunderstood by those in the West that all the victims of the Holocaust were gassed in camps, which is far from true, and in the few camps whose names are in common circulation in the West. In reality, bullets and starvation were the most common means of death and most of the killing took place in the Poland, Ukraine and Belorussia in those areas where they were occupied by the Germans.
While, as noted, it's been commonly thought that Peschauer died in a concentration camp, and may even have been ordered into execution by a fellow Hungarian serving the Germans, some recent information is that he actually died in a Soviet POW camp. The irony here would be that Hungary was a German ally during World War Two. This might actually be more likely as while Hungary was repressive towards its Jewish citizens, it didn't deport those who actually held Hungarian citizenship, that being done to Jews who lived in areas that Hungary took in after it invaded the Soviet Union.
By this point in the war, it should be noted, countries like the Kingdom of Hungary should have been seriously reconsidering their role in the war as, at least to an astute advisor, there was no way for them to come out on the winning side. Of course, they were also captive to their earlier decision to side with the Germans.
The Luftwaffe bombed the Sandhurst Road School in a daytime raid of the London suburb of Catford, killing 41 school children. By this point in the war, Luftwaffe raids over the UK were increasingly rare. Six teachers were also killed. Eleven of the German aircraft were downed by Typhoons.
The Red Army continued to advance, with the New York Daily Post noting that the Germans were now back on their 1941 line as a result. The British took Homs and Tarhuna in Libya. The Germans advanced in Tunisia. Chile broke diplomatic relations off with Germany, Italy and Japan.
His religion was noted in our earlier entry, but this does make for an interesting topic.
Prejudice against Catholicism was intense for much of American history, and indeed it remained so at least up until the post World War Two era. The Oval Office was effectively barred to Catholics for that reason, but interestingly the United States Supreme Court was not.
Just Roger B. Taney was the first Catholic appointed to the Supreme Court, with that appointment coming in 1836 via President Andrew Jackson's nomination. Taney would serve all the way until 1864, when he passed away in office. Taney is unfortunately remembered today for being the author of the Dred Scott decision, not a good way to be recalled, and he interestingly died during the Civil War. Somewhat ironically, the next Catholic justice, Edward Douglass White, served in the Confederate forces during the war. Since White's appointment, there's never been an occasion when there wasn't at least one Catholic on the bench.
Theoretically, there's been a total of fifteen Catholic justices, including the six currently serving on the bench. Having said that, Justice Sotomayor is not an observant Catholic. Justice Thomas is a Catholic "revert", having been an Episcopalian at the time of his appointment.
Catholicism is a large, but still a minority, religion in the United States. The impact of Catholic jurists has been noted, but not always very accurately. An interesting observation on this is that Catholics are heir to an intellectual tradition that suits legal inquiry. The same observation has been made about members of the Jewish religion, and there have been eight United States Supreme Court justices who have been Jewish over the years, a fairly substantial recognition in light of their minority status.
It's often noted that the Court today has a Catholic majority, which is true, but it's less of a majority than it might seem given Sotomayor's ambiguous status. Having said that, it'd be a bare majority even without Sotomayor. This hasn't always meant predictability, however, in spite of what critics like to assert, as Catholic justices have taken positions that are at least facially contrary to Catholicism, such as Justice Kennedy's decision in Obergefell, and certainly Sotomayor was in Dobbs.
Thirty-three Supreme Court justices have been Episcopalians, reflecting that Protestant denomination's massive standing in the United States up until the 1970s. Once the dominant Christian denomination, culturally, in North America, it's suffered a huge decline to which it's reacted by moving to the left on social issues, which has seemingly accelerated the decline. Eighteen have been Presbyterians, which likewise was a Protestant faith of wide influence for many years. Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism reflect the country's early settlement, with both being religions that hailed from Great Britain and which descend from the Church of England and the Church of Scotland respectively.
The Lutheran faith, which is widely represented in much of the United States, interestingly has contributed only two Supreme Court justices. The Baptist faith has contributed only one more than that, even though it is currently the largest Protestant denomination. Five justices have been Methodists, which make sense in that it descends also from the Church of England and once called itself the Episcopal Methodist Church.
Fifteen Justices have been non-denominational Christians whose religious affiliation is not really known, and who may have not all been dedicated in their faiths. The religious background of one Justice, James Wilson, has been debated, but it seems likely that he was a Christian of the same type that some of the founders were, who seemingly favored various Christian denominations without being clearly of any particular one.
Nine justices have been Unitarians, which is somewhat surprising.
Generally, the religious affiliation of Supreme Court justices has been nearly wholly uncontroversial, save for Catholics and Jews, both of whom continue to be subject to prejudices that date back to the country's founding and early colonial history. Prejudice against Jewish justices tends not to be openly spoken, but prejudice against Catholic justices is.
Aleksandras Stulginskis was elected President of Lithuania. He was already serving in the role. He'd serve in that role until 1926.
Stulginskis had started off with the intent of being ordained a Catholic Priest, but abandoned that pursuit in favor of agriculture. He retired from politics in 1927. In 1941, he and his wife were arrested by the Soviets, and he was held as a Soviet prisoner until 1956 when he was released following Stalin's death. He died in Kaunas in 1969 at age 84.
Aleen Cust became the first licensed female veterinary surgeon in the United Kingdom. She'd been in practice for twenty years at the time.
Three students of an adult crafts class doing steamed crayon work in making table clothes and wall hangings. Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado
The Polish Government in Exhile isued "Raczyński's Note" an official diplomatic note to the Allied governments dealing with the German extermination of the Jews. It stated:
The Germans unsuccessfully attacked Majaz al Bab in Tunisia.
The British and Canadian governments announced that they would unshackle German POWs on December 12.
What does this have to do with Wyoming? Well, arguably not much. But the story is relevant, as depicted here, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it was the first really all year around, all weather, rural highway in the United States. The trucks depicted here are travelling in conditions that would be familiar to most Wyoming drivers, but which most people avoided travelling in for the most part, for long distances anyhow, prior to World War Two.
Pat of the reason that, after the war, they would travel in conditions like this has to do with a technology depicted here which wasn't common at all prior tot he war. . . the all wheel drive. In this case, the vehicles are 6x6 2 1/2 ton military trucks, but it was the 4x4 military truck that would really cause a revolution in post war rural travel, when it put on civilian colors.
Turkey stated a demand for East Thrace, which had been ceded to Greece in 1920.
East Thrace.
This meant that Turkey was declaring that it wanted to reclaim recently lost territory, lost to Greece, across the Bosporus. This would of course give it completely control of the straits, and hence entry into the Black Sea.
Greeks had comprised about 38% of the population there before the Greco Turkish War, and Bulgarians about 4.3%. Bulgarians had been subject to a pre-war set of expulsions and violence due to the Balkan Wars that foreshadowed World War One which, at the same time, increased the Muslim population as Muslims fled into the area for refuge due to Ottoman lands being lost elsewhere. Greeks would now be subject to the coming population exchange between Turkey and Greece, which also impacted the remaining Bulgarians. In 1934 the Jewish population was expelled in the Thrace Pogroms.
Today, 15% of the Turkish population lives in the region.
Dealing with speed of a different type, motorcycle racer Billy Denham was photographed at a motorcycle race.
Denham is wearing elements of the wool U.S. Army uniform of the period, to at least the extent that he's wearing a wool service shirt. Note also that he's wearing a tie, something you wouldn't see a motorcycle racer wear now, and for good reason.
