LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,755
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
("Scribner's Commentator" was the most notoriously pro-Fascist mainstream magazine of the prewar period -- it had nothing to do with the original Scribner's Magazine, nor with the Scribner publishing house, but merely appropriated the name of the original Scribner's when that magazine folded in 1939. Its editorial policy took a sudden hard-right shift in the summer of 1940, and from then on It was the home base of America's number one "intellectual Fascist" Lawrence Dennis, along with Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Gen. Robert Wood, and others along that line. "The Living Age" was an aggregation magazine, pulling its content from other publications, all of which, after 1938, seemed to display a certain ambivalence toward Japan's adventures in the Far East. The "North American Review" was the oldest American literary magazine then published, dating back to 1815, but it suspended in 1940 when its Japanese/Fascist allegiance became a bit too obvious.)
A report by the semi-official Chinese Central News Agency said today that at least 21,000 young Chinese men and women were massacred by the retreating Japanese in Chekiang and Kiangsi Provinces. The reports stated that cities in the two provinces from which the Japanese have withdrawn have been left "heaped with corpses," and the Japanese are said to have burned the cities and surrounding villages, leaving hundreds of thousands of people along the Chekiang and Kiangsi Raliroad without homes. Most of the victims were under 25 years of age. This is the second massacre of Chinese by Japanese troops to take place this summer, with 600 Chinese children having been killed in July in the city of Kinhwa.
New Nazi brutalities against Jews in France are reported today, with details emerging of a "virtual pogrom" beginning on Bastille Day, during which approximately 25,000 Jews were herded at gunpoint into Prince Park and the Velodrome D'Nivier Sport Center to be processed prior to deportation to occupied Eastern territories for use as slave labor. Men, women, and children were reported to have been rounded up by brutal Nazi guards. The removal of all Jewish patients from Rothschild Hospital is reported to have been personally led by a Gestapo officer cracking a whip.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian Government in Exile reports that Czechs and Serbs have been added to the thousands of Russians, Poles, Danes, and Dutch shipped to occupied Norway by the Nazis for use as slave labor in the construction of defenses against a possible United Nations invasion. Most of those laborers are believed to be prisoners of war, forced into labor gangs, starved and flogged by brutal German guards.
Yugoslav partisans are reported to be advancing on the Bosnian city of Jajce along the Vrabas River, after smashing counter-attacks by Croat Ustasni troops launched from the north. It is also reported that Croat guerillas who have rebelled against the ruling Nazi puppet government in Croatia set fire to crops in the fields of Zmun, all of which had been earmarked for shipment to Germany. These same guerillas are reported to have seized arms and ammunition stored in the town of Pisarovina.
"But only as a sideline of beauty." Ah, the tourist business.
Landlords who have chafed at the cost of civilian defense equipment now required by law in all buildings can look forward to a reduction in the cost of the most expensive item on the list. The price of stirrup pumps is expected to fall to $5.50 or even $4 per unit, from a high of $8.98 following a shipment of 50,000 to 100,000 pumps expected to reach the city within the next two weeks. In the meantime, Acting Fire Lieutenant Charles E. Wagner indicated that, although all owners of one and two-family dwellings are required by law to obtain the required firefighting equipment by October 1st, the pump shortage will be taken under consideration in enforcing that law. In all cases, however, buildings will be required to possess and maintain snow or coal shovels and sand buckets for dealing with incendiary bombs, and that the sand will be required to be kept dry.
Old Timer John F. Pfalzgraff remembers the heyday of the Old Time Barber Shop, long before the invention of the safety razor, when most men shaved every other day and the shops were always busy, with the customers reading the Police Gazette and exchanging neighborhood gossip as they waited for their favorite barber to serve them. Every shop displayed a shelf of personal shaving mugs, monogrammed with the initials of its owner, and the more fastidious patrons also had their own combs and hairbrushes.
("'At game yest'day was t'bunk," growls Joe, as he and Sally pause on their way into the Newark Eagles-Homestead Grays doubleheader at Ebbets Field to sign the "End Jim Crow In Baseball" petition. "I bet if we had some'a t'ese guys here, we'd a' won it." "If Joe Louis c'n be t' Champ, an'nat Jesse Owens c'n be inna 'Lympics," declares Sally, "I don' see why t'ese guys can't play inna Majeh Leagues." "Yeah," agrees Joe. "I mean, lookit us. Who eveh hoida a Lit'uanian an' a Irish gettin' along? But we do it! No reason diff'nt kinds a bawlplayehs can't. It's whatcha cawl ya Awl-American melted pot!" "I bet t'is Gibson," growls Sally, "don' strike out witta bases loaded!")
Production of cola drinks and other beverages containing caffeine will be regulated by the War Production Board, with that drug and theobromine both placed under strict allocation controls as of October 1st. The controls are expected to reduce the quantities of those substances available for beverage manufacture, but, it is stressed, the impact "will not be felt heavily at first."
(BOBO NEWSOM! BOBO NEWSOM! BOBO NEWSOM!)
(Cowboys are such romantic fellows.)
("Yep, I bought it secondhand from some guy called Tiger Lilly.")
(NOW JUST A MINUTE. "Private Lives" is pre-empted this week by a Pepsi ad? Gotta get those sales up before the caffeine rationing starts!)
(Mr. Bushmiller really misses the World's Fair.)
(Never mind the white lard, I think Bill's been eating white lead. And meanwhile, "It's foolproof, Mr. Dunn! I bought the formula from some stringbean-looking character named Bungle, who said he had to leave town in a hurry. IT CAN'T MISS!")
(Mmmmm, sure is a good thing we have modern toothpaste made from soap, precipitated chalk, and potassium chlorate!)
