Christmas editorials (12-25-43)

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Wilmington Morning Star (December 25, 1943)

Editorial: Christmas

Christmas, 1943, finds us deafened by the roar of cannon, the zoom of warplanes, the cries of thousands – victims of man’s inhumanity to man.

Someday the war will end; when is known only to God. But it is true; when it does cease, we will have to reappraise human values.

We will have seen and survived the assault on civilization, and material possessions in many lands swept away by the forces of evil.

What will remain are the imperishables – things of the spirit.

We will need these things as never before.

Chief among them are faith, courage, hope.

We will need them to bind up the wounds, repair the ravages of war.

We will need them to replace with love the hatreds bred of war.

We will need them to make us realize the essential oneness of humanity.

Unless we have them, we will fail the generations to come.

These things of the spirit are not to be purchased in the marts of trade. Money cannot buy them. Yet a price must be paid.

That price consists of kneeling at the crib side of an infant. It involves the abandonment of pride – the discovery of the virtue of humility and discerning the emptiness of human values, the nothingness of human plaudits.

The powerful and the great will be making merry at the fashionable inn. The humble and contrite of spirit will be at the stable. Those at the inn will be in the company of Herod, showering him with flattery to win his favor. Those in the stable will be in company with lowly shepherds, paying homage to an infant – too busy to court the patronage of Caesar – and with wise men guided by a star, not to the inn but to a manger.

Caesar and Herod are no more. The splendor they created is gone. Their thrones art overthrown. The inn is in ruins.

The infant in the manger – the Prince of Peace – still rules. The faith, the courage, the hope he brought will triumph even in this period of global combat, if we cultivate the things of the spirit.

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The Afro-American (December 25, 1943)

Editorial: Christmas, 1943

Drew Pearson’s revelation that contrary to the Allied statement there was not a full agreement at the Cairo Conference comes with the force of a bombshell exploding on this second war Christmas.

According to Mr. Pearson, Prime Minister Churchill opposed the use of Chinese troops in India to reopen the Burma Road. Indian troops are unwilling to make the fight alone unless they are promised independence, to which Churchill cannot commit his government.

The story goes that all the other Allies, Russia, China, and the United States, were agreed, except Britain, and the result was the first serious break between President Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister.

One of the immediate results of the rupture, according to Mr. Pearson, is that the U.S. Chief of Staff, Gen. George Marshall, is to remain at home and a British general will be chosen to lead the Allied invasion of the European continent.

If the Pearson story is correct, we haven’t gotten to the place in the fighting where we can see a victory crowned with a people’s peace – a peace in which the world’s exploited populations in Asia and Europe are to have a chance to develop self-government and freedom.

What we are fighting for abroad, if the British government has its way, is the same old imperialism in which the weak are enslaved to support the strong in wealth and power – a new alignment of nations in which the territories of Japan and Germany are taken away from them and parceled out to new masters of which the chief shall be Britain.

If that is the new peace on earth we fight for, it is not worth our participation and sacrifice.

But the mention of it today is important because it represents abroad a feeling which is shared by many at home with respect to our own domestic problems.

We have in America a great crowd of stand-patters who oppose any gains for the common people at home after this war. They demand segregation as usual and certain jobs and services to be labeled “for whites only.” The ballot in the South is to be reserved for certain people. They flag of the nation is to be supported by a streamer reading “white supremacy.”

There are the selfish, greedy interests at home and abroad who say to the 1943 Christmas spirit – “Come back this time next year, I may have some business for you.” But they lie. They have no earnest desire and longing for peace and good will to all men, and they must be destroyed utterly.

The will of the people of earth is for a peace and a victory for all men. The angels’ song echoing over the centuries cannot be drowned out, it is the chant of hundreds of millions. It must not be delayed or postponed. It cannot be stopped.

It is the world’s Christmas spirit, and it will prevail.

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These words and their sentiment are as true today as it was in 1943. The enemy of the people are different but their motives remain the same……the thirst for power and money and control over all of us. They fail to see that their war is lost. There is only one God who reigns.

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