April 8: ON THIS DAY in 1943, army rejects mayor

April 8, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle

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ON THIS DAY IN 1865, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “There is little added today to the war news upon which our comments upon the military situation, yesterday, were based. As we supposed, the reported surrender of Lee’s army was premature, and was contradicted later in the day. The more demoralized Lee’s army is, the less will be the chance of a general surrender. There is every reason to believe that Lee’s army has fought its last battle. There is no resting place for it. Today it is announced that Hancock is moving up the valley of the Shenandoah, on Lynchburg. Stoneman is advancing from another direction on the same point. Sheridan will be able to prevent a retreat on Danville. From Sherman we have no news, but it is not to be assumed that he is inactive. The Confederacy is now a thing of history.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1877, an Eagle music review stated, “Some two thousand [people] last Thursday evening attended the performance of Wagner’s ‘Die Walkure.’ As a matter of fact, apart from the pretense of appreciating the latest novelty, what did they think of it? Granted that Mr. Fryer’s troupe of singers sang it remarkably well, as we believe they did, and that with a few allowances it was as true an interpretation of Wagner’s idea as we can hope for in this country, was it not, frankly speaking, a bore? How many of those who were present found any real enjoyment in it? How many of them understood the composer’s thought through it? What did those crashes of brass instruments and dim discords of a full orchestra mean? What thoughts did they suggest? Is it not true, if our readers merely ponder the matter and confess it to themselves, that the music of the future was a chaotic, unintelligible, deafening jargon utterly beyond their comprehension?”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1919, an Eagle editorial stated, “The death of Frank W. Woolworth at his home in Glen Cove this morning removes one of the great merchants of his time. Mr. Woolworth’s greatness lay in the fact that he had a vision and stuck to it until he had realized it and had built from its profits the most beautiful business building in America. Dr. Cadman has called the Woolworth Building ‘the cathedral of commerce.’ To the building of a cathedral went the labor of many hundreds of men. To this ‘cathedral of commerce’ went the contributions of many millions of men and women, collected in dimes and nickels all over this country and England. Mr. Woolworth had his vision of the power of those small coins when he was a clerk in a country store which ran a five-cent counter to dispose of shop-worn goods. Forty years ago he tried out his idea in a small way in a store of his own and found it so profitable that he began to establish branches, until today there are a thousand of these stores in this country and Canada and sixty-five of them in England, while the stock of the company represents $65,000,000. Never was there so triumphant a demonstration of the old English proverb about the superiority of the nimble sixpence to the slow shilling.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1943, the Eagle reported, “Washington, April 8 (U.P.) – Secretary of War Stimson said today that the plan for commissioning Mayor LaGuardia of New York in the army had been abandoned, at least for the present. LaGuardia offered his services to the War Department Tuesday, Stimson told a press conference, but after some discussion it was decided that LaGuardia could be most useful at this time by continuing as mayor … Stimson said, ‘It is my view that he is rendering to that city [New York] and indirectly to the entire nation an example of such usefulness it would be difficult to find now any place for him in the army where he could be equally useful. After talking it over, we left the matter open for the present, the mayor assuring me he would always be available for service.’”