Indianapolis Times, Volume 39, Number 278, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 March 1928 — Page 4

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4C * l PPJ - H OW A.M.O

The President Spanks Porto Rico President Ccolidge's rejection of Porto Rico’s demand to be made a “free state - ’ instead of “a mere subject colony,” constitutes one of the most remarkable state papers in annals of the White House. The island Legislature turned the petition over to Col. Lindbergh, when our "good-will ambassador” landed there a few weeks ago, with the request that he transmit it to the President. The President's reply was in the form of a letter to Horace Towner, Governor of the island. Prank almost; to the point of being brutal, the letter draws a somber picture of conditions in Porto Rico before the coming cf the Americans and, with this as his background, the President suggests that the inhabitants should be duly grateful for their vastly improved status. Quoting a native, Dr. Cayetano Coll y Teste, on local conditions in 1897 just before we went in, the President holds up the following vivid portrait as typical; “Only the laborer, the son of our fields, one of the most unfortunate beings in the world, with a pale face, bare feet, Jean body, ragged clothing, and feverish look, walks indifferently with the shadows of ignorance in his eyes, dreaming oi the cockfights, the snuffle of the cards, or the prize in the provincial lottery.” It is hardly possible, the President quotes Dr. Coll y Teste as saying, that the climate is to blame for this. Rather, it is a result of moral and physical vices prevalent in the island. A product of this environment, the man “takes up with the first woman to be found in the neighborhood and makes her his mistress, to gratify his amorous lust. In the wretched tavern the food he finds Is only the putrid salt meat, codfish filled with rotten red spots, and India rice ...” Ironically enough, the man who harvested the best coffee in the world, drove to pasture the finest cattle end worked on sugar estates, had neither meat nor bread nor sugar for himself, because local taxes and general conditions put them beyond his reach. Quoting all thus back at the Porto Rican legislators, the President reminded them that they can not dispute its accuracy, for their own economic Society of Friends of the Country voted Dr. Coll y Tests fen award for having written it. Furthermore, the President adds, black as the situation was, the tendency was not to improve, but to grow worse. However, since the United States took charge, the people have advanced tremendously in sanitation, health, economics, education, finances and in every way. So they should not complain. They ©re better off now than they ever were before. ■Every word of which, no doubt, is true. But we can not help wondering whether the President's extreme candor will do more harm than good. It is somewhat like the superintendent of an uplift institution refusing an inmate's request for a more comfortable bed by lecturing her and telling her to remember what she was before she came. People seldom like that sort of tiring. It is human nature to resent seeing themselves held up in all their unlovely nakedness for all the world to gaze upon, and, Instead of leading them to see the error of their ways, generally speaking, it fills their souls with gall. We may be wrong and we hope we are, but this, we fear, will be the most likely result of the President’s message to the Porto Ricans. Put and Take Men in the automobile business have a saying; "You get just as much car as you pay for.” The idea is that the more you put into a car, the more you get out of it. However true that may be in the automobile business, it certainly is true in the business of politics. This is becoming clearer day by day, as the Senate committee probes into campaign contributions. The average party member puts little or nothing Into his party. And that's exactly what he gets out. Not so your Dohenys, your Falks, your Ira Nelson Morrises. They put their money into their party and get something tangible in return. They understand this so well that they put their money into both parties. How Doheny and Fall contributed and what they got is now a well-known story. How Ira Nelson Morris contributed became public this week. Morris, a Democrat, contributed to the Democratic campaign fund in 1912. He was made ambassador to Sweden. Morris contributed $27,500 to the Republican campaign fund in 1921 and 1923. What he got, or expected to get in return, Is not yet known. It was only Thursday that his former Secretary revealed his impressive contribution, together with the fact that it was concealed by using a third person's name. But Morris is a meat packer as well as a diplomat and there have been many ways that a meat packer in recent years could obtain a return on a campaign contribution. Some day common or garden Democrats and Republicans will understand this process. Some day they will discover why it is that protected industries write their own tariff schedules, for instances. v Meantime, however, the rank and file of party members no doubt will continue to think they are fortunate in having benevolent gentlemen with large check books standing by to pay the party's campaign bills. When they get over this delusion, they will decide to finance their party organizations themselves and so keep the party organizations for themselves. Accidents at Home We are accustomed to think of traffic as the chief contributor to our steadily mounting total of accidental deaths in the United States. But the March issue of Public Safety, the organ of the National Safety Council, discloses that during January of this year accidents in homes caused more fatalities than cccidents on the street. In that month traffic caused 1,760 deaths. In the game period accidents in the home caused 2,020. This is rather amazing, and also disquieting. The work of safety education, apparently, has only begun. We can rely on laws to some extent to help cut down the traffic toll; for accidents in the home there is only one remedy—education. In this year’s “Miss America” contest at Atlantic City “no girls will appear clad in bathing suits,” according to the committee. But we’ve always been Wanting to see a girl appear clad in a bathing suit.

The Indianapolis Times <A SCBEPPS-HOWABD NEWSPAPER) Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos., 214-220 W. Maryland Street. Indianapolis. Ind. Price In Marion County. 2 cents—lo cents a week; elsewhere. 3 cents— l 2 cents a week. BOYD GUP LEY. ROY W. HOWARD. FRANK O. MORRISON. Editor. President. Business Manager. PHONE—MAIN 3500. SATURDAY, MARCH 17. 1928. Member of United Press. Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance. Newspaper Enterprise Association. Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau of Circulations. “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”— Dante.

The “Straits of Panama" The project to create a man-made Straits of Panama, by widening and deepening the Panama Canal, is unthinkable. The life's dream of the famous French engineer, Bunau-Varilla, whose name figures so prominently in the early chapters of this titanic enterprise, it is fortunate for us that the best engineering thought in this country still is almost unanimously against it. As desirable as a sea-level waterway undoubtedly is, in practice, at Panama, it is not only an absurdity, but an impossibility. In the first place the water levels of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans vary terrifically. The Atlantic is nearly tideless at Cristobal, the variation being about fifteen inches, whereas the Pacific has a rise and fall of about twenty feet. Supposing the "Straits of Panama" already existed. you would have a ten-foot bore of water swirling through at all hours of the day and night, as one ocean poured itself into the other. Locks at either end of the so-calied “Straits" therefore would be necessary to prevent the rush of water wrecking not only the ships attempting passage, but the canal itself. Even if the oceans were tideless, the sheer physical task of cutting a ditch, 1,000 to 2,000 feet wide at the bottom, across the loose-soiled hills of the isthmus to a depth of fifty or more feet below the level of the sea, would be too vast an undertaking even lor our miracle-working Americans. By the time it was finished, half the Republic of Panama would have been steam-shoveled into the sea. It would take from fifteen to tweny years to complete it. Meanwhile, the present canal would have to be closed. Ail revenue, amounting to some $25,000,000 a year gross, would cease, and our national defense, now dependent upon the waterway, would be at a tremendous disadvantage. Any enemy desiring our destruction would be led to choose just such a time as this to attack. The problem presented by the Chagres River, now controlled by the formation of Gatun Lake, a vital part of the present system, alone would be almost insurmountable. In the rainy season its wild flood, pouring into a sea-level ditch, would play Havoc with both the canal and its shipping, yet a parallel channel, big enough to drain off the river without emptying into the ship canal, would make the cost prohibitive.' Lastly, if the idea of closing the Central American isthmus to our navy for twenty years were not in itself unthinkable—as it is—the final cost of a man-made Straits of Panama would at least equal, if not surpass, the cost of cutting the proposed across Nicaragua, a more practicable and a better proposition from every point of view. The Nicaraguan canal would shorten the distance by sea between our east and west coasts b;* some 800 miles. It would stimulate water-borne shipping and lower freight costs. And, at the same time, it would add a much-needed second string to bow of our national defense. TTiese are but the highlights of our isthmian canal problem, about which the public is destined to hear a great deal in the future. For the world is moving at a tremendous clip nowadays and, almost before we are aware of it, we’ll have to decide one way or another—between one enlarged canal, or two. Well, now that the campaigns are under way, isn’t It remarkable how many candidates are agreed that the laws should be enforced while they are on the books? Speaking of proverbs, the New Yorkers probably are saying it these days: “Oily to bed and oily to rise, makes national committees healthy and wealthy and wise.” A scientist now discovers a sixth vitamin. This matter of health Is getting to be rather a complicated affair.

You Never Are at Rest BY DAVID DIETZ

Scripps-Howard Science Editor WE will assume that you just have finished your dinner and have settled down in your favorite easy chair by the living room tabic to read The Times. We are going to ask you to take out your watch and count the seconds. Tick-tick, a second has passed. You are perfectly at rest, you think. But let us see if you are. • Your heart is not at rest. It is busy pumping the blood through your arteries. Your lungs are not at rest. They are busy drawing in the oxygen without which life is not possible. You hear the ticks of your watch. That is because sound waves set up by the watch have struck your eardrums and set them in vibration. Those vibrations are carried by the nerves of your head to your brain, where they are interpreted as sounds. Light waves, traveling with a speed of 186,000 miles a second are entering your eyes. That is why you are able to read what is written here. Your body, like all other physical things, is made up of molecules. These tiny particles are in continuous vibration. Molecules in their turn are made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of electrons, which whirl In orbits at a speed of more than 50.000 miles a second. But you will say that these things are all internal and that externally you are at rest. Let us see. The earth is rotating on its axis. That means you are being whirled around on the surface of a sphere 8,000 miles in diameter. The earth is revolving around the sun with a speed of eighteen and one-half miles a second. Ticktick. In that second you moved eighteen and onehalf miles around the sun. The sun itself is dashing through space with a speed of 200 miles a second. The earth and other planets are, of course, carried along with the sun. Tick-tick. In that second you have moved 200 miles through space. The sun is moving through space in the general direction of the constellation known as Draco, or the Dragon, .a constellation not far from the Great Dipper. Each second we are 200 miles nearer that constellation. That is something for you to think about as you sit in your favorite easy chair—“at rest.” A daily science column by Dietz will be published on The Times editorial page starting Monday. In it he will discuss some of the problems and wonders of science which he has brought up in the foregoing article. Dietz writes of science in an accurate but popular fashion. You will enjoy his column.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

M. E. TRACY SAYS: “While Prohibition Sentiment Has Changed to a Marked Degree, Especially in the Large Cities, It Will Have to Change a Great Deal More to Put the Modificationists in a, Majority West of the Hudson River”

Senator Borah launches a singlehanded campaign to pay back the $160,000 which Harry F. Sinclair “contributed” to the Republican party and thus wipe out what he considers an “obligation of same.” Because they find it well nigh impossible to believe that a man ever does anything just because it Is right, politicians are speculating as io whether Senator Borah is trying io save his party or become a candidate for the presidential nomination. This is a dirty, unmerited reflection on Senator Borah’s character and career. No one who knows him will believe that he was inspired by anything worse than quick-tem-pered impulsiveness. The move may be quixotic and may force him into the embarrassing position of having delegates thrust upon him. but cutside of that it is too typical of the man’s nature to be regarded otherwise than as a boil-over of righteous indignation. bub Boralvs Boil-Overs The trouble with such boil-overs is that they are generally not so effective as harder headed methods. About the best they can do is clear the conscience of those who feel they have been hurt by another’s sin. Desirable as this may be. it hardly serves the ends of practical justice. As Senator Couzen’s pertinently asks. “What good would it do to give the thief back his money?” B a it • Clean Up the Party No matter how much money penitent Republicans may give to pay off Sinclair, they will not make the record clean until, or unless they put him and some other people behind the bars. Senator Borah may be honest and high-minded, but Senator Couzens is right. an n A Texas Monkey Wrench Just to show that the Republicans have no monopoly on monkey wrenches, Governor Dan Moody of Texas shies one into the Democratic lineup. “If I had the power to tell the Texas delegates what attitude they should take toward the various candidates for the nomination.” he declared at the Jackson day dinner in Dallas, “I would say that they should use their utmost endeavor to bring about the nomination of a man competent to be President, and who is in favor of prohibition and its enforcement.” There can be no misunderstanding of what he meant. The Governor of Texas has decided to throw' his influence against the nomination of any .candidate opposed to the Eighteenth Amendment or the Volstead act. In so far as he can control the situation. Smith, Reed or Ritchie will get no votes from Texas. B B B Dan Moody's Stand Admitting that much, the question still remains as to how far Governor Moody can control the situation. His youth and spectacular rise have made him a much talked about man. He has been mentioned on several occasions as a possible candidate for the vice presidency. Certain Smith supporters have let it be known that they would consider it very desirable to have him as a running mate with the idea of placating prohibition Democrats. All that, however, does not prove his ability to determine what kind of a delegation Texas will pick or for whom it will vote. B B B Great Dry Majority The significance of Governor Moody's statement lies in the fact that it will be quite as effective in rousing prohibition sentiment throughout the south and west as in guiding the politicians of Texas. Those who labor under the illusion that there is not plenty of such sentiment to be roused merely fool themselves. I say this as a matter of observation, not preference. I happen to be one of those who believe the Volstead Act should and will be modified, but I refuse to let this belief cloud my judgment. While sentiment has changed to a marked degree, especially in the large cities, it will have to change a great deal more to put the modificationists in a majority west of the Hudson River. BUB Nose Count at Houston Those who think that Governor Smith of New York, or any other man generally regarded as opposed to prohibition can obtain the Democratic presidential nomination without soft pedaling the issue until it practically ceases to be an issue, so far as the Democratic party is concerned, are too optimistic for their own good. It is not a question of what you and I prefer, but of counting noses at Houston, and some folks are going to be surprised at the number of noses blowing dry even though they look red. What is the southernmost point in the United States proper? Key West, Fla. Has the Passion Play at Oberammergau ever been filmed? It has never been filmed. TV* Passion Players have been offered large sums for a film production, but they have refused to permit it because the play is a religious observance, started centuries ago as a thank offering for lifting the plague whicn ravaged their village. It will be produced again in 1930.

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Heloise Learns of Abelard ’s Death

TO her master, nay father, to her husband, nay brother; his hand-maid, nay daughter, his spouse, nay sister; to Abelard, Heloise: Your letter written to a friend for his comfort, beloved, was lately brought to me by chance. . . . Which things I deem that no one can read or hear with dry eyes, for they renewed in fuller measure my griefs; . . . and every day our trembling hearts and throbbing bosoms await the latest rumor of thy death. And so His name Who still protects thee in a certain measure for Himself, in the name cf Christ, as his hand-maids and thine, we beseech thee to inform us by frequent letters of those shipwrecks in which thou still art tossed, that thou mayest have us at least, who alone have remained to thee, as partners in thy grief cf joy . . . For who among kings or philosophers could equal thee in fame? What kingdom or city or village did not bum to see thee? Who. I ask. did not hasten to gaze upon thee when thou appearest in public, nor on thy departure with straining neck and fixed eyes follow thee? What wife, what maiden did not yearn for thee in thine absence, nor burn in thy presence? What queen or powerful lady did not envy me my joys and my bed? . . . Tell me one thing only, if thou canst, why, after our conversion (to the monastic and conventional life*, which thou alone didst decree, I am fallen into such neglect and oblivion with thee that T am neither refreshed by thy speech and presence, nor comforted by a letter in thine absence? Tell me one thing only, if thou canst, or let me tell thee what I feel, nay what all suspect. Concupisence joined thee to me rather than affection, the ardor of desire rather than of love. When, therefore, what thou desiredst ceased, all that thou hadst exhibited at the same time failed. This, most beloved, is not mine only, but the conjecture of all. not peculiar, but common, not private, but public. Would that it seemed thus to me only, and thy love found others to excuse it, by whom my grief might be a little quieted. Give thy attention, I beseech thee, to what I demand . . . while I am cheated of thy presence, at least by written words, whereof thou hast an abundance, present the sweetness of thine image . . . Farewell, my all. His reply is almost cold; emasculation had unmanned him, taking both his love and his bravery away; misfortune had broken him into a man trembling at the repeated blows of life, thinking now only of the refuge of death and the promise of peace in another world. He addresses her in a way calculated to remind her, as gently as possible, that they are now vowed to the religious life: “Heloise, his dearly beloved sister in Christ; Abelard, her brother in the same.” He asks for her prayers, bids her comfort her own sorrow with the hope that they meet in heaven, and begs of her, when he is dead, to bury him in the oratory of rhe Paraclete. BUB THEY met once more, w'hen the Abbot Suger of Saint Denis evicted the nuns from Argenteuil on the ground that he needed the land for other purposes. Abelard, hearing of it, came down to Paris, now an 013 and weary man, and offered the nuns refuge in the Paraclete. There Heloise became Abbess; “and such grace in the eyes of men did the Lord bestow upon that, our sister, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as a sister, the laity as a mother; and all alike marveled at her piety, her prudence, and in all things the incomparable meekness of her patience.” And here she lived until she died. The last years were not so quiet

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION

Written for The Times by Will Durant

.’or Abelard. He had published two books as full of heresies as that which had been condemned at Soissons. A volume on ethics, entitled “Soito Te Ipsum” (“Know Thyself"), taught that an act is a sin only when the agent knows it to be sinful; and that therefore the killing of martyrs could not be called a sdin if the persecutors thought that they were defending their own faith from disruption. And a dialog between a Jew and a Christian failed to leave the Christian with sufficient tokens of victory in the dispute; the philosopher called the Jew Stultos and the Christian Insanos, and mourned the blind heredity of belief and the unwillingness of people to recognize the possible truth in other people's faith. What a gad-fly this restless soul must have been to his believing age! Bernard, the watch-dog. scented the wolf at the flock and called for a heresy hunt. At the Council of Sens in 1141 his agents brought charges against Abelard a second time, packed the court with trustworthy lovers of orthodoxy, refused to let Abelard speak in his own defense, but listened at length to Bernard as prosecutor, voted unanimously “Damnatr.us"—“We condemn" —and rejected his appeal to Rome. But lest Innocent 111 should take 3 sympathetic interest in the case, Bernard wrote him a pious letter describing Abelard as a crawling viper who had come out of his hole, and after having one head cut off at Soissons. after the manner of a hydra, had grown seven more. tt tt tt THE people confirmed the judgment;. without, waiting to hear Abelard’s side of it. Abelard started out from Brittany to Rome, heard that the papal sentence had been pronounced against him, re-

GROWTH 1921 $29,281,610.92 1923 $33,373,130.91 1925 $41,320,993.09 1927 $45,682,848.2$

quiring him neither to write or teach anymore, and stopped at the monastery of Cluny in Paris (now a charming museum of medieval art), there he lived less than two years; and as in his youth he had written splendid songs for Heloise, which had been sung all over, and had ltd the troubadours to number Abelard as one of them, so now he wrote Latin hymns of exquisite delicacy, surpassed only by those of Adam of St. Victor. He died in 1142, aged 63. utterly broken in body and soul. The Abbot sent the news to Heloise at the Paraclete in a letter that shows the better side of the prelates of the time. He consoled her by speaking of Abelard as the Socrates, the Plato, and the Aristotle of his time; he saw, even then, how modern thought had begun in this rebel of tiie schools; he acknowledged his greatness in the lace of a condemning Church; and he concluded with tender piety: Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united—after your tie in the flesh —by the better and stronger bond of divine love; he. with whom and under Aliom you have served the Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you. and warms in his bosom; and for the day of His coming, when shall sound tho voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from Heaven. He keeps him to you by His grace. (Copyright, 1928. by Will Durant) (To Be Continued) Does a disabled World War veteran have to pay taxes on household goods? Yes. Holders of honorable discharges are exempt only from poll and road taxes in Indiana,

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.MARCH 17,1928

BRIDGE ME ANOTHER (Copyright, 1928, bv The Ready Reference Publishing Company) BY W. W. WENTWORTH

(Abbreviations: A—are: K—kin*; Q—nnecn; J—jack; X —any card lower than JO.) 1— Partner bids no-trump. When you hold: hearts—Q J XXX; spades—K X; diamonds—X XXX; clubs—K X, what do you bid? 2 Declarer hold A J X X X: dummy Q X, How does declarer finesse? 3 When you hold six in minor suit and no re-entries, should you take out partner's no-trump? THE ANSWERS 1— Two hearts. 2 Small to Q. 3 Yes.

They Say

Wabash Plain Dealer Many organization Republican newspapers and party bosses are in a very indignant frame of mind over the entry of Secretary Hoover’s name in the Indiana presidential primary, claiming that the action of the Hoover adherents violates all political ethics and is, in fact, but little short of a political crime. Those who' are not engaged in politics as a means of livelihood fail to share the professional politicians’ viewpoint. The primary law was enacted in order that the rank and file might express their opinions of the candidates. With every aspirant barred from the primary except the self-appointed “favorite sons” of the organization in the various States, how can the primary reflect the preference of the voters? The favorite son entries arc forlorn hopes, in most instances, and the entry is not made in the hope of electing the alleged “favorite” to the presidency but to give the delegates to the organization for trading purposes in the national convention. The entry of Secretary Hoover challenges the contention that Senator Watson is the “favorite son” of Indiana Republicans. The scant margin by which the Senator was elected in the last general election also cast some doubt on his claim to being the unanimous favorite of the voters of the State, or even the voters of the Republican party. There is no harm in listening to voice of the people. Failure to do so in the past has placed the Republican organizations in Indiana in a very precarious position. If Senator Watson is as strong with the people as the organization believes, the Hoover entry can do no harm. Goshen News-Timet Watson organization against Hoover popularity will be pretty much the situation in Indiana in the torrid scrap before the primary on May 8. and very probably the organization will win the bacon, as it has many times in the past. In a Statewide organization such as the “old guard ’ has maintained in Indiana for many years, when the call comes to turn out at a primary, the members turn out, and their man wins. As the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel, one of the representative Republican papers of Northern Indiana, expresses it, the Republicans of Indiana do not want a recurrence of back room selection of a candidate for president, or the control by a “favorite son” of a number of delegates for personal advantage. North Manchester Record Governor Jackson paid North Manchester a fleeting visit recently, but he didn't bring with him a word of cheer for Dcllings stock investors in this community. He paid his respects to the college and then hurried back to Wabash, where he spoke at a banquet at the United Brethren Church. Usually when the governor of any State pays a visit to a community it is a gala event. But then there arc governors and governors.