Indianapolis Times, Volume 41, Number 171, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 November 1929 — Page 4

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A Continuous Burden Announcement that the state highway commission will add 2,000 miles to the state road system is fine. But the announcement also means that each and every year there will be an added burden for the care and maintenance of roads and that little has been done toward obtaining a permanent type of road that will, at some future time, relieve the citizens of the costly burden. The condition of many roads during the past summer, with detours in such condition as to cost the owners of automobiles hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs, is ample proof of the transient type of the roads that are being built. Avery few years see the finish of the ordinary road and after that comes anew bill for repairs, a bill paid by gasoline tax that is as much a tax as though paid through the office of the treasurer. The people are now'paying approximately twenty millions of dollars each year for good roads. These roads are more than desirable. They are economical when the saving in the life of the ordinary car is considered. But there should be a time when this burden can be lifted and the present commission has apparently neither the vision nor the desire to tackle this part of the problem. This is shown by the nonchalance with which it purchases a few millions of dollars’ worth of cement each year and is compelled by public sentiment or fears to hand the contracts to the lowest bidders. Perhaps the cement road is the answer. If it is the answer, then the state, if it is to be a continual-purchaser, should manufacture its own cement. The state has the raw materials. It has, may it be suggested, the labor in the shape of a continually increasing number of idle prisoners in the state prisons. The saving of a million dollars or more each year by state owned and state manufactured cement for state highways would do something to relieve the taxation burdens against which the farmers of the state are protestting so vigorously. It may be too much to ask of state commissions that are more powerful than all the rest of the state government and with more money to spend than all the rest of the state officials. But some day there may come a commission with enough courage to recognize the fact that the way to increase prosperity is to place as small a tax as possible on industry and enterprise. One way of doing it is to put that twenty millions of road money into a permanent form and spend it with as much care as the seasonal workers spends his meager wages.

Shadow-Boxing With Religious Ghosts Some years ago a distinguished professor at Columbia university defined a theologian as a “blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.’’ This Is doubtless an over-harsh estimate of theology and its place in religious life. Theology, as man's intellectual interpretation of the nature and meaning of religious experience and activity, has a permanent and enduring place in religion, even though its province may be handed over more and more to social scientists. But squabbles over relatively petty matters of belief and ritual inevitably bring religion into disrepute with up-to-date minds. Moreover, they dissipate the energy which churchmen should be devoting to advancing the cause of justice, truth, beauty and happiness in the every-day life of man. Such is the underlying issue brought to the fore in the current quarrel between Bishop Manning and the participants in the New York meeting of the Christian Unity League. Coming together to promote accord among Protestant Christians, they provoked vivid dissension over delicate technicalities in the administration of the communion service. Many friends of a dynamic social religion will wonder why church leaders today are greatly concerned with respect to communion rites. A generation ago Dr. Hatch and others pointed out the derivation of the rites of communion and the mass from the Greek mystery religions. At the same time, Conybeare. Shotwell and Goetz were demonstrating that St. Paul instituted the sacrament of the mass to compete successfully with the Greek cults among which he was proselyting. Percy Gardner. Alfred Loisy, Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, and others have made it clear that we must seek the origins and meaning of the sacraments, including the mass and the Protestant communion service, in anthropology rather than through a study of formal systematic theology. In short, in strictly contemporaneous religious discussion. a controversy over the niceties of communion ritual and etiquet is comparable to animated controversy in regard to varying interpretations of how God dictated the Bible to Moses. Yet churchmen allow themselves to be drawr. into a warm dispute over the communion service, without for a moment bringing up the crucial question of why it ghould longer be a matter of deep concern to any but a fundamentalist. v The meeting of the Unity league would have produced more confidence and interest among skeptical Dut friendly observers if the sessions had been devoted to the place and function of the church in the modern urban and industrial age. Gastonia (N. C.) as a symbol, is more cogent an issue than the Eucharist and the Protestant modification* in its celebration. Instead of battling over ritualistic communion rooted in antique beliefs, why did not the leaders carry on an earnest sociological

The Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWAKD NEWSPAPER* Owned and published dally (except Sunday) by Tbe Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos., 214-220 Went Maryland Street, Indianapolis, Ind. Price in Marlon County, 2 cent* a copy: elsewhere. 3 cents—delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week. BOYD GURLEYI I BOY W. HOWARD" FRANK G. MORRISON, Editor President Business Manager PHONE-Klley .W.l WEDNESDAY, NOV. 27. 1929. Member of United Pres, Scrlppa-Howard Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association, Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau of Circulations. *T}ive Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way’’

communion regarding thAjninimum wage, labor unionism, workmen’s compensation, crime, prison reform, world peace, the integrity of the family, contemporary esthetic problems and the like? Dr. Ainslee’/program of Christian unity Is a noble and commendable one. But why not try to promote union on the basis of conceptions of social justice which should appeal to all honest and courageous men, rather than on details of creed and ceremony, which inevitably must put the movement on the rocks of formalism and discord? Union and progress in religion are to be achieved in facing forward toward pressing human problems here and now. It can not be attained by quarreling over outgrown ritual of antique origin. Radio Irritation The National Broadcasting Company refused to put on the air the addresses by prominent preachers and others given at the mass meeting of the national birth control conference. It did so on the ground that they might be irritating to many owners of radio sets. The company stated that it declined to broadcast the speeches, “due to the controversial nature of the discussion; and due to the fact that it might tend to irritate listeners, inasmuch as the Catholic church and the Jewish religion are opposed to birth control in any form.” To deny the air to any topic merely because it is controversial and might irritate a considerable bloc of listeners is to adopt a highly dubious basis for discrimination, inconsistency and unfairness. The National Broadcasting Company allows the freest access to the air by those who present orthodox views on religion, God, salvation, sin, the Bible, modern business and the like. These are now subjects on which there are intense and honest differences of opinion, and about which there is the livest sort of current controversy. To invoke the defense of protecting radio patrons from irritation will not prove a convincing argument to many. More than 60 per cent of Americans are not active church-goers. Some of these might be irritated by radio sermons of both fundamentalist and modernist clergymen. Certainly orthodox sermons would irritate a larger group than are affiliated with the Catholic and Jewish faiths in America combined. Ex-President Clarence C. Little of the University of Michigan says: “If the birth control question is any more irritating than some fundamentalist preachers I have heard over the radio, then I don’t w T ant to think about it.” A more fundamental question is that of public education and the consideration of just who ought to listen to a controversial debate. It would appear reasonable that it is exactly those who are likely to be irritated who should be given opportunity to listen. Those who are pleased by a discussion are likely already to be converts who do not need to listen. The skillful speaker on such occasions will aim to provide a maximum of persuasive enlightenment and a minimum of provocation. Such certainly was the case with the birth control meeting in question. It was presided over by an eminent cleric and the addresses were given by famous preachers. No one asked the National Broadcasting Company to open its service to fanatical partisans of birth control. Dr. Fosdick observed at the meeting that birth control is here as much as automobiles. We can not evade or deny this fact. Hence we should be acquainted with the merits and defects of the movement. Nobody should be compelled to listen to its advocates or to believe its tenets. But all should be free to learn as much about it as they will. The radio authorities can not well take any other position, unless they desire to surrender their claim to being an instrument of public education as impartial as it is powerful.

REASON By F S K

THOUSANDS of open air impresarios are piloting the pep meetings now being held by high schools, colleges and universities, but the real cheer leader of America is Herbert Hoover as he gets the captains of business together and coaches them in the school's college prosperity yell. a a u Since the very effective use of them in the cases of ex-Secretary Fall and Mrs. Pantages, all the up-to-date f riminal lawyers of the country have added nurses and wheel chairs to their courtroom equipment. * a a a Many fine messages have hurried past the stars since the radio made the sky an international neighborhood, but the finest of them all was that message sent the other night by the 67-year-old mother of Commander Byrd, when she talked to the South Pole from the Virginia statehouse at Richmond and told her son that she prayed for him and his men every night. van GLORIA SWANSON has returned from Paris, leaving her titled mate over there. It must be a very solemn moment when the marquis reflects that the broad Atlantic surges between him and his base of supplies. a a" a Professor G. Elliott Smith of London states that ex-Preddent Coolidge was the first man in 150 years to announce that peace is the natural state of man. all of which should be very grat'fylng to the gentleman who wrote the speech for Mr. Coolidge. a a a The other day Senator Copeland of New York glanced around the chamber and said he could name the next senators who were going to die as a result of overwork, but he didn't name them, all of which is most exasperating to ambitious gentleman back home. a a a AFTER this, the Turks are going to observe Sunday instead of the Mohammendan Friday, are the mere fact that the people of the two countries are all playing golf at the same time should weave a certain bond of sympathy between Turkey and the United States. a a a If this Australian who is planning to shoot himself across the English channel in a rocket succeeds in perfecting the thing, it should give the profession of banditing even a wider popular appeal than it has at present. a a a After aspiring to rule the world, how tragic for the All Highest’’ to go into a German court, just like in ordinary human being, and sue a mere newspaper man for libel! v a a a Thousands of English puddings, liberally spiked with brandy, are being imported for Thanksgiving. Most of the customers will run the pudding through the clothes wringer and imbibe the consequences.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

M. E. Tracy SAYS: It Is Only a Blind Mistaken Faith That Rapid Transit Will Relieve the Congestion in Our Cities . REMEMBER when the “balloon ascension and parachute descent” was the big thrill at county fairs and circuses? How far away it all seems, with couples dropping half a mile to give the wedding ceremony a kick. We used to believe that human beings couldn’t fall more than a few hundred feet without losing consciousness. We would believe it still if some good sport hadn’t proved us wrong. mum Progress owes a lot to good sports. It takes nerve to try anything first, especially when everybody believes “it can’t be done.” The man who goes off into the wilderness alone deserves credit, but not so much as the man who defies mass opinion. mum Confidence in Future UNTIL recently, mass opinion was reactionary, clinging to what was old, doubting what was new. Now it seems to be going to the other extreme, looking askance at what is old, worshiping what is new. Confidence has seized upon the future, rather than the past. In these days, we look ahead, instead of backward, bet on improvements that are just around the corner, and take it for granted that our children will be better off than their grandfathers. s m m There probably is as much danger in overdoing the new viewpoint as there was in overdoing the old one. We can not afford to ignore human experience, or put too much faith in our ow T n deductions. Just because we have learned to do a certain thing doesn’t mean that ,we understand its effect. m m m Dream Fails to Be True EVER since rapid transit came into existence we have assumed that it would relieve congestion. The first street car in New York City, and in this country, for that matter, made its appearance ninetyseven years ago. Soon afterward a local paper prophesied that it would decentralize the community. “Instead of being cramped and confined to a single lot of ground and a close atmosphere in the city,” said the paper, “an acre or two will be purchased and a comfortable house built at reduced costs, a garden, orchard, dairy and other conveinences follow; and the train of railroad carriages will start from Trinity church at 3 o’clock and will carry passengers to Harlem and the intermediate stopping places, with as much facility and ease as they now are carried to Greenwich Village.” u a After being fooled for nearly a century, we persist in the blind faith that rapid transit, whether in the form of subways, or automobiles, will decentralize our towns. The more we have of it, the greater our towns grow, and the fewer people we have living in the country. Each census shows a steady drift in this direction. Not only our rural population, but our small villages are disanoearing and rapid transit is the chief cause.

Napoleon Far-Sighted THE necklace which Napoleon gave Marie Louis's on the birth of their son is exhibited by a New York jeweler. Though a curiosity in itself, it is more of a curiosity, because of the vanished glory it svmbolizes. v Not that there is any less display of jewelry than there was in Nanoleon’s time, or that the plutocrats of this age do not worship it as enthusiastically as did the aristocrats of his, but that it has become more a matter of commerce than politics, more an emblem of wealth than power. a a a With all his ambition and love of pomp, Napoleon was not blind to the advent of new forces and the dawn of anew epoch. When he sold Louisiana to the United States, he said he had something that would one day humble the pride of Great Britain. He also said that within one hundred years, Europe would become Cossack or Republican, and that China was a sleeping giant of whom those who waked her should beware. a a a Leaders Looked Ahead THE greater minds always have perceived the shadow of coming events. Indeed, that, more than anything else, perhaps, is what made them great. The leaders of today, whether in politics, trade, or finance, are those who realized what was coming, and who,made their plans, accordingly—the Rockefellers, who foresaw what oil meant; the Carnegies, who appreciated the value of steel; the Wrights, who believed that men could fly, though every one said it was impossible, and the real estate men who were not deceived as to the effect of rapid transit. What is the longest river in the world? Not counting the Missouri-Miss-issippi as one river, the Nile in Africa is the longest river in the world. Was Cuba ever owned by the United States? What is her present political status? Cuba became an island possession of the United States after the Span-ish-American war. It is now an independent republic, and a protectorate of the United States by virtue of the Platt amendment, which was a condition precedent to granting independence to the people of Cuba. The amendment is part of the organic law of Cuba. Is the famous race horse, Man O’ War still alive? m Yes. He is serving in the stud at Samuel D. Riddle’s breeding farm in Kentucky.

\ j Liiii

Paralysis Relieved After Inoculation

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygeia, the Health Magazine. THE first recognizable description of a case of general paralysis appears to have been published about 1798. In that description, the delusions of gradeum, followed by the symptoms of paralysis and complete insanity, are fully emphasized. Perhaps the two most important observations concerning this disease were those of the Englishman Mott and the Japanese investigator Noguchi, the first of whom indicated and the second of whom proved that general paralysis invariably was the result of infection of the human body by the same organism

IT SEEMS TO ME By BROUN

IT is exciting to hear that Sherlock Holmes is coming back and with him William Gillette. Indeed, these two are interwoven so closely that it is difficult to remember which is the detective and which the actor. I defy any one to think of the character created by Conan Doyle without giving him the physical appearance of Gillette. No other performer ever has made a famous fictional figure so wholly his own. And Holmes is familiar the whole world round. Surely no other character in modern fiction is known to so many millions of readers. It seems to me that critics have been a little toplofty about discussing Conan Doyle’s achievement. You seldom see his name mentioned in any discussion of the truly notable writers of our day. And yet, as a betting proposition, I would venture to wager that Sherlock Holmes will continue to be known in a day when Hardy is quite forgotten and most of Kipling a dim memory. This does not mean that Conan Doyle has written better than his contemporaries. I can think, offhand, of a dozen men who seem to me more important in the cosmic scheme. But posterity, like ourselves, may reject the good and beautiful and hold to something for the plain and simple reason that it likes it. a a a The Best THE creation of the master detective was a splendid piece of portraiture. Its chance to survive rests upon the evidence that in suite of competition, nobody ever has done a more fascinating detective. Within the last four or five years there have been no lack of mystery stories. Everybody has taken a hand in the game and Van Dine’s Philco Vance has come forth as the kingpin of investigators. Yet Philco's most magnificent efforts are as but child’s play compared to the triumphs of Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle created not only the best detective in English literature,

Questions and Answers

What is biology? The science which deals with the origin and life history of plants and animals. What people conquered Spain held it for several hundred years and gave it a splendid civilization? The Moors, conquered Spain and established a capital at Cordova which was the most magnificant city in Europe during the golden age of the Ommiad dynasty. How can one exterminate roaches? One of the most common methods is with ordinary borax (1 part of borax to 3 parts of finely pulverized chocolate), sprinkled freely about the places frequented by roaches. Or it may be mixed with any food that seems to attract the roaches. What cities in Italy were completely destroyed by a volcano? Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvious in 79 A. D.

Just a Breathing Spell

DAILY HEALTH SERVICE.

that causes one of the two great venereal diseases. General paralysis always has been considered a most serious disease, leading progressively and inevitably to death. Within recent years Waggner-Jauregg made an announcement of investigations which earned for him the Nobel prize in medicine. He had discovered that patients with general paralysis improved when they became infected with other disorders and in 1917 he inoculated some patients with malaria. The improvement in these patients was for the most part remarkable. Four of them developed complete remissions and were able to go back to work. The remaining four did not do so well. The experiments were continued

but a figure which never has been approached. The play founded on the life of the great man of Baker street has aged by now, and it never was any great shakes as drama. Still, I will not soon forget my early thrill when the lights in the gas chamber went out and Holmes tricked the villians into following the false clew of his burning cigar. Although there must be rust on it by how, I trust the play has retained some of its great vitality. William Gillette always will be for men a dashing player, even though he comes back new a man of more than 70, who has been in retirement some ten years. He was the hero of the first play I ever saw. This was not “Sherlock Holmes,” but the earlier Civil war play of Gillette’s own authorship, called "Secret Service.” a a a Modern Acting THIS must have been back in the era of the Spanish-American war, for I was a small boy at the time. More than thirty years ago, Gillette founded the school of what we call modern acting. It seems a simple conception, and yet he was the very first hereabouts to act upon it. In the so-called golden age of the American theater, it was customary for a prominent player to wait for what he called his “big scene.” Up to that time he played as if the second team were in. Once the climax of the play approached, the actor would let loose everything he had. He’d sink both teeth into the situation and worry it about, to the intense delight of the audienceWilliam Gillette realized that the chief performer might make himself

HOOSAC TUNNEL November 27 ON Nov. 27, 1873, the Hoosac tunnel, piercing a spar of the Green mountain range in Massachusetts, was completed at a cost of about $20,000,000. The tunnel is on the line of the Fitchburg railroad and passes through a southern extension of the Green mountains, known as Hoosac mountain, at an altitude of 743 feet. It is four and three-quarter miles long and was driven from the two ends and from an intermediate shaft 1,028 feet deep. Work was begun originally in 1855, and there were many delays due to lack of funds and the obstacles encountered. The tunnel proper was completed in 1873, but several additional years were consumed in the masonry work The tunnel is twenty-four feet wide in the widest part and twenty-two feet eight inches high, and carries two lines of railway track. The maximum height of the Hoosac range is 2.400 feet and is reached about a mile south of the ruunel.

not only by him, but by many for the insane throughout the world. Asa result, figures have been accumulated on thousands of cases which indicate finally that malarial treatment of general paralysis definitely increases the length of the patient’s life and in most instances produces improvement in the mental condition as well as in the physical condition. In addition to inoculating such patients with malaria, attempts have been made to control the disease by producing fever in the patient and by the injection of other organisms similar to the malarial organism. While these experiments also have been encouraging, at present most of the evidence indicates that the malarial treatment is superior to the others that have been offered.

Ideals and opinions expressed in this column are those of one of America’s most interesting writers and are presented without re-ard to their agreement or disagreement with the editorial attitude of this paper.—The Editor.

stand out from the rest by virtue of a wholly different method. He reasoned that if audiences tended to signal out the one who made the most noise, they might likewise notice the actor who made the least. Accordingly, Gillette developed his famous whispering technique. His enunciation was excellent and he never fell into the modern error of talking for the first five or six rows of the orchestra. In those days, people actually sat in the second balcony. > a a u Truly Funny I CAN add to my book list one of the funniest satires or burlesques ever written. I refer to, “Is Sex Necessary, or Why Do You Feel the Way You Do?” by James Thurber and E. B. White. At random, I quote from the Thurber-White book: “The sexual revolution began with man’s discovery that he was not attractive to woman, as such. The lion lhas his mane, the peacock his gorgeous plumage, but man found himself in a three-button sack suit.” That’s funny, and one of the reasons why it is funny is the fact that it also happens to be true. (Copyright. 1929. by The Times)

Daily Thought

O ye simple, understand wisdom; and, ye fools, be ye of understanding heart. —Proverbs 8:5. u a tt We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love. —Mrs. Jameson.

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For Tour Convenience . . . Store Open Until 4 P.- SI. Saturday!

SCIENCE By DAVID DIETZ You May Not Think So, But You Have a Real Interest in Paleontology. • PERHAPS, gentle and long-suf-fering reader, you never guessed that you had an interest in micropaleontology or igneous petrography. But if you belong to that legion known as the auto owners of America, you have such an interest just the same. For the price of gasoline is governed by the supply of oil. The supply depends upon the ability of prospectors to find new wells. And of late it has been found that micro-paleontology and ingenous petrography, despite their formidable names, are very handy in locating oil. Ten years ago the two branches of science just named were the sort sometimes called “cultural,” that is they were interesting to those who wished to study them for their own sake, but without direct application in industry. They were to be classed with the study of Greek, for example, rather than that of steam engine design. Today, as Dr. Charles N. Gould, director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey points out, the oil companies of America are combing the colleges of the nation in search of people who are expert in them. Paleontology is the study of the fossils found in the rock layers of the earth. Micro-paleontology is the study of those fossils which are so small that the microscope must be used in identifying them. t * a a Question IGNEOUS petrography is the science of identifying sand grains under a microscope. Dr. Gould explains why the identification of sand grains and microscopic fossils have become of importance to the oil industry. Expert geologists a few years ago discovered that certain types of sandstones, when occurring under certain conditions, were oil-bearing. That is why it became important to be able to recognize these types of sandstones. It becomes quite important, he points out, after a drilling operation has gone down 5,000 feet into the earth without striking oil, to determine whether drilling should be continued or not. “It is no unusual occurrence,” he says, “after a certain ledge of sandstone has been encountered, for drilling operations to stop, machinery to stand idle and workmen to loaf on the job, while a sand sample from the bottom of a 5,000-foot well is sent hundreds of miles to the laboratory where the petrographer makes his tests. “The question as to whether another SIO,OOO or $20,000 shall be spent in the deep hole, in addition to the $75,000 or SIOO,OOO already expended, frequently rests upon the determination of the particular type of sand grains under the microscope.” Microscopic fossils are studied lor the same reason. They help in identifying the various rock layers through which the drill is passing. Larger fossils can not be utilized, because they are smashed by the drill as it pounds its way down. Only those already of microscopic size escape destruction. a tt tt Boom THE result of all this, says Dr. Gould, is that these sciences are “on the boom.” “Young men and women have learned where these subjects are well taught and today the men who teach them well are overwhelmd with students,” he says. “In some of our American universities, in the departments of geology and paleontology are overcrowded, and, on account of inadequate teaching personnel and insufficient laboratory facilities, are turning away students who desire to enter.” It is interesting to note today how the oil industry is r-~’:ing use of the latest findings of science, not only in the fields of geology and chemistry, but many others as well. Among the subjects to which the industry is turning its attention is that of seismology, the study of earthquakes. Seismology has shown that earthquake waves travel with different speeds through' different types of rock formations. So here is another clew to that great mystery which concerns the oil industry—the structure of the rock layers on the earth. “Pity the poor student,” says Dr Gould in summing up the amount of knowledge which the oil industiy now demands in young geologists entering it.

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