Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 271, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 March 1934 — Page 17

Second Section

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun THE advertisement of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce seemed very impressive to me as I read it in the newspapers and heard it over the air. But the impression which it created ■warred with the suggestion which it sought to convey to “employes of the automobile industry.’ I mean that I came away with a sense of the compact, well-organized power of the various motor companies. Here were regiments, brigades, divisions,

indeed an entire army corps. Almost I could see the huge expanse of factories and the ingenious regimentation of men and machines by which the miracles of modem production are achieved. Almost in every sentence there rang the beat of the same refrain: “We are power; we are might; we are organization.” But, strangely enough, the moral” which the manufacturers sought to convey was: “Remain weak; strip yourself of power; do not organize.” It was a little as if a driver of a-fast motor bus upon meeting a stage coach would cry out to the restive passengers in the

Jfpj-wood Broun

latter vehicle: “You don’t mean to say that you are thinking of abandoning the merit system?” tt a a A Little Off Key IT seems to me that there was a distinct giveaway in the first two paragraphs of the motor ma*ufacturers’ manifesto. It, read: “This is what is happening; “The American Federation of Labor and other outside unions are trying to force you to join their union and to pay dues to support professional labor leaders.” A famous Chicago newspaper owner once said: “I hate labor unions. I can t abide by ’em. And if I ■were a worker I would most certainly join one.” Suppose, for the sake of fantasy, Mr. Automobile Executive, that you were an employe in one of your own plants. Where would you look for leadership? The manifesto says “professional labor leaders” as if that phrase were in some way sinister. But a worker would be a fool to put his trust in a semiprofessional labor leader and even more foolish to enlist under the guidance of an amateur. tt tt tt For More Professionals INDEED, the chief complaint to be made against the American Federation of Labor is that its officers are not sufficiently professionalized. They are insufficiently skilled in the technique of organization and strike strategy. There is need for more labor colleges in which specialists could be trained. Then it would be possible for the employes in any industry to call upon these “outsiders” for counsel in time of crisis. * I have always been irritated at this puffed-up indignation which employers manifest whenever they speak of “outside agitators” or “outside unions” or just “outsiders.” What is so reprehensible about an “outsider?’ To take a simple instance, Yale would not have an outsider as football coach. Princeton would. Princeton has the victories and Yale has the simplicity. If the model of any famous make of car scored a great lack of success in any season the board of directors would meet and there would be talk of just what, was amiss. At this point some director might arise and say: “I happen to know that we can get Skimpins 'who designed that swell 72) at a very reasonable figure.” The board might decide to hire Skimpins or pass him up but I doubt very much whether any director would rise from his chair and say: "What! Hire Skimpins! Do you* mean to suggest, sir, that we should bring an outsider into our plant?” tt tt tt On Seeking Outsiders NATURALLY enough, large-scale industry hires outside designers when it needs them, outside lawyers, outside advertising men. When I have a toothache I always go to an outsider. America makes many excellent cars. Take the Goofus. to invent a name at random. If I worked for Goofus, Goofus & Son I would take a certain pride in being one of the men engaged in putting together the Goofus Fluctuating Nine. But I wouldn't give a long cheer for Goofus every day, and I’m'damned if I would die for dear old Goofus. And bear this in mind,” say the automobile manufacturers in their might., majesty and power, “the automobile industry is unquestionaby leading the way back to prosperity.” If I worked for Goofus and I heard a sternvoiced gentleman telling me this through my ten-back-payments-due.radio, I rather think Id purse my lips and holler—“ Why not wait for baby?” (Copyright, 1934, by The Times)

Your Health BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

THE argument as to whether exercise is beneficial to your health might seem trite to you, yet it continues in most of the scientific publications principally because investigators only now are beginning to studv the chemical and physiological changes which occur in the body after exercise. . There seems to be no absolute evidence that physical training produces a condition of the body which helps to protect it against disease. In general, if you have had good physical training you would have a good condition of blood, a good condition of the lungs and of the breathing apparatus and you would be less likely to become fatigued than one who is not in training. There is a general belief that the hardy mountaineer. who is engaged constantly in physical activity, is more healthful than the lazy inhabitant of the tropics, who sleeps through large portions of the twenty-four hours. But we have nothing to prove that the mountaineer lives longer or in general has better health than the “lazy-bones'' who sleeps in the sun. There are too many associated factors, such as exposure to climate, different conditions of diet, and similar matters which have to be taken into account, a a a DURING the last fifty years there has developed anew attitude toward physical exercise. In previous generations, exercise was associated with moral discipline. Modern exercise is joyful, vigorous, full of spirit; it includes competition. Dlay and relaxation. Regardless of its effects on health, its effects on the mind are exceedingly useful. There is. of course, a good deal to the general impression that persons who exercise regularly are more healthful than those who do not. at least up to middle age. The general health of the body depends on a great many factors, besides exercise of the muscles. Exposure to climate, the provision of essential food substances, suitable hours of rest and mental relaxation are no doubt as important as muscular exercise. Good posture is important in relationship to health, and physical exercise certainly is. an aid to good posture. ana IF scientific study y’r ... any one thing in relationship of it establishes the fact that a fair amount.%?f regularity is important. If you exercise one a week: and then delay for two or thrpe weeks before trying again, you are not likely to get much out of your exercise. If you work all week in your office and then play thirty-six holes of golf on Sunday you may do yourself more harm than good.

Full Leased Wire Service of the tinted Press Association

THE MONUMENTS OF LITERATURE

This is the third of a series of articles touching the highlights of classical literature. It Is written exclusive.lv for Times readers to give them a comprehensive background of the masterpieces of literature. nan BY TRISTRAM COFFIN Times Staff Writer THE two lovers, Paolo and Francesca, clung together, moaning their grief as the raging hurricane whirled them about in the dismal, dark regions of the Inferno. The austere Italian poet, Dante, wached them and curiously inquired of their downfall. Giving eager eye to all the virulent tortures of hell, Dante was piloted through the Inferno by the Latin poet Vergil, Beatrice, the object of his distant adoration, and St. Bernard. However, “The Divine Comedy,” which describes this melancholy travel, was conjured out of the imagination of Dante in the late thirteenth century. Written with an almost bestial sadism, unsurpassed by Chinese tortures, this book reflects the attitude of the church at that time on sin and punishment. Written on the gates of hell were these words: “Through me men pass to city of great woe; through me men pass to endless misery; . . . Ye that pass in. all hope abandon ye.” Dante, in his description of hell, is a glorified brimstone and fire revivalist. Hell Is a long channel through the center of the earth entered by crossing a river of tears. The various sections of hell are divided by a river which winds all through the inferno to purgatory and heaven.

At the gateway are those persons who are so weak as to always be swayed by the crowd. In Limbo, are consigned the souls of those who never were baptized. The names of many great men, -Plato. Homer. Brutus and Caesar, as well as children who died before the rite could be performed, are on the lists of Limbo. Sins of love, unpremeditated passion, were punished in the second circle. In the cold, clammy mud of the third circle Cerberus, the triple-headed dog, tears apart the souls of those who have committed sins of gluttony. Those who drank and Bt,e too much in the cheerful ' banquet halls were thrown to the mercy of “Cerberus, fierce beast, like whom there is none, barks like a dog from out his triple jaws at all the tribe these waters close upon. Red glare eyes and taloned are his claws; his belly large, his beard all greased and foul.” tt tt tt ISE R Sand spendthrifts struggle vainly to push huge boulders up a steep hill in the fourth circle. Through the fifth circle runs a river of boiling tar in which the sullen angry are stuck. The river pours into the flaming city of Dis, prison of the fallen angels. The walls are whitehot iron. So fierce are the tortures that Dante and Vergil stand hesitant and afraid as the ghastly smoke curls up to them. The heretics, those who have denied their church, are captive in individual tombs heated red-hot in the sixth circle. Flakes of fire fall upon them. The capacity of pain, unlike that of human beings, is eternal in this hell. Unconsciousness or death ends pain in life, but Dante's imagination was far more cruel. As fit their crimes, sinners of violence and tyranny are plunged choking into a stream of boiling blood in the seventh circle. Plunging on into the scorching wilderness, Dante comes upon a forest. He broke a limb off a tree and a voice cried out in misery, “Why this dire mangling make?” The trees were human beings turned into wood to be clawed and tom apart by the dreaded Harpies. These persons had been involved

The Theatrical World Ruth Chatterton Shines in ‘Journal of a Crime’ - BY WALTER D. HICKMAN

NOBODY will be able to say that Ruth Chatterton is “cute” in her latest movie. In “Journal of a Crime.” Miss Chatterton no only kills her husband's mistress, but lives to suffer the agony of a guilty conscience. It is high-powered drama, mixed up with a lot of good melodrama. Don't confuse “Journal of a Crime” with the mine-run murder mysteries. This one is as different from the murder stories as night is from day. There is no mystery about who the murderer is. The spectator knows who murders the woman as he watches the husband find his wife's revolver in a bucket on the theater stage where the murder was committed. Only two people in the cast know who is guilty. They are the killer and her husband. In a dramatic scene the husband refuses to surrender his wife to the authorities, but decides to live in the same house with her and watch her break as she struggles to keep her crime secret. This is made more interesting because a man. known to police as a killer and who is wanted for the murder of a bank clerk, was in the theater and possessed a revolver at the time the actress was murdered. He is charged with both crimes —the one he was guilty of and the other for which he was innocent. Even when Miss Chatterton visited the killer in his cell, he goes “noble” and refuses to share his murder record with her. The story then takes a strange turn. For months and months the terrible secret that she was carrying with her was bringing her to the point of confession. Her husband calmly looked on and recorded his obesrvations in a diary which he called a journal of crime. * Miss Chatterton is one of the few women on the screen who can register mental grief with telling effect. She is the best in the business at that sort of a thing. As the wife. Miss Chatterton gives a performance that establishes her firmly as one of the three best leading dramatic actresses on the talking screen. Adolphe Menjou as the husband of Miss Chatterton gives a restrained but effective performance. Splendid work. The test of the acting of Miss Chatterton's is that one actually feels sorry for her because she puts her deed such a high plane—she just would not let her perfectly good husband divorce her and marry his mistress.

The Indianapolis Times

Dante Paid Back Enemies by Consigning Them to Inferno

deep in intrigue and politics. Miserable suicides were seized and bitten by fierce dogs. Were Dante's catalog of sin and punishment a true one those ruthless individuals who have defrauded people of their savings would, at their death, be subject to the dire vengeance of the ninth circle. At the pit of hell, traitors were frozen alive in the ice. Dante was exiled from his city by men whom he considered traitors; so it probably was a bit of neat satisfaction to the poet to consign his enemies to a sad end by a few strokes of the pen. a a tt T UCIFER. the arch traitor, is a ■*~ J giant not unlike those of Norse mythology. Over his frozen form Dante and his guide crawl down to the center of the earth and up to the base of Mount Purgatory. Almost every one except a few saints must travel through purgatory to wipe out earthly sins. Those who pass through purgatory are bathed in the River Lethe (forgetfulness) to wipe out the memory of the terrific torture by which they purified themselves. Thus persons who reached terrestial paradise could look down upon the misery in hell with no feeling of remorse or compassion. “Justice, is higher than love” is emphasized throughout “The Divine Comedy.” Dante prophesied the end of the world. On that occasion Christ would sit in judgment on the world. Earth and terrestial paradise would be destroyed. Those who were pure would enter into heavenly paradise, a mystic union of souls. The heavenly paradise is an idea that Dante borrowed from the deeply philosophical Orient and corresponds to Nirvana, a nebulous place so cleansed of worldly things that it is almost complete nothingness. Dante is a. composite of many ideas current in his time. Aristotle, the profound Greek thinker who might be said to have created philosophic thought in the western world, contributed his three divisions of sin to “The Divine Comedy.”

The settings are in splendid taste. Photography and sound are just- right. Now on view at the Circle. tt tt tt On View Here Today T'HE Civic Theater last night presented its next-to-the-last production of the season. “ThreeCornered Moon” has the services of many of the well-known players of this organization. The demand for seats is so heavy that the engagement has been extended through Monday night, instead of closing on Sunday night. Burton Holmes tonight at English’s will give an illustrated travel lecture as one of the offerings of the Town Hall series.. Other theaters today offer: “Sweet and Lowdown,” a big revue, on the stage and “Let’s Be Ritzy” on the screen at the Lyric; “Success at Any Price” and “Two Alone” at the Indiana; “This Side of Heaven” at Loews Palace; “David Harum” at the Apollo, and burlesque at the Mutual. EX-SOLDIER CLAIMS DOLLAR HE SPENT IN FRANCE DURING WAR By United Prat WORCESTER, Mass., March 23. —Apparently a good dollar, like a bad penny, always returns. On an A. E. F. pay day at St, Nazaire. France, late in 1918, a doughboy scrawled on dollar bill: “G. C. Lonergan. G Cos., 101st infantry. Camp No. 1. St. Nazaire, Emmet Guards) of Worcester, U. S. A.” Yesterday, fifteen and one-half years later, Ira S. Copeland of Lynn, came into possession of the bill bearing that legend. Patrolman Geoffrey C. Lonergan recalled having written on the bill. Mr. Lonergan planned to send Mr. Copeland anew dollar bill in exchange for the souvenir. I. Ur>ROFESSOR TALKS French Canadians Topic of Lecture Before City Club. “How Friendship between French Canadians and the French People Is Building Better Relations Between France and Great Britain.” was the subject of a talk by Professor Ernest J. Leveque pf Indiana university before the Alliance Francaise in the Washington last night. Professor Leveque has lived eight years among the French Canadians of Quebec.

INDIANAPOLIS, FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 1934

An artist’s conception of the raging inferno as described by the immortal Dante in his “Divine Comedy. 1 ' Piloted by the poet Virgil, Dante views the horrors of hell and philosophizes on sin and punishment.

DANTE was an admirer and pupil of St. Thomas Acquinas, the great Catholic scholar, and many of his ideas are contributed to the book. Dante also borrowed from Vergil and from mythology. The heavenly paradise is more liberal than the conception of the vengeful deity. Heavenly paradise is a oneness with God, an oblivion of self. The rampant individual was the object of much of hell’s tortures. Dante lived in the last of the Middle Ages, stern, ascetic days, and in him is culminated the philosophy of that era. Following Dante came Petrarch, who

CHICAGO U. TO HAVE UNIQUE MAP SERVICE Collection Designed to Aid Business Men and Students. By United Press CHICAGO, March 23.—Accumulation of more than 400,000 maps in a great map library, rivaling the collection of the national government and organized to serve scholars and business men of the middle west, is under way at the University ©f Chicago. Professor Wellington D. Jones of the university’s geographiy department has outlined the project, which, when completed in detail, will perform a serivee which no other American university ever has attempted. “Expansion,” Professor Jones said, will be along four lines: The collection of ‘master’ typographic maps, acquisition of large scale city maps, accumulation of hundreds of maps containing special data and the collection of historical maps.”

SIDE GLANCES

"You guys get to work. We haven’t time to discuss foreign i aft air 3,” j

revived the study of ancient Greek and unearthed valuable manuscripts that had been lost to the world. Like a flood catapulting over a dam, all the pentup liberal ideas burst forth. Art and creation of thought attained a peak of privilege that it never has seen since. Morality reversed itself. Culture reached a. fever of enthusiasm, prompted by young men’s societies. Romanticism had pressed through the barriers of strict duty and stern justice! The fury and fervor of his subject gave Dante inspiration to write a literary masterpiece that

Hi-Jinks andHi-de-ho All Around the Old Clock

BY DAVE HARRISON NEA Service Writer NEW YORK, March 23. There’s plenty of hi-jinks and hi-de-ho underneath the Harlem moon. But you can’t see Gotham’s black belt from a ringside table at the aristocratic Cotton Club. Only “dickty” Negroes go to places like that. “Dickty” and “hinkty” are synonymous for “high-hat.” Most Harlemites find their fun on the little dark side streets off Seventh and Lenox avenues. For one thing, the “o’fays,” or white folks, cramp their style. Also, few of them can afford to go to hot spots which many white people would be willing t<x patronize.

By George Clark

excelled many creations of those who followed him. Death, sin and punishment are such a mystery to man and apparently so necessary as a guide to living that “The Divine Comedy” has a timeless quality, although its ideas are plainly dated Middle Ages. It would be interesting if some one today would write a revised “Divine Comedy” placing definite tortures upon those who are a menace to modern civilization. Would John Dillinger choke in a river of boiling blood? Would heartless executives voting themselves additional salaries and pay cuts for employes be consigned to eternal torment?

FOR example, there’s the Belmont, typical of scores of allNegro night clubs. It’s a basement place with a speakeasy-style entrance, and is easier to enter if one has a Negro guide. Hats checked, 15 cents in advance. And then a long, narrow, smoke-filled room, its walls garishly painted, in the cheap Greek restaurant mode. Worn linoleum on the floor, and at the back are a few wooden booths for ladies and gemmum who wish a little privacy. A large black man at a piano supplies the music. A saffron-col-ored girl named Jean sings and dances. Her songs are ordinary popular melodies, some of them with shady lyrics. Dancing, she pulls up the hem of her modest evening gown and her long legs flash in the intricacies of a routine known only to such children of the night. Patrons at the tables along each wall sit quietly for the most part, but when Jean dances they shout, “Swing it, honey!” You can hear that exhortation wherever people dance in Harlem, “Swing it, honey! Go to town!. Swing it, now!” Thick chicken sandwiches are 20 cents. A shorty (half pint) of corn whisky costs 50 cents. Harlem apparently never has heard either of prohibition or of repeal. Bootleg com and bathtub gin remain, as always, the alcoholic staples. a m tt THREE o’clock is a little early to go to Dick Moore’s Theatrical Grill, but later every table is occupied in the stuffy little bedlam. The black belt knows Dicky as its best-dressed man. One night he’ll appear in formal fails; the next night in heavy sports tweeds from one of Fifth Avenue’s smartest importers. He’ll show you the label to prove It. Visiting celebrities supply most of the entertainment, supplemented by a four-piece band and a tall, coal-black Negro who is one of those erotic phenomena called “queens” female impersonators. This one has assumed the name of a famous white movie star, wears a wig ana an evening gown, and sings alto. Strangely there is less public lewdness, ana much less nudity, in all-Negro night clubs than in the wh,te hot-spots around the Manhattan theater district. Or at the Harlem night clubs patronized by whites. In explanation an entertainer told me: * Our people ain’t got. much self-restraint, once they gets gay, so we got to b careful.”

Second Sec Hon

Entered •* Recond-Cla-s Matter at Postoffice, Indianapolis

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler THERE is a distinct tang of politics in the at* mosphere of the national capita! just now which was not noticeable at the Lime of Mr. Roosevelt'S Inauguration just over a year ago. At the time that Mr. Roosevelt took over, things were in such a mess In Washington that the sound of a backfiie as some ancient flivver struggled down the street was enough to put people in mind of barricades and set them to wondering whether, in case of a march on the capital by a pitchfork and wagon-spoke army, the troops of the local garrison

would obey an order to let them have it. That is no exaggeration. Things were very glum and jumpy in the last hours of Mr. Hoover’s administration and labor wasn't threatening any big strikes just then because you can't quit your job if you haven’t got any job to quit. So the present irritation of the working man over such a matter as the formal recognition of his union and the return of the old political spirit among Republican statesmen might be regarded as symptoms of improvement. A year ago, after twelve years of authority, tne Repub-

lican statesmen did not have the nerve to gn around telling people that four years more of the same thing was just what the United States needed. There wasn't anybody who could offer as much as a sood excuse for the state of the country at the moment Mr. Hoover handed it over to Mr. Roosevelt on the big pine scaffold in front of the Capitol building. I was upstairs on the senate side peeling out a window with a Washington journalist the day before the inauguration, discussing the plans for the ceremony. We had to holler to maxe ourserves heard to one another above the din of the banks which were blowing up all over the country at the moment. I asked my colleague what Mr. Hoover would do after he turned the wreck over to Mr. Roosevelt, and he pointed out across the park to a long, low, green shed In the distance. a tt a *Let ’Er RolP "n° you see that big, old turtle-back building over yonder?” my friend asked. "Well, that is our Union station and just as soon as Mr. Hoover is damned good and certain that Roosevelt is it, and didn’t have his fingers crossed, he is going to tear across that park and grab the tail-board of his train and holler to the conductor to let ’er roll. Then, for a long time you will not hear anything but cheers for Mr. Roosevelt, but, as soon as things begin to get a little better, some of the boys who are being kicked out now will begin to put their heads up and blow raspberries at him.” It seems impossible to keep the citizens reminded that the statesmen of the two parties are interested exclusively in their jobs and the jobs which they can deal out to their people in return for political work. The trouble seems to be that people are incurably innocent and only occasional momenta of practical sense when they realize what the politician is and what his motives are. It depresses people to think such sordid thoughts so most of the time they select political heroes and villains who are exactly alike in all essentials. a u tt Things Are Retier I AM not naive enough to believe that the statement of the opposition who now are clamoring for a chance to save the country are inspired by motives of pure patriotism, but neither do I ascribe such motives to James Farley and his Dernocratld organization. The rise of political contention is encouraging, however, in that it suggests that things must be much better now than they were a year ago when the opposition was in such a panic over the ruin that they did not even think it was worth fighting for. Certainly, in the city of Washington, life is much improved. People are not carrying their savings in little bags around their necks under their shirts as they were in the last hours of the long Republican regime if they had been lucky enough to get to the banks in time. There is not so much back-firing in the streets as there was a year ago because there is a distinct improvement in the type of car. indicating that the citizens have been able to buy improvements. The hotels are crowded and, under repeal, the dining-room and case checks are much bigger and one hotel, alone, has put on fifty new waiters, checkers and bartenders, to say nothing of the musicians who fiddle and bleat for the cocktail trade in the afternoon. There are superficials, to be sure, but a. year ago the superficials were very grim and the banks were all sealed shut and the people had the jumps. This is no attempt to decide whether the present condition merely means that the people have been doped with a. big shot of borrowed money and will have to be doped again and again. Isn’tJt enough to feel better without developing an attack of the shakes over the possibility that pneumonia will set in tomorrow? (Copyright, 1934. by United Feature Syndicate. Ine.) 1 lj II Today's Science 11—i BY DAVID DIETZ =======——* QTAND outdoors upon a clear moonless night and gaze in silence upon the stars. Gradually, the universe will assume its true proportions for you. In the darkness, the earth will grow smaller and smaller until its seems no more than a speck of dust in the immense ocean of space. Soon you will feel the magnitude of that vast ocean in which each twinkling star is really a great sun, most of them mightier than our own. Sooner or later, in any contemplation of the heavens, the a.uestlon of life in the universe arises. Are there, out in that vast ocean of space; creatures like ourselves inhabiting globes iike our own earth? Is there any life on Venus or Mars or the other planets of our solar system? Are any of those distant stars surrounded with planets like our own sun? These are the questions which arise. There are no positive answers yet. For life as we know it, we may quickly rule out all the planets but Venus and Mars. Mercury is too hot and without atmosphere. The others are too cold and have atmosphere containing such gases as ammonia and methane, gases which would not permit life as we know it. a it tt OVER the inhabitability of Venus and Mars there is a sharp division of opinion. One group thinks the chances of life on Mars are pretty good, but the recent work of Dr. Walter S. Aaams at Mt. Wilson indicates that Mars has only about one-tenth of 1 per cent as much oxygen over each unit of surface as does the earth. His work also indicates that the amount of water vapor is slight and that night temperatures on Mars average about 40 below zero. ‘‘lt .is hardly probable that life except perhaps of the most elementary forms could exist under such extreme conditions.” he says. Venus is surrounded with heavy dense white clouds which make observation of its surface impossible. There is the possibility of favorable conditions beneath the clouds, but no one can be certain. One turns next to the rest of the galaxy What about those 100 billion stars? It seems unreasonable that in so vast a structure as the Milky Way there should be no abode of ’ife but our own little earth But at this point. Sir Arthur Eddington comes forward with a word of caution. Nature is prodigal and wasteful. Look around our earth. If all the eggs laid by the fish in the ocean hatched and all the young fish grew to maturity, in a few years the ocean would be so full of fish that there would be no room for the water.

•<£ *1 . m

Westbrook Pegler