Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 282, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 April 1934 — Page 13
Second Section
It Seems to Me By Joe Williams Pinch Hitting for Hey wood Broun THE popular theory is that the circus goes on year after year stoutly holding its clientele because on the one hand it delights the juveniles and on the other it enables the graybeards to feel frisky again. There can be little doubt that it is a gay adventure for the young, but whether it serves as an emotional shot in the arm to the oldsters is something else. On the contrary, the effect might easily be quite the opposite. What, if anything, would the average middle-aged
man do with his kidhood days if he could recapture them? I suspect that many of these raptures of which our homespun philosophers wTite so feelingly in verse and prose would lose much of their fine warmth if restored to actuality. Personally I know I would much rather swim in the tile pool at the club than go back to the days when somehow it seemed grand fun to swiggle around in the muddy river bottoms. And the few times I have been privileged to sit in a comfortable deck chair and fish in the ocean off somebody’s yacht never stirred in me a feverish yearning for
Joe Williams
those hot, stuffy Saturday afternoon treks up the bayou. Nor do I experience anything approaching nostalgia when I recall how the young lady’s dad used to stick his noggin in the parlor and grumble something about it beiftg after 9 p. m. It seems to me that the present is much better. None of the hot spots close before 3 in the morning. At any rate I mace a casual study of the reactions of the oldsters at the circus the other day, and I am compelled to report that very few of them turned outwardly and blatantly juvenile during the performance. tt tt tt Shaming Youth AND certainly none of them came skipping airily out of the place in rompers waving a red balloon and yelling, “Yo, ho. Skinny, how about a spot of run sheep run?” And probably it was just as well. The guardians of the law are none too tolerant with such cases. Were a person to let go all the way and surrender to the rejuvenating serums that supposedly accompany the sawdust ring the chances are he would be hustled off to Bellevue to be confined in the psychopathic ward with others whose hallucinations run to similar delusions. I tried to read some sort of social significance into the exhibition, but beyond the fact that everything seemed to proceed in an orderly helter-skelter manner, thus suggesting the current Washington scene, there didn’t seem to be much that you could hang a good, meaty paragraph on. In a loose, offhand way I thought I detected a parallel between the trained seals and those utility people who are on intimate terms with such statesmen as Chateaugay’s Mr. Thayer. Whenever the trainer wanted one of his seals to roll over he simply tossed him a fish, and instantly he got desirable action. As an ardent music lover I do wish, however, that the trainers would not encourage their seals to blow noises through brass horns. I do not object so much to the noises as being disagreeable, but to the serious possibility that in time seal music may become something more than a circus exhibit. It is difficult accurately to forecast musical trends, as has been demonstrated by the unexpected success of the jug-blowing school of music, which even now, in my judgment, does not compare in stateliness, beauty and feeling, with the seals, although I would rank it a note or two higher in real art than the steel saw masters. Still, a seal is a seal no matter what, and I have seen very few that I would care to bring down to the office to discuss Mozart or Debussy with Mr. Pitts Sanborn, or. for that matter, fetch up to the house to entertain the folks on a dull evening. Seals should be seen and not heard. There should be nothing compulsory' about seeing them, either. tt tt tt Animal Kingdom /"\NE of the strange things about the circus is that vy its presentation is geared so as to persuade the various animals that life is all gayety and sweetness, while the humans must be made to remember that life bristles with pitfalls, hazards and split-second escapes from death. I mean men are shot out of cannon, aerialists fly through the lofty reaches of the arena like winged creatures, an artist walks across the towering ceiling head downward, young Mr. Clyde Beatty enters an iron cage filled with snarling beasts. Everywhere is a reminder that the business of living is difficult. In the animal kingdom, if the circus thought may be accepted, this is not so. There are no worries, no dangers, no stern, demanding tomorrows. Life is a lark set to tinkling tunes, an endless frivolity wherein the fiddler never calls around for his pav. Horses waltz, elephants tango and our friends, the seals, submerge their arctic souls in dreamy sublimities. What puzzled me was that the neck-risking humans appeared to be happier in their perils than the animals in their joys. The tangoing elephant seemed to be particularly displeased. To the last wrinkle in his swaying snout there was a distinct manifestation of boredom, if not downright disgust. It was as if he were saying to himself, "This is perfectly silly. A big fat thing like me trying to dance. I must look terrible from the boxes.” At about this time a young matron whispered to her son: "Look at that clown with the bird cage hat, junior. Isn't he funny?” The young man sneered: "Aw, what's funny about him?” I felt the same way. Maybe you do get your youth back at the circus at that. (Copyright. 1934, by The Times)
Your Health J.-1 By dr. morris fishbein IN the great surgical clinics today, you will find many machines which have proved of immense importance in saving human life. First, you will see great batteries of stream sterilizers that destroy germs on bandages, linens, and instruments. Instead of depending on just one anesthetic, the modern surgeon has a choice of ether, nitrous oxide oxygen, ethylene, and other anesthetic mixtures of gasses. New types of machines have developed which arrange and mix the material accurately and supply them to the surgical patient safely and regularly. There are especially-built X-ray machines for use in the operating room. In the performance of the surgical operation, machines now are available which cut and seal the tissues of the body by use of an electric knife. There are electrically driven saws, and machines which make clips take the place of silk for stitching the skin. a a a IN the physical therapeutic departments of the hospital, more machines come to light. There are devices which provide ultra-violet rays. Other apparatus applies heat to the body, by use of electric light, by burning of carbons with reflectors, and by passing electric current through the tissues. Many hours would be required even to list devices used in the diagnosis and treatment of disease today. Their names are complicated and their uses highly technical. , The sphymograph. the polygraph, the pethysmograph. and the electrocardiograph are devices which provide records on a visible scale of changes in the pressure, the pulse, and the motions of various tissues and fluids.
Full Leaded SVlrt Serrlc# of the Tnlted Pres* Association
FRANCE FACING POLITICAL CHAOS Stavisky Scandal Follows Many Threats to Third Republic
BY MORRIS GILBERT NEA Service Staff Writer PARIS, April 5. —The French third republic was born in the flames of a capital given to the torch, to the rattle of musketry in the streets where Parisian mobs behind the barricades contested paving stone by paving stone the troops of a reactionary, king-loving army. This was sixty years ago. The Third Republic, in point of longevity and success, towered above all its predecessors since the time the tumbrils rolled in the Place de la Concorde. It saw France's colonial holdings expand so much that Napoleon at the crest of his wave could show no such territorial development. It saw France’s wealth increase enormously. It saw France return from a position of pariah among nations to power second to none in Europe.
But the Third Republic also saw tragedy, treachery. It withstood violent atacks on its sovereignty. It withstood reeking financial skullduggery of which the Stavisky scandal was the most recent unhappy example. And as Stavisky took his own life, so have the suicides of others in high places left the pages of French history blotted with blood since the last years of the nineteenth century. tt a General boulanger, most historians are now agreed, was a big fat-head on a big black horse. Boulanger was the man who, on the evening of Jan. 27, 1889, would have been able to put France— Third republic and all—into his handsomely decorated pistol holster .. . if he could have made up his mind to throw on his hat, leave Mme. Marguerite de Bonnemain upstairs alone in the restaurant Durand, walk downstairs and clatter on his horse along the rue du Faubourg St. Honore as far as the Elysees palace. Paris—France, indeed—was apparently his for the asking. The handsome, blonde-whiskered cavalryman had just been elected deputy in Paris itself, after having had numerous previous electoral successes in the provinces. A coup d'etat would have certainly succeeded if Boulanger had had the internal fortitude to make the coup. But he preferred to bask in the company of his Marguerite while his followers nervously drank champagne in an anteroom; and the hour passed. At midnight a young man in the company, who had been passionately urging his lamentable chief to snap out of it and walk down the street, glanced at his watch, thrust it back in his pocket, and murmured, "Too late! The star is fading!” It was. The strapping fathead was never a power again. Presently he had to flee from Paris. And not long afterward, an exile in the Channel islands, he shot himself to death. B tt tt Boulanger was, in his epoch, the greatest example of Lincoln’s classic aphorism about fooling all the people some of the time. He provided the first great test for the Third Republic. Caracoling up and down the Champs Elysees on his famous charger, he seemed the ideal “man on horseback” beloved by the rich in their salons, the poor in their bistros. Much more romantic and appealing a figure than a handful of unpicturesque deputies in bowler
The Theatrical World — - ‘Bible’of Film World Issued by Publishers - —BY WALTER D. HICKMAN
'T'HE "Bible” of the movie industry, “The Year Book of Motion Picpublished by the Film Daily, has just been released. The Year Book for 1935 consists of 1,056 pages and embraces every phase of the industry.
Jack Alicoate, editor of the Film Daily, has every reason to be proud of this task as the book this year is the most complete issue ever produced. In the introduction, Will Hayes states that “motion picture entertainment enters 1934 artistically greater and socially more significant than ever before. It is in the van of reviving industrial confidence. Recent milestones of its forward march have been laid in weary months of depression, code discussion, and rehabilitation.” Under the heading of ‘‘Film Facts,” the year book places the capital investment of the film industry in this country at $1,700,000.000, of which $90,000,000 is in studio property. The new attendance record in this country last year was set by Mae West in “I’m No Angel,” at the New York Paramount when the picture played to 180,000 people in its first week. The long-run and play date record for a short subject was won by “Three Little Pigs.” I suspected it. I've seen it seven different times. The Year Book states that “movie attendance in 1933 averaged about 60.000.000 weekly. There was a total of 12,574 theaters in operation on Jan. 1 of this year, which is an increase of 94 houses on Jan. 1. 1933.” The Year Book shows the result of Film Daily's annual poll of the ten best pictures of the year as voted by the movie critics. Every picture released in 1933 is listed, showing the distributor, running time, cast, director, author, and the like. The work of every player since 1932 is given, as is the title of every movie released in this country as well as the imported films. Every film exchange is listed with address and officers. The movie code is given in full. Every trade and fan publication is listed. Another important item is the listing, with capacity, of every l movie theater that was open in this country on Jan. 1 of this year. The buying guide lists everything that is needed in a movie theater. It is the most useful and comprehensive yearly film book that I ever have seen. It is a masterpiece.
The Indianapolis Times
hats, who were trying to preserve democratic institutions. The republic had been having its troubles. Ministries were extremely unstable. A disastrous war in distant Tonkin had cost huge sums and many lives. The two Bourbon pretenders and the Napoleonic one were hovering on the outskirts of power. And there was a desperate financial crisis in which the small shopkeepers, the peasants, the whole middle class suffered. George Ernest Jean Marie Boulanger suddenly appeared as a great political force in 1886. A mediocre war record failed to diminish his prestige, and he had the backing of such great folk as the Duchesse d’Uzes, who supplied millions for his campaigns. His first big job was war minister, but this came to an end when the ministry collapsed. The fact that Boulanger was then suddenly transferred from Paris to a military post far to the south was a signal for a huge public demonstration. As he drove to the Gar de Lyon, thousands of citizens gathered to cheer him. “We want Boulanger!” they yelled. He was returned to parliament in triumph. But it didn’t last long. Accepting Clemenceau’s dare to run for parliament in Paris itself, the general did and succeeded. But he couldn't bring himself to trust his own luck and on April Fool’s day, 1889, hopped the border into Belgium. The Third Republic had licked its biggest enemy to date. a o a TJANAMA was the next. Again the regime wavered, this time in the blast of a financial scandal which ate up the savings of the thrifty nation and involved between 140 and 150 politicians in accusations of corruption. Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, was the innocent scapegoat of the affair. Armed with his resplendent reputation, a company was formed to dig a big ditch across the Isthmus of Panama. And into this ditch the savings of France poured. The company, after amazing mismanagement, having spent fabulous sums in illicit commissions, bribery and other frauds, failed in 1891 for 1,250,000,000 francs. As in the recent Stavisky case, the affair threw up a parliamentary inquiry, paused for an instant with a suicide, and continued with governmental collapse. Akin to the agitation of the royalist “Action Francaise” in the Stavisky affair was the ferocious series of demonstrations by the League of
tt tt tt On View Here Today TNDIANAPOLIS theaters today offer: “Riptide,” at Loew’s Palace; George White's Scandals at the Apollo; “The Road to Ruin,” at Keith's; “Wonder Bar,” at the Circle; “Broadway Merry-Go-Round,” on the stage and “Dark Hazard” on the screen at the Lyric; “The Lost Patrol,” and “Sing and Like It,” at the Indiana, and burlesque at the Mutual.
SIDE GLANCES
S ' ' Y NtA soviet, me.
“Give him a big hand! The club isn’t pacing him any* thing for this talk.**
INDIANAPOLIS, THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1934
chief documents used against
Patriots, a reactionary organization led by Pauld Deroulede. But the disgust of the people, as also in the Stavisky case, was more than political, it was unanimous, and nation-wide. It destroyed the government in power, and again put the republic to a crucial test. Democracy was too new to be safe. And hardly had it begun to shake its head clear from this terrific hammering when it was jolted again by the most famous of all French internal struggles in re-
BRYAN STATUE READY FOR UNVEILING MAY 3 Roosevelt to Accept Memorial on Behalf of Nation. WASHINGTON, April 5.—A memorial statute of William Jennings Bryan executed by the noted sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, will be dedicated here May 3, the Bryan Memorial Association announced today. President Roosevelt is to speak and accept the memorial in behalf of the nation. Other participants in the ceremonies include Josephus Daniels, ambassador to Mexico, and president of the Bryan association. RED MEN SET MEETING Supper.. Will Be Enjoyed Saturday by Winamac Tribe. Winamac tribe, council and hayloft, Improved Order of Red Men, will hold a social evening and pitchin supper at the Red Men’s hall at 6 Saturday night.
By George Clark
cent times—the appalling Dreyfus affair. tt b it NOBODY in France cared very much, at first, about what happened to the Jewish captain in the French army who was convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans, and sentenced to Devil’s Island. Clemenceau didn’t care about Dreyfus, but did care about the fact, presently revealed, that Dreyfus hadn’t had a fair trial.
The DAILY WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen
WASHINGTON, April s.—William A. Wirt, the good doctor from Gary, in broadcasting his worries about the danger of dictatorship and revolution, may be doing the country a good turn. He is promoting a little introspection as to what has struck us since March 4 a year ago. The word “dictatorship” has an ugly connotation. It smacks of castor oil, Jew-baiting, sweaty shirts and machine-gun riddled apartment houses. Leaving these European frills out of the picture, however, there has been no disposition on the part of most men around Roosevelt—whether they be brain trusters or not—to shun the fact that we have in this country a governmental system close to a dictatorship. Call it dictatorship with a smile, dictatorship by consent, nevertheless the inescapable fact is that Roosevelt has more power over the economic fate of the 120.000,000 people in this country than any other President in peacetime history. a tt tt tt a tt CONSIDER the present structure of government. The power almost of life and death over industry—especially smaller industry rests in the hands of the President through the NRA. Similar powers—on paper permissive, but not in practice—rest in the hands of the President to limit agricultural production through the AAA.
The banks of the country are in the hands of the RFC, could not live without it. The railroads can not lower wages, raise hours, or float important bond issues without government consent. The Home Loan bank board is doing a land office business in mortgages. The public works administration is virtual dictator of building construction. And the Tennessee Valley Authority has even gone in for selling electric irons, refrigerators and washing machines. All in all, the number of potent recovery bureaus now dotted around the Washington landscape, make Mr. Hoover’s commissions seem like poor little doll houses. Yet, aside from castor oil, salutes and colored shirts there are two all-important exceptions to the recovery layout as steered by
U tt tt CUB THAT is why so many of the President’s friends are putting the microscope to his overturn by congress on the veterans’ vote. Some of them are inclined to pull horse faces.
Congress is used to being the center of the Washington merry-go-round. And for one year its members scarcely have been a side-show. They have been flouted on appointments. They have been forced to pass bills with machine-gun rapidity. They have been forced to cool their heels in the outer offices of brain trusters. They almost had to get down on bended knee even to see Louey Howe, the President’s secretary. So they got a swell laugh when they kicked the traces. And having found out that they could kick the traces, the temptation will be to do it again. This is the chief significance of the veterans vote. The real issue is not going to be congress versus the President, but planned economy versus rugged individualism.
A Third Republic born in a mob’s wrath . . . watches in silent awe the funeral procession of six of the victims of its most recent political strife, as shown in the upper photo just received from Paris.
Certain documents upon which the court based its decision, it finally came out, had been concealed from the prisoner and his defense. Dreyfus had been convicted in violation of justice. On that score, Clemenceau went to bat. Pro-Dreyfus sentiment grew. Zola took up the cause, and in a trial for slander (in which Zola was convicted) the whole card-house fell—revealing almost unbelievable skullduggery, malice, complotting on religious and social grounds, an army speckled with corruption. A Colonel Henry confessed having forged one of the chief documents used against Dreyfus. Again a terrific French scandal was lit "with the lightning flash of suicide—Colonel Henry’s. Another officer, Esterhazy, openly accused of the original treachery, took flight from France. And another government fell. But the public persisted. Violent antagonism to its form could not break it completely down. With the turn of the century new troubles rolled up, culminating in the World war and in the peace. The question which has troubled it for sixty years rises again: Can the republic take it?
Roosevelt, and the stark raked dictatorship popular in Europe. One is the fact that Roosevelt has tried to take into consideration both sides of the deal. He has tried to give a break to both capital and labor. He has done something—though until recently not much—about protecting the consumer. He has maintained a fairly reasonable balance between pros ad cons. In general, he has followed his favorite policy of “hitting a little left of center.’’ The second is the fact that Roosevelt’s powers are subject to review and abridgement by congress. His is not a perpetual dictatorship. The power to .regulate industry, agriculture and so on ceases unless definitely extended by congress. They are pure emergency powers.
In other words Roosevelt will have a real battle making his program stick. His idea is to let the country go a little slow, prevent too much prosperity, head off subsequent depressions. Against him on this is pitted one of the strongest lobbies in the country—the business lobby. Its cry of “Rugged Individualism” is deeply rooted in our pioneer background, in our prairies and our passing frontier. In practice it is gone. Only the myth remains. But that myth, plus the barrage of Big Business, plus the skittishness of a headstrong congress may upset the Roosevelt dream of planned economy. If so, we may really find out what a dictatorship is like. (Copyright, 1934. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)
Second Section
Entered as Second (.lass Matter at PnstoHee. Indianapolis
Fair Enough By V Westbrook Pegler IDO not wonder that some of the stable hands around the Louisville horse park hanged an effigy of Senator Huey P. Long as the papers say. considering that Senator Long had alleged that Colonel Ed Bradley was a partner in the operation of a chain store system of gambling dives. There was a double
aspersion on Colonel Ed Bradley in that cruel and irresponsible remark. In the first place. Colonel Ed's opinion of the human race, after some seventy years of active membership in same, is such that he would not trust another member as a partner, and furthermore, his only known store, the Casino at Palm Beach, is no dive. Colonel Bradley's store at Palm Beach is a nice, refined store, not unlike a New England meetin’ house in its outward appearance, and as elegant and subdued as an exclusive automobile showroom inside. A good many of us will resent any aspersion on the character
of the Colonel’s store at Palm Beach because there are those of us with social yearnings who regard our Matriculation at Bradley's as otir high score in the social way. It was here that we found ourselves breathing the same air as the Palm Beach millionaires, dabbing our cigarets in the same ash trays with them, and wagering our 50 cent checks against the same wheels ch'ps Ch thCy Were chancing their hundred dollar " u tt Social Contacts There TT gave a man a feeling to come out of Colonel Ed s Place at 1 o’clock of a balmy morning in the month of March, forty or fifty dollars light, perhaps, but with a knowledge that he had done some frittering on common ground with a member of the Woolworth clan. I recollect that I casually wondered one morning on the way to the Grande Royale Bourbon Mansion hotel just how long one of the little girl clerks in the Woolworth branch in West Palm Beach, a scant mile across the causeway, would have to stand on her burning feet and how many dimes’ worth of salted peanuts she would have to sell to earn back as much money as my Woolworth had frittered away that evening. This led into some involved mental arithmetic and I was up in the tens of generations of little girl clerks on burning feet in the five-and-ten by time I got to the Grande Royale Mansion hotel, or whatever the name of the hotel was that season, and gave it up. This sort of calculation is not good for a persons peace of mind, anyway. It sets a fellow to wondering how many days you would have to lay off a railroad brakeman, with a family to support, and maybe wanting doctors, to save enough money to operate the big Vanderbilt yacht one day on a cruise in the Mediterranean. You don’t want to get into habits of thoughts like that. It leads to bad citizenship and eventually, if you don’t watch out, to Bolshevism and forfeiture of the precious privilege of working on burning feet in the five-and-ten while Princess Barbara Mdivini tours the world with half an ocean liner to herself. I am told that Colonel Bradley has been subpenaed to Washington to testify before the statesmen whether he ever was a partner of a New Orleans politician in the operation of a chain of dives. a a tt The Answer Is No THEY could have saved the colonel time and trouble if they had just called him up, long-dis-tance, collect, and put the question to him because the answer to that one is “No.” Colonel Bradley has been going about the country for years, repeating in a soft voice his rather discouraging conclusion that if a man arrives at the age of 70 years believing that he has enjoyed the genuine friendship of five men in that time, then he probably has been fooled five times. I believe he was fooled, himself, a time or two in his growing years, but not since he came to Florida thirty-nine years ago and set up his store at St. Augustine, which was then the end of the railroad in a frontier country. But while they have Colonel Bradley on the seat in Washington, I do wish the statesmen would ask him some biographical questions because the story of his life is one that some of the greatest newspaper and magazine reporters in this country have been trying to elicit for a dozen years with no success that you could notice. The statesmen with their powers of subpena and contempt have been among our best reporters these last few years. If a reporter asks the colonel to tell about his old gambling days in Arizona and Texas and the colonel says “Nope, thank you kindly for asking,” a reporter can’t slap him into some jail for contempt, but the senate could. I am just newspaper man enough to pine to read this piece even though I never should be the one to get it and write it. And while they are on the subject of gambling in New Orleans the statesmen shouldn’t fail to put Senator Long himself on the witness stand and ask him the how come of certain mysterious operations in the gambling trade during his term as Governor. The militia raided the New Orleans gambing stores during Senator Long’s term and acquaintances of mine among the chancy trade told me at the time that the soldiers not only closed them up, but confiscated all the taw. In some resorts the taw was supposed to run up into big, coarse figures and members of the gambling profession have wondered for all these years whatever happened to all that taw. Senator Long might know. (Copyright. 1934, by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)
Today's Science — 1 BY DAVID DIETZ =- ■ THE bright star-like object which comes over the eastern horizon each night about an hour after sunset is the planet Jupiter. It is not the planet Venus. Venus is not now in the evening sky, but shines in the morning sky. On Sunday, Venus rose over the eastern horizon at 4:30. By the end of th 9 month it will be rising at 3:30. It fades from view, of course, when the sun rises. But Jupiter, rising after sunset, is in view throughout the entire night. Gradually it climbs higher and higher into the sky. By midnight it is almost overhead. Then it descends into the western sky. Jupiter is brighter than any of the stars and so it is easy to find. It is not, however, brighter than Venus. At its brightest, Venus may be fifty times brighter than Jupiter. I have urged many times that readers get acquainted with the constellations of the stars and with the planets. Life is richer if you can identify the constellations as they come into view with the seasons and if you can follow the wanderings of the planets against the patterns of the constellations. It is a pity, but nevertheless true, that many persons do not know the fundamental distinction between a star and a planet, even using the wors as though they were interchangeable. a a a THE stars are great glowing bodies like our sun, some a little smaller, some thousands of times larger. They are great globes of gaseous material ranging in temperature from 1,800 to 50.000 degrees. The planets are small bodies like our own earth. Our own earth is a planet. The sun is a star. If you remember these simple facts, you will never confuse the two. The planets are all secondary bodies belonging to one particular star, namely, our sun. They range in size from Mercury which is 3,100 miles in diameter to Jupiter which is 86,000 miles in diameter. Because the planets are revolving around the sun, they appear to move against the background of stars. This fact was noticed by the ancients. The name "planet” comes from the Greek and means “wanderr.’*
Cl
Westbrook Pegler