Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 229, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 February 1935 — Page 6

PAGE 6

The Indianapolis Times (A KCRirru.HOWAin newsfapebi rot W. HOWARD PreaMaat TALCOTT POWELL Editor EARL D. RAKER ButineM Manager Phone Riley SKI

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SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 2 1825 I THE EMPEROR ARRIVES VERY man a king is far off in Louisiana, but Huey Long at least is more despotic than any modern king would dare to be. Yesterday he ordered one of his bodyguard thugs to blackjack an Associated Press news j photographer for the crime of taking a picture of his majesty. A few hours earlier a policeman in his kingdom was punished for stopping a speeding joyride car carrying the emperors son and driven by one of his guardsmen. ~ is not difficult to understand why Huey the First, to maintain his rule, must declare marual law and use the National Guard as a personal army to terrorize opponents. It's a grand life—while it lasts. HUNTING TROUBLE T TAVING refused to subscribe to the World Court, the Senate now considers a proposal to set itself up as an international tribunal. Senator Borah proposes that the Senate spend SIO,OOO inquiring into the alleged denial of religious liberties in Mexico. Strangely enough, the Senate was not exercised about religious liberties in our own country in the days of the Ku-Klux Klan. Nor is it now eager to interfere with the denial of civil liberties in Louisinaa, California and many other states. But if the Senate is in the mood to make itself judge of domestic disputes in other countries it may not stop with Mexico but go on to investigate— Nazi oppression of Jews and Catholics in Germany; Mussolini's tyranny in Italy; England's dictatorship in India; Serbian oppression of Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia; opium traffic in China; Soviet liquidation of Russian Kulaks; Japanese persecution of Liberals; press censorship in a score of countries; and a thousand other violations of freedom around the world. Os course, other nations may reciprocate our kindly interest in the welfare of their peoples. Japan may investigate our treatment of Orientals in Arizona and California; Hitler, our alleged third degree of Bruno Hauptmann; Russia, our quaint police practice of clubbing radicals; Abyssinia, our numerous lynchings and the Scottsboro trials; Ireland, our imprisonment of innocent Tom Mooney; and Mexico, our exploitation of cheap Mexican labor along the border. Without questioning the Borah resolution’s assumption of American moral superiority and the Senate’s omniscience, we venture to suggest that it will require a rather large Army and Navy to protect us once we begin to meddle in the domestic affairs of the rest of the world.

THE WISH TO BELIEVE 'T'HE power of rumor is a queer thing. Someone tells someone else a tall tale, that someone else carries still farther—and the first thing you know, half the country believes it; believes it with an intensity that no amount of public denials can ever entirely shake. A sample is the trouble which curators of the National Library in Paris have been having with credulous folk who insist on having a look at the mummy of Cleopatra. The library has never had such a mummy. As far as any one knows, no mummy of the famous Egyptian queen is in existence. For 50 years the library curators have been issuing public denials that there was such a mummy. But it makes no difference. There is a rumor abroad in France that the library has the mummy, and people keep coming to see it—and getting indignant when they can't. A rumor of that kind can be one of the hardiest growths known to human society. NAVAL ENCROACHMENT 117 HEN the Washington naval treaty was * ’ drawn up in 1921, it was generally agreed that the action had averted an almost certain war in the Pacific. When Japan denounced the treaty ' recently, a good many people got an uneasy feeling that perhaps this once-averted war would again become an almost certain thing. This fear was only natural. The treaty was drawn up to end a naval race which, in the years immediately after the armistice, had become both expensive and dangerous —especially dangerous, in view of the object lesson which 1914 had provided as to the probable fruits of unrestrained competition in naval armaments. If the treaty dies, the way is open for anew race to begin. Nevertheless, the outlook today is by no means as perilous as one might suppose. For the one saving factor in the situation is a simple bit of geography. The *hree great naval powers—England. Japan and the United States—are separated from one another by thousands of miles of salt water. This, fortunately, means that any one of these nations can build a fleet which will provide complete national security for itself without menacing the national security of either of the other two. That was not the case in the famous naval race between England and Germany. Those two countries were close together. If Germany were to have a fleet strong enough to keep German sea lanes to the outer seas open, it had to be a fleet strong enough to dispute with England control of waters vital to England's safety. The same thing was true the other way around; an English fleet strong enough to make England secure was automatically a fleet strong enough to cut Germany off from traffic with the rest of the world. Neither nation, therefore, could attain naval security without at the same time raising a direct menace to the security of

other. Feverish naval building followed by war was the only logical result. The present situation is vastly different. The United States* fleet may be strong enough to keep our own sea lanes open and protect our coasts, and still be too weak to invade English or Japanese waters for such largescale maneuvers as would be necessary to force either country to its knees; and the same thing is true of both the English and the Japanese fleets. This fact should not be overlooked. It makes all the difference in the world between the situation today and that which obtained just before 1914. England and Germany could not build for security without directly threatening each other; England, America and Japan can do so. . . WHICH IS ABSURD” TN the days when we struggled through geometry, we all met that method of disproof which led up to a final conclusion "... which is absurd.” The kind of dictatorship which insists that people shall have only such plays, books, movies and newspapers as the rules believe are best for them, always runs afoul of these absurdities in wholesale lots. Two shining examples recently cropped up. In Russia there was a public scandal over the fact that a radio station was caught red-handed broadcasting Negro spirituals! Somebody saw insidious counter-revolutionary propaganda in the haunting melodies and sweet chords that had wandered so far from their home in the Old South. And in Germany, a movie film, which was immensely popular in Germany in 1926, is today barred as ‘‘not coinciding* with world philosophy of the present day in Germany.” It was Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush!” If a man is a political dictator, he inevitably thinks he knows better than the rest of us what we ought to see, and read, and hear. Which is absurd. GALLANTRY New Bedford comes another story to glorify the Coast Guard. Sally, the 5-year-old daughter of a fisherman who lives op bleak Cutty hunk Island, was very ill of an infected ear with fever running high. Among the 47 people of the island was no doctor, and Sally had to be moved ashore in a hurry. A radio flash was picked up by the Coast Guard cutter Harriet Lane, off Provincetown, 75 miles away. Without delay the cutter started for Cuttyhunk, plowing mountain waves through a slashing blizzard. While folk ashore hugged their firesides, guardsmen took Sally, bundled warm, from an open catboat and rushed her to New Bedford. There an operation saved her life. This was only routine for the Coast Guard crew. But it shows that wars are not needed to test men’s valor and chivalry. THE FOUR R’S the Nation as a whole the downward trend in school finance has apparently been checked,” reports the Joint Commission on the Emergency in Education of the National Education Association. After the perils that have threatened free schools for five years, this is good news. But our country would be foolish not to profit from the lessons of those punishing years. To rebuild the damaged educational system the N. E. A. suggests: Restoration of lull school services, badly slashed In many impoverished communities; Reorganization of units of school administration—many small school districts should be merged; Reconstruction of the school program “to meet the changing social needs of modern life,” reforming antiquated courses and adding vocational, recreational, and adult train.ng; Revision of systems of finance, making schools less dependent upon the uncertain property-tax revenues. These new four R’s of public education may be harder for bureaucrats and politicians to learn that the old three R’s were for youngsters. Eventually they must be learned, however, and now is a good time to begin.

TODAYS HOLY GRAIL’ T7' VERY age has its wonders, its legends and its unattainable ideals; and this particular era in history seems to have set up Hollywood and its people for service in those roles. We read, for instance, of a moon-struck Brooklyn lad, the son of a barber, who became hopelessly smitten with longing for a certain lady of the films, and brooded about it so much that he finally bummed his way to Los Angeles to >.alk to her. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't get her telephone number. He tried valiantly; he spent, in fact, his last few dollars in paystation telephone booths, trying vainly to get the lady on the phone. At last the police found him, broke and hungry, still dreaming of getting just one word from the lips of his adored one. Somehow they persuaded him that it was a hopeless quest and sent him back home. Youths of other ages sought their Grails, their fountains of youth, their lands of El Dorado; ours try to telephone movie stars. The action may be grotesquely different, but the underlying urge is much the same—the quest for an unattainable ideal. FOR SAFETY AT SEA DEPARTMENT of Commerce officials are quoted in current Washington dispatches as saying that it would be a good thing if Congress should order an investigation into recent steamship disasters; and with this comment the ordinary citizen probably will oe m complete agreement. It is utterly impossible for the innocent bystander even to hazard a guess as to what may be wrong—if, indeed, there be any one cause for our recent tragedies at sea; but there is a general belief that something is out of line somewhere, and that it needs looking into. Generations of experience have proved that American designers, builders and seamen are as good as any on earth. We should not be having accidents at the rate we have been haring them. A congressional investigation be an excellent remedy. German university students are striking against a professor who wouldn't help collect charity funds .on the streets. Now he has to go out for himself. The du Ponts, It seems, tested their new foolproof explosive with everything except an insane patient with a revolver.

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES.: PRESIDENT FRANK AYDELOTTE of Swarthmore College has developed a reputation lor educational liberalism, intellectual progressiveism and executive leadership. Therefore one may be legitimately amazed at the enunciation of an apparently narrow, archaic and illogical educational philosophy in his latest annual report. That Dr. Aydelotte understands the problem is certainly clear from his excellent statement of it: “During the last fifty years the developments in the different fields of knowledge have been so vast that the problem of giving the undergraduate any adequate idea of the geography of the intellectual world has Become enormously more difficult. "The problem may be attacked, sa far as the undergraduate is concerned, in two opposite *ays—by giving him as thorough a grasp as | possible of one field and leaving it to him to ! spend the rest of his life in widening the circle ol his knowledge; or, on the other hand, by giving him a birdseye view of the whole world j of knowledge and leaving it to him in later life j to concentrate upon someone subject and to ! learn to know that as thoroughly as he can. “The second approach is that of the so-called ■ orientation courses, which have, during the last ! few years, become so popular in American col- ; leges and universities. It is in harmony with the ; tendency of American education to accept superficiality as the price of comprehensiveness.” n a PRESIDENT AYDELOTTE vigorously attacks the orientation approach in college instruction. He recommends intensive specialization in some narrow field of Knowledge, with the hope that the student will iater broaden out his interests after he nas left college and give himself that wider and more adequate education which many now expect a college to provide. One may legitimately raise the question as to whether educational specialization inevitably creates breadth of view and a zeal to extend one’s intellectual norizons. It is certainly safe to say that there is little basis for such a belief in the educational experience of the past. The alleged breadth of those who were trained almost exclusively in the classics is purely illusory. They were broad only in the vague irrelevancies which inevitably inhered in the classical type ox education. They were abysmally ignorant of all the realities of contemporary life—as Thomas H. Huxley once pointed out in a caustic and classic passage. Moreover specialization, of the type which is possible in an undergraduate course, is no specialization at all. Today the specialist is not a biologist or a physicist, but a man who has given his entire lifetime to some narrow subdepartment of one of these fields. Even so it may progress so rapidly as to escape him. One of the most famous of American mathematical physicists committed suicide not so many years ago because he alleged that his subject was getting out of hand, and he could not keep up with it. tt u tt IT is obvious, therefore, that the college undergraduate can never become a true specialist in four years, while if he did his knowledge would soon become out of date within a few years after he left college. He would therefore be in the unenviable position of knowing only a little about something, with even this little becoming daily more mossy and moldy. It is becoming progressively more obvious to thoughtful educators that there can be no intelligent handling of college education unless we differentiate sharply between the types of students involved. There is a small minority of high ability, qualified to de research work, and intending to go on to some type of specialized professional work. For these specializaton may be the best thing in the world, but it never should be purchased at the price of narrowness and bigotry. For the majority, the orientation course is the only sensible plan for undergraduate instruction. What we should have is not a restriction of this development, but a vast extension of the program, until it embraces a majority of the courses offered to undergraduates. In my opinion the contemporary civilization course at Columbia College is the most important since the Civil War, with the possible exception of the elective system first made possible by President Eliot of Harvard. No one need contend that orientation courses are 100 per cent perfect. But comprehensive superficiality is certainly to be preferred to abject ignorance upon nine-tenths of the realities of our day, and imperfect and out of date knowledge of the remaining one-tenth.

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABELL

PERHAPS the best way of describing the huge birthday ball in honor of President Roosevelt at the Shoreham Hotel is to point out that a press photographer collapsed from the heat and excitement. When a press photographer collapses that’s news. And the President’s birthday ball was news. It had all the elements of news—color, timeliness, celebrities, size and national interest. Promptly at 10 o’clock, the crowds started to arrive. Nearly all official Washington came in sables, in ermines, in mink—in a hundred other varieties of fur—in silk hats, in gold-laced uniforms, in the traditional white ties, in black ties, in ordinary sack suits—in everything. Policemen stood at the main entrance, and the hotel corridors were lined with marines and sailors, who held back the mob when White House notables and others whirled up in their limousines. a a a MRS. ROOSEVELT arrived early, radiant and smiling as usual. She wore an electric blue evening dress (the same shade that New York last year christened by the name of “Eleanor blue”), an ermine coat with white fox collar and a silver necklace. She carried a blue ostrich fan. Admiral Cary T. Grayson, honorary chairman of the ball, strode proudly beside her, a white carnation in the lapel of his coat. In due order, came Anna Dali Boettiger, daughter of the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, dressed in white with a flame colored chiffon scarf about her shoulders. She was escorted by Ray Baker, chairman of the executive committee of the ball, possibly better known as exdirector of the mint. Mrs. John R. (Ma) Williams, chairman of the reception committee, was also of the group, as were the Elliott Roosevelts—young Mrs. Roosevelt becomingly dressed in ermine bertha. All the White House staff seemed to be in the party. The gold-laced aids marched before, the social secretaries followed. Mr. Muir, the man who took Luke Hoover’s place as chief usher at the White House, merrily twirled to the strains of the ‘ Blue Danube.” ana STATE SECRETARY AND MRS. CORDELL HULL led the procession of Cabinet members, the benign Secretary smiling and inclining his silver head on all sides, Mrs. Hull in dahlia red. Attorney General and Mrs. Cummings followed—Mrs. Cummings in black satin, somewhat amazed by the crush in the large ballroom. Senator Joe Robinson, majority leader of the Senate, attended with Mrs. Robinson, apparently much less depressed than the previous day by his defeat on the World Court issue. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, majestic in bronze lame and wearing orchids, was surrounded by a group of friends. She remained most of the evening, but left the party just a few minutes after Mrs. Roosevelt departed. (Incidentally, Francis Sayre, son-in-law of the late President Wilson, whom he greatly resembles, also was present.) Gen. Douglas MecArthur, who squashed the bonus army, has given W. W. Walters, head of that army, a Job. Well, that puts one of the trouble-makers out of the way.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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The Message Center

(Timeß readers are invited to express their views dn these columns. Make your ietters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less.) ana NICHOLSON BILL FINDS FAVOR By Nevel Hartley. The Message Center is very interesting. lam a reader and just can’t help trying to answer the letter of Iris Hamilton, the woman who was so highly amused and indignant when she read about Mrs. Nicholson's bill to do away with the breach of promise law in Indiana. I don’t see why she should be so "highly amused” about it, unless she was thinking about what saps some women can make of men with the alimony jail. I think she takes some pretty deep digs at Mrs. Nicholson, although she probably doesn’t even know her. If a couple is poor and either one is jilted, there is nothing done about it, but if the man happens to have some money, then the woman can get right down to her digging. The writer of the letter says the boys can’t try playing Don Juan, or step out, without paying the consequences. Lou? of girls Art as much as they please ar.d no consequences are paid. I don’t think, if a woman was really heartbroken, she would have it aired in court. Os course, those were her views. These are mine. I don’t think any one will ever sue me for anything, but I am for Mrs. Nicholson’s bill anyway. a a a URGES “FIRING” OF WORKING WIVES By M. Trilby. A young couple gets married Saturday night and goes back to work Monday morning. The bride says she will keep on working for a month or two and then quit her job. Don’t fool yourself; she never quits. But why explain to her friends that she will give up her job? Well she knows and so does every one else that she does not intend to do anything else but cheat on the unemployed. You may talk about chiselers, but she is the worst type of enemy we have in the world today. In the first place they are cheating the younger generation out of a job, making beggars and robbers out of honest men who must do something to clothe and feed their families. They take bread ar.d warmth from the homes of these families and break the spirit of the man who wants to find work. They cheat nature by not having children. I wonder how they will answer to God for that alone. They cheat the doctor of a confinement case, then through this neglect they deprive the manufacturers of thenprofit of sales on articles such as baby clothes, shoes, hose, furniture, froceries, milk, coal, household goods of all descriptions, the butcher. the baker and the candlestick maker. All they need is a refrigerator (and what goes in it), a bedroom, and, oh yes, a car. so that they can go to Aunt Mary’s in the country for a square meal for nothing, and then wifey doesn't cook so well. Most men would like to have that baby, but wifey is too selfish for that. If the wife would stay home and keep the house as she should and learn to cook, she would have plenty to do, and not make the excuses, "I just get so lonesome and I can’t find enough work to do at home, so I thought I had better get a job.” You’re fooling nobody but yourself, sister. V/e have heard that too often, and know that you

Incomes Should Be Public

By George Gould Hine. A local editorial applauds the efforts of the United States Chamber of Commerce to prevent the publication of income tax returns. There always has seemed something furtive about the contention that the rich should not be identified, lest they become the prey of the criminal and the salesman, as if the Identity of the rich was not a matter of common knowledge in every community. It seems furtive because it is contrary to the natural instinct of every honorable man to be proud of success in life. And because the preposterous nature of this argument shows that there are other hidden reasons of real importance to the people. Any government which consents to concealment makes certain confessions. It confesses that it is not any too proud of the way the

can’t cook or keep house right. I’ll venture to say that if all married women were fired from work today, in thr.ee months you would see an advance in all industries. The man on the street would get a job and he would spend his wages on things he needs to replenish Ijis supplies and again eat something besides beans, beans, beans. Money would go back into the manufacturers’ pocket and he in turn would have to hire more men to take care of the new business. Maybe the selfish wife would also have that baby, who knows? What is the matter with the socalled business man? Can’t he see that he is hurting his own business by hiring these married women? Look over your office and factory and see if the women you hired need that money as much as the poor man on the street. I know what I am talking about because I w’ork with and around a big building full of them and in most casts the husband makes a big salary and the wife makes one just as large. I also meet the young persons and their tale of woe is pitiful. Take stock of your office and factory and help the unemployed by getting rid of the married women who do not need the money. If they want to work, why get married? I know; so do you. a a a VOICES OPPOSITION TO SALES TAX Bt h. s. The Times of Tuesday advocated certain measures for adoption by the Legislature. I regretted to see that no recommendation regarding the tax problem was included. I hope that The Times will oppose the proposed sales tax as a vicious measure that will hit all persons of small income and relieve those of larger incomes. The great majority of persons earn less than SIOOO a year and are therefore exempted from the gross income tax. Under a 2 per cent sales tax they would be taxed S2O. A man with SISOO income now pays $5, but would pay six times that much under the 2 per cent sales tax. No doubt, persons with an income of less than S2OOO spend practically all for goods on which the sales tax would apply. The man with SIO,OOO income now pays S9O gross income tax; he probably would spend S3OOO on which the sales tax would apply and save S3O. If the income is $20,000, the tax now is $l9O and as this man probably would not spend more than S3OOO on which a sales

GAS PAINS

[l wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. — Voltaire.

national income is being distributed and is helpless to do anything about it. Or it confesses that it is satisfied and does not intend to do anything about it. In either case it confesses to a belief that the people are not to be trusted with the information. Which means that they are not to be trusted with the ballot box. And the concealment is therefore nothing but an evasion and denial of the first principles of Democracy. As time has proved, concealment has helped as a sort of anaesthetic to keep the people insensible while they are being inoculated with pauperism. It will be interesting to note the effect on the Administration of the frantic appeal of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which, in effect, is: "Quick, Watson—the needle!”

tax applies, his saving would amount to $l3O. A sales tax hits the poor and relieves the rich who are now paying their share of gross income tax. If taxes must be increased, raise the income tax, but do not place additional burdens on the poor. a a tt POOR WILL LOSE IN GAME PRESERVE PROGRAM By Walker Hull. I see in The Indianapolis Times Jan. 22, where they are going to take thousands of acres of land for park and game preserves. Now all the benefit there is to this is to drive poor people from their homes and force them to work on some rich man’s fine land for practically nothing and be a landlord’s slave. There are too many poor people in the good farming communities. It also will create a haven for sportsmen. The poor man never has the money to spend to go to a state park and have a little recreation. He is back in the city doing his duty for his master. Leave the poor people on this land and allow them to make an independent living. ana SEVERE SENTENCES WILL STOP DRUNKEN MOTORISTS By Eloway. A car careens from side to side, narrowly misses a tram, then nicks a parked car; speeds crazily on. ! Two girls cross the street. The traffic signal says stop. Drunken eyes can only dimly make . out the path ahead. With undiminishing speed the car catches the now fleeing girls, hurls them to the pavement. The driver, vaguely conscious of it all, speeds on. If he gets away he is free; if he is caught—one judge the other day, in a case like I have described, said, “One dollar and a suspended sentence of thirty days.” The girls are critically hurt in a hospital! They might have been killed! One dollar and a suspended sentence doesn't put the fear of the Daily Thought Verily, verily, I say unto yo>\! That ye shall weep and lament, b.;t i the world shall rejoice; and ye shah be sorrowful, but your "sorrow shall be turned into joy.—St. John, 16:20. SORROW is the mere rust of the j soul; Activity will cleanse and. brighten it.—Johnson.

FEB. 2, 1935

law’ In any drunken driver’s heart. It isn’t even a bad break; he’s had the best of luck. But the girls, disfigured for life, lose indefinitely. They can never regain their loss and he is free to drive and get drunk again. Hit-and-run and drunken driving will not stop until strict penalties are imposed! Until the penalty is made high enough to make a man realize before he gets drunk t: , he can not take a chance on driving if he gets drunk, until the penalty is strong enough to make a byword among those, who habitually get drunk, of “I must not drive while intoxicated." Until then, we will have more hit-and-run drivers, more deaths and the next victim might be you. So They Say Go back to Russia? Never! If I went back there, some commissar would throw me into prison and let me sing my beautiful songs to the rats.—Feodor Chaliapin, famous Russian basso. If a man worked hard at it, he couldn’t work up a bigger list of enemies than I have made.—Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes. Hitler’s great victory in the Saar plebiscite marks the opening of a new phase of Nazism—that of an old-fashioned military dictatorship, —Dr. Paul Hutchinson, Chicago. There is more legislation put across in the name of national defense than any other one misrepresentation—U. S. ’’Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Once infected, you can not get the political germ out of your system, but I’m going easy and do not intend to hold office again.—Jimmy Walker, former mayor of New York. Make an end of war. How? Educate, educate, educate.—Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, famous feminist. My only supposition is that Hollywood resents a lady.—Ann Harding, famous actress. The munitions racket, one whose victim is all civilization, has governments as its partners, unconsciously on the part of governments perhaps.—Senator Gerald P. Nye.

Broken Dreams

BY POLLY LOIS NORTON This is the dust-heap of now broken dreams; Pin-ravaged bubbles cf radiant sheen, Ideas of steel, once as Damascus keen. Once-perfect rainbows, shattered like glass Frayed feathers from floating wings as they pass. Here tattered tags of great ambitions lie. Rusty old springs from hope's eternal beds, Shields, emblems gone, that did trouble defy, Looking today like old washboiler lids, Success-tins, mock-silver, now with the years Blackened and battered and half full of tears. This is the dust-heap of age-broken dreams. Dreams that were fair— but how long now that seems 1