Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 312, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 March 1936 — Page 9

It Seems to Me HEYWOD BROUN THERE was a light tap at the door, and when I opened it I found my old friend the Man from Mars, whom I have come to know as Harry. Oh, it's you again.” I said a little sourly, for, I was busy on a column and I didn’t want to be bothered with any questions. ‘‘Yes," replied Harry. ‘‘l’ve got to do a paper for the Martin Club entitled ‘Housing Conditions on the Planet Earth,’ so I thought I'd drop in on New

York and take a look around.” "Well, you’ve chosen a fine lime. We've got a strike on.” “I’m not in the least surprised," said the man from Mars. "I always figured that the tenants would get tired of being pushed around.” Sometimes I wish Harry would stay home in Mars and not pop in on me with embarrassing questions, particularly when I’m busy. I had to tell him about the goof with the gun and of a prominent Bull Moose leader who puts in five hours a day in his own building running the car up and down

; ' 7

Ileywood Broun

to show that underprivileged people can’t intimidate him and compel him to walk seven flight of stairs in the morning to get the milk. B B B it'* All Very Puzzling TTARRY seemed very much puzzled. "The name n is familiar,” he said. “I listened to him as he talked over one of your radio stations a few weeks ago. His subject was Back to the Founders.’ He was telling the people here on earth that Americans are being coddled. He spoke about the hardships of the Puritans, and he longed to be at a place called Valley Forge. He wanted more of the pioneer spirit. He urged people to fight for their rights. He said that Abraham Lincoln” "Yes, yes, I know,” I had to interject, "but the gentleman does live on the seventh floor.” ‘ Well,” said Harry. "I guess we’d better look around at some of these apartments.” I pleaded a heavy cold. Don’t be silly,” said the Man from Mars. “With this little instrument we can see anything we want anywhere in New York.” He handed me something which looked like a cross between an opara glass and a harmonica. "Take 67 on the dial,” he said We were both looking into the hallway of an elaborate Park-av apartment, and by the door there rat as villainous a looking man as I have ever seen. He had on heavy black gloves to conceal brass knuckles and he carried a long wooden club. “Quick!” cried Harry, startled out of his usual if**- 1 " ThlS must b - a hold, *P. That man ls a thug if I ever saw one.’ 1 #i ... uu Doesn't Make Sense to Harry course he’s a thug,” I told my visitor. "He's W a strike breaker from one of the agencies. But lies also a special guard, paid about $8 a day, to piotect the tenants.” v ‘, Y °u came hp re to investigate housing in New lork, I said sharply. “You mustn't look for sense.” Hariy blinked twice in his deliberate Martian way Then he said, "Let me get this straight. First of all, the small investor was soaked with bum stocks and bonds. Then he was soaked in rents, and now he's being soaked because the people who have his money won t let go of any of it to provide a decent living wage for the elevator operators.” “That's the way I see it,” I admitted. Harry put on his traveling helmet. "I'm going io Mars.” hf said, “and I won't be back until I hear lhat some of you saps down here, have begun to get the idea that maybe private capital hasn't the capacity to solve the housing problems of the City of New York.” (Copvrtffht, 193f1l

Orient Is Danger Spot to America BY RAYMOND CLAPPER WASHINGTON, March 9.—Whatever Hitler’* movement of troops into the Rhineland may mean for Europe, it stands for America as evidence of the futility of the last war. which neither killed off Germany nor ended autocracy. Twenty years later both are thriving. It is not likely that the United States will again go in to settle Europe’s national affairs. Our danger lies in the .opposite direction—on the Pacific side. During our budding days of imperial-

ism at the opening of the century, we dreamed about far-flung possessions. They looked impressive on the map. We dreamed about tapping the riches of Cathay. We insisted upon the open door so we could get at them. For years this theme has made a rousing subject for fine political speeches. The dream of a rich China market has sunk so deeply into the unquestioning mind that Senator Pittman recently was able, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee, to say in effect that we would fight for 011: uade with China, without being asked what our trade with China was. He lodged more deeply than ever into the subconsciousness of public opinion the doctrine that trade with China is one thing that the United States can not sacrifice. mam But what is our trade with China? Last year China bought from us goods worth less than one battleship. Our exports were valued at $38,156,292. A sum that Harry Hopkins would scarcely look at. We bought almost twice as much from China. In 1929 our exports to China were only $124,000,000. considerably less than they were 10 years before. The Wrigley chewing gum business could with its present surplus reserves buy almost as much as China bought from us last year. mam BUT, Senator Pittman would say, think of the great possibilities. The best analysis of those possibilities has been made by Dr. Charles A. Beard in his -Open Door at Home.” He says they are trivial: "China is not a country possessing extraordinary wealth in natural resources, and her frightful excess of population bears down the standard of life until it is a fortunate laborer who receives as much as 20 cents a day. Approximately 80 per cent of the kerosene oil imported into China is retailed in quantities of a gill or less. If China had an orderly government, and could develop certain regions now backward, an increase of population, unless national habits were changed, would swamp and submerge the economic gains thus effected. . .It is probable also that a well-organized China would dump huge amounts of cheap manufactures on the crowded world market as Japan now does. . . A certain moral fervor might be aroused by a military effort to protect China against Japan but even victory over the latter would be futile unless the transaction were accompanied by the organization of American authority over distracted China including assumption of all political responsibilities associated with it.” m m m THE great American market is here at home,. where consumption has not passed beyond a bare living existence for the majority of people. Foreign trade, aside from complementary exchanges Involved for instance in trading cotton for silk with Japan.-or manufactures for coffee with Brazil, is a luxury, and a precarious one subject to customers beyond our control. Secretary Hull Is attempting to realize as much as possible from this luxury trade by his reciprocal tariff agreements. But they are based on the theory that a good bargain is one from which both sides profit. Which is different from trying to dfctch customers with a conquering army.

William Abrrhart * Sfo-a-month government has held power In Alberta for month?. Ii took offiee on a platform resembling the Townsend plan. With a ?ien tn reporting on the progress made to date, the Scripps-Howard Newspapers sent Forrest Davis to Alberta for a study of conditions. His third article follows. BY FORREST DAVIS Scripps-Howard Staff Writer CALGARY, Alberta, March 9.—A rally at the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, which up to six months ago was the powerhouse for a $25-a-month crusade that set the prairie afire, today resembles a Tammany district club when the leader has called the boys in to urge patience until the chief patches it up with Washington or the reform mayor gets out. The mood of both is one of hope delayed. A half year after the glorious election and the fruits of victory—the Promised Land for which Social Crediters burned the prairie—not only is not at hand, but William Aberhart, who doubles as premier and leader of the institute, discouragingly puts the first payment as far in the future as 18 months. I attended “church” at the Prophetic Bible Institute, a red-brick, school-like hall The theme was resignation. Remember the weary, 40-year ordeal of the Israelites; pull in your belt another notch; don't e ’ and ’ a , bo^ e all ‘ don,t “ tem Pt Christ,” in St. Paul’s words, by doubting your leaders. , ’ J

Gone was the high, co-operative exaltation of the pre-election days; replaced by a hard doctrine for trusting folk, who until last Aug. 22 believed themselves about to quit the Wilderness for Canaan. Already the tone of social credit propaganda is defensive. B B Jt T'HE exhorter was the Hon. Ernest C. Manning, 27, provincial secretary and coadjutor to Premier Aberhart in both enterprises: Province and Institute. Mr. Secretary Manning and the premier preach alternate Sundays at Calgary and their new mission outpost, Edmonton. A microphone hung over the oak pulpit carries Mr. Manning’s frosty message far out over the “great western prairie.” This was the regular two-hour Sunday afternoon service of the prophecy and politics which through eight years gathered the constituency enabling Mr. Aberhart to expand a Bible class into a government. The 800 of us, erect on hard, straight pews, surrounded by varnished pine woodwork and dun plaster, eagerly, awaited the Word according to St. Paul, Mr. Aberhart or that remote founder of Social Credit, Maj. Clifford Hugh Douglas of London, England. We had not long to speculate when Mr. Manning, after interminable notices of Social Credit meetings and greetings to the afflicted and bereaved, took the pulpit BUtt MR. MANNING elected St. Paul —but St. Paul harking back to the Children of Israel, those luckless vagrants who finally crossed into Canaan. His text, I Corinthians, 10, was: "Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.”. Without mentioning Social Credit, $25 a month or the absent prophet and premier, Mr. Manning worked wonders with that text. Grimly, he admonished them to beware of the destroyer. Even as the prudent among the Israelites trusted Moses, so, in these days, did it behoove the godly to have faith in their leader. The moral, I surmise, was not lost on the good folk in Sunday clothes, smelling of soap and shoe blacking. . Any history of agrarian revolt in English-speaking North America should contain a chapter tracing the influerice of phases on the re-

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March 9. “ ’ Revenue raising is oniy the secondary objective of the President’s tax program. Its chief purpose is the distribution of static wealth; to force into use billions of dollars lying idle in the coffers of corporations. • The germ of this underlying social motive was enunciated by Roosevelt in his surprise tax message last May, when his target was large inheritances. Since then he has done considerable reading on the subject of taxation, particularly four slender volumes: “Brass Tacks,” by David Cushman Coyle; ‘’lncome and Economic Progress.” “America’s Capacity to Produce” and “America’s Capacity to Consume,” the last three published by Brookings Institution. The theme of these studies is that the accumulation of idle surplus reserves is clogging economic recovery. It is at this blockade that the President is battering with his tax program. He believes that if the piled up hoard of undivided corporation profits (estimated by Treasury experts at $4,500,000,000) can be forced into movement, the result will be a tremendous infusion of purchasing power, with consequent benefits „o business and employment. The New Deal policies of dollar devaluation, government spending and loan guaranteeing were all aimed toward this end. The tax plan is the latest, and in some respects the most revolutionary, of the President’s experiments in this basic economic problem. a a a THREE of the younger inner circle advisers had much to do with crystalizing the President’s views on the tax program.

Clapper

I " II ~,i- i,j r . i u:i| * coupe coupe ADVERTISING ADVERTISING — h attorney _ A6er,or **l*™ AT LAW

ANTA CLAUS^dsAJll§l

Washington Merry-Go-Round BY DREW PEARSON and ROBERT S. ALLEN

BENNY

The Indianapolis Times

■ —' “■ ........ ■. ■ .... rne < Pr >pholi( Bihl< |nmmwmr '■ he invaded the field of politics. .... J . finding controversy stimulating to JB|R ** mail, cash receipts and pres?ice. VV- M Hra&fiL • ijife Anri final!\ ,Mv limit imr-.ii ’ hen * 7 4 jen The IV: mm but ctushod bv <n i .--rnnonn of * V <nmP rtisturbina to Ins sc use of if:r "'S'SIRf \ T YE was shocked to hoar, for inII Stance that the North farinX " ers had been reduced to trapping | He read statistics showing that g j between 1928 and 1934 52 per cent ; 1 of all Alberta farmers possessing ■Hmlil i telephone service, almost indis-

The Social Credit registration office. A. Shandro is shown registering a recruit.

formers from Bryan to Huey Long, Miles Reno and Aberhart. B B B THE young statesman and Bible expositor bade us sing, "O God, Our Hope in Ages Past,” Isaac Watts’ grand old hymn. The Aberhart forces tore the hymn to tatters in their campaign. But yesterday the rendition of the theme song, I thought, lacked fire. So did Mr. Manning. He curtly ordered us to repeat the first verse. “Now sing it!” he commanded. A piano led the voices. “O God, our help in ages past, "Our hope in years to come.” Seven months ago, Albertans say, the faithful shook the plaster off the walls when they came to the consoling syllable HOPE. Not today. They slurred it, if anything. Man’s faith is but a frail reed at best. And hope six months deferred seemingly, in Alberta as elsewhere, maketh the heart faint. I walked down Eighth-av from the institute with a little rnan still wearing • a Social Credit election button. B B B “T'HE people have been asking A for their money. righ. enough,” he reported. “Some of them a bit nasty. Last November Mr. Aberhart read a. letter from a blighter who threatened to

They* were Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Herman Oliphant, general counsel of the Treasury; and Robert Jackson, counsel of the Internal Revenue Bureau, recently promoted by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. As early as the fall of 1934 Jackson urged on the President a drive against corporation surpluses. Eccles, a banker and industrialist, also had long favored such a program. Oliphant added his voice when the Supreme Court made anew tax measure necessary, by unbalancing the budget with its order returning the $500,000,000 impounded processing taxes. a a a THE nature of the President's tax program was a carefully guarded secret. It was a complete surprise to Democratic congressional leaders. There was a good reason for this wariness. All of the old-line leaders were opposed to any kind of new tax measure. They favored only a re-enactment of the processing taxes in anew guise. Their big argument was that political strategy and expediency barred tax legislation in election years. Applied to a bill that digs down into the pocket of the man in the street, their theory is sound. But the President s program doesn’t do that. As one veteran Senator expressed it, “The scheme is the answer to a politician’s prayer. It not only does not affect the average person, but has the added attraction of socking corporations. That’s always popular. Further, the great mass of stockholders wdll be for it because it means more dividends.”

jMONDAY, MARCH 9, 1936

burn down the institute if the $25 weren’t forthcoming on the spot. “I blame some of it on the candidates; they promised too much. One of them up in the country told his constituents they’d be having the $25 to buy Christmas gifts for the kiddies. That was bosh.” In justice it must be recorded that Mr. Aberhart at no time pledged immediate, or even early, payment of the social dividend. Sotto voce, it is said, during the campaign and more candidly after election, he specified 18 months or two years as the earliest date for distributing the $25-a-month manna. But less discriminating Social. Crediters may be pardoned for having misunderstood in the zeal of the campaign. The Calgary prophet entered upon political leadership almost by inadvertence, although devout followers no doubt saddle the responsibility on Providence. B B B A QUIET citizen, except when explaining Armageddon and St. John’s Four Horsemen from the pulpit, Mr. Aberhart for twenty years served the Crescent Heights High School as principal, voted the Conservative ticket, saved his money, built a comfort-

T TNDER-COVER sniping at Secretary of Commerce Roper from within the Administration has become more intense and not too carefully concealed. It increases in proportion to the internal dissension which chums the Commerce Department. No other Cabinet member has achieved Roper's record for firingor losing outstanding executives. They quit because they can not stomach the intrigue of his department. Here is the record: John Dickinson, the first Assistant Secretary of Commerce, quit in disgust and was transferred to Justice. His successor, Ernest G. Draper, an able New York business man, is reported to be on the verge of departure. Ewing Y. Mitchell, another Assistant Secretary, was fired amid a fusillade of charges and countercharges regarding shipping and efficiency. Willard Thorpe, Roper’s first chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, was axed by a Senate committee when he came up for confirmation, as a result of secret connivance by some of Roper’s henchmen. Thomas M. Woodward, independent and outspoken member of the Shipping Board, was forced by Roper to resign when he insisted that shipping companies fulfill the terms of their contracts with the government. McCoy Jones and Frederic L. Adams, crusading members of the Bureau of Navigation p.na Steamboat Inspection. we*.e dismissed for making public the real facts about inefficiency m their bureau. 'Copyright, 1936, by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

able bungalow, regarded Alberta as God’s country'and indulged his harmless quirk for expounding Bible prophecy. Incidentally, he interpreted the prophets quite literally. A graduate of Queens College in Ontario and a mathematician, I have it on the word of R. B. Bennett, former Dominion Prime Minister and a Calgarian, that he ranked tops as an educator. When his Bible classes outgrew the denominational churches which successively harbored them, he organized the institute, personally raising the $65,000 needed to build the hall already described. Dispensing with clergy, his was a layman’s “church,” bearing much the relationship to the stone piles of orthodoxy in Calgary that Social Credit does to conventional economics. Radio advanced slowly into Calgary. At a little later time than an energetic parish priest in Royal Oak, Mich., discovered this magnificent new enlargement of the human voice, Mr. Aberhart, too, learned of its advantage. His became the first sustained propaganda broadcast in southern Alberta and out of it he established a radio correspondence Bible class with 5,000 members. Similarly with Father Coughlin,

POOR LEAD PERMITS SLAM

Today’s Contract Problem South is playing the contract at four spades doubled. The opening diamond lead is ruffed by East, w-ho cashes the king of hearts and then returns a spade. Can South now make his contract? 4 S 2 ¥ 3 ♦AK Q 6 3 4 A 10 8 6 4 4 * I m |4J1074 ¥ 10 9 6 2 _ ¥A K J S ♦ JlO9S W _ b 74 5 S ¥ Void 4Q 9 5 Dealer 4K J 3 4AKQ 9 5 3 ¥ Q 5 ¥7 4 2 4 7 2 N. & S. vul. Opener—¥ J. ■ Solution in next issue. 2 Solution to Previous Contract Problem BY W. E. M’KENNEY Secretary American Bridge League IT is surprising to note that very rarely do we find a hand in tournament bridge at which the same results are obtained at every table. There is always some variation—a bad bid or a bad opening lead. It is quite apparent that today's hand very easily can make four hearts or four no trump. These results were achieved by several pairs. One or two pairs succeeded in making five hearts, and this can be accomplished if the diamond suit is not started, and the losing diamond is discarded on the long heart suit. The most surprising result, however, and one that seemed to raise a great deal of discussion, was a

he invaded the field of politics, finding controversy stimulating to mail, cash receipts and prestige. And, finally, Aberhart unearthed a social conscience. The misery of Albertans, heirs to a glorious land, but crushed by a cruel economy of debt plus contracted markets, became disturbing to his sense of well-being. B tt HE was shocked to hear, for instance, that the North farmers had been reduced to trapping gophers, unpalatable rodents, for food. He read statistics showing that between 1928 and 1934 52 per cent of all Alberta farmers possessing telephone service, almost indispensable in that scattered country, had been forced to give it up. The province of Alberta owns its own telephone system and the rates had been adjusted to diminishing farm incomes by the United Farmers government. In September, after his election, the Premier made a triumphal visit to his home town, Seaforth, Ont., scene of his birth 58 years ago. In a speech to his old neighbors, he said, as if in justification for his entrance into politics: "Conditions in Alberta almost made me a Communist, although I have no use for Communism.” Given an aroused social conscience, a radio following, a closely knit organization unified by the Bible, and it was almost certain that Mr. Aberhart would find a political formula. He did. Two years ago, while at Edmonton, grading papers for $lO a day and expenses, a holiday chore which Alberta teachers covet, he ran into Major Douglas’ economic theories labeled Social Credit. Unkind Albertans say that only a man skilled at searching the apocalyptic meanings of St. John the Divine could have interpreted Douglas. Surely, Mr. Aberhart applied liberal meanings which Douglas himself has never quite fathomed. Tomorrow —Aberhart finds himself in power.

4A9 6 2 ¥J9 5 3 ¥ A 5 4A 5 3 4K.)10 8 I N |4 4 3 ¥9wp ¥ 7 2 ¥K.I 9 7 w c c ¥QloS4 4Q96 2 b 2 Dealer ] AJ ly 8 7 i4Q 7 5 ¥ A K Q 10 6 4 ¥B3 4 K 4 , Duplicate—N & S vul South West North East 1 ¥ Pass L 4 Pass 2 ¥ Pass 2 N T Pass 3 4 Pass 4 ¥ Pass Opening lead— 4 2 2 ■ 11 . ~~ -I score of 680 points. I took the trouble to investigate this result and found that it had been accomplished because of an opening lead which I always have freely criticised; namely, the lead of a jack from a king-jack-ten holding. In this particular hand the jack of spades was opened and permitted to ride around to. the queen. Two rounds of trump were taken and South now led a small heart to the ace-nine-six. West split his two remaining honors, playing the ten, and North won with the ace. South returned to his hand with the king of clubc. A small spade was played to the nine-six oh the board. West was forced to go up with his king, and this established the nine in dummy for a discard of the losing diamond. Asa result of the opening of the jack of spades, which I have always considered to be a losing opening, South was able to make six hearts on a hand which originally could not produce more than four odd. (Copyright, 1936. by NBA Service. Inc.)

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

Entered as Second-Clan* Matter at IVustoffice. Indianapolis, Iml.

Fair Enough MMH VIENNA, March 9.—Monarchists have long been planning io dust off the crown and plant it on the royal skull of the exiled heir to the throne. He is a persistent little parasite named Otto, who had reached the age of 21 entirely innocent of useful toil and any contribution to his country or human race. He has been biding his time and watching his chances in Belgium. His chances are not very good at the present writing. but his mother, who is a Bourbon named Zita, puts in her time heating up the

Royalists and needling her kid to demand his rights. Otto is the son of Karl, who took over just after the death of old Francis Joseph during the big war and died in exile in Madeira after the fall of the monarchy. Karl was the son of the diseased and degenerate grand duke named Otto, who was the brother of Francis Joseph. Back in the good old days of the monarchy this Otto, the grandfather of the present heir, was a notorious barfly and chaser in the night life of Vienna, whose

career rose to a gaudy climax one night when he stalked into the dining room of the Sacher Hotel and went about among the ladies and gentlemen, passing the time of evening attired only in his monocle and sword. When old Francis Joseph heard of this he called Otto to him and hit him on the nose. Otto couldn't hit back because Francis Joseph was not only his brother but his Emperor. BBS Probably a Good Thing IT was considered to be a good thing for the country and the dynasty when he curled up and died, in 1910. He now lies with the rest of the Hapsburgs in the cellar of a Capuchin Church, done up in a bronze coffin the size of a piano crate. These enormous boxes probably were the inspiration for the fabulous caskets in which the more prosperous hoodlums of the prohibition era were laid to rest, although it must be noted that bootleggers’ coffins were phony, whereas these unquestionably are real. ' The bronze coffins of the. Hapsburgs undoubtedly are all that they pretend to be. Empress Maria Theresa and her husband have the best one, a magnificent two-passenger model, big as a Hudson River gravel barge, with cupids, angels and death-heads wrought in best-quality bronze and battle scenes engraved on the sides and war drums, bugles and cannon balls strewn around the base. On top of the box are two life-size figures, the Empress herself and her husband, both fully dressed, arising as though from a long sleep, while a fat little angel with a big bronze horn blows a summons to bliss eternal. The Empress put her husband away 15 years before she died. In the meantime she used to drop in every so often to see how he was getting along. B B B The Evil Omen SERVANTS would carry her down the cellar of the Capuchin Church in a chair with handles on it, and after she had taken an inventory of the bronze boxes of varying sizes and pretentiousness she would get back in the chair and cluck to the servants to get going out of there. But the last time she went visiting, one of the handles of the chair brdke and the Empress sat on the stone floor rubbing herself rrabout the place where she would have busted her flask, if she had had one, and declaring that this was an omen of her own death. So she didn’t go into the cellar again until they carried her down and laid her beside her husband, who was pretty well kippered by this time. The coffin weighs 10 tons, and seems almost too much bronze to inclose a queen and her gigolo husband when you consider how poor the country is and what sort of burial Austria was able to give a million or more men who were killed or died in Galicia, Italy, Serbia and Siberia in the big war. They weren’t able to keep much track of them. They were shoveled into holes or left just where they fell. It is just as good as any other way, no doubt, but the casual and blurry disposition of all those patriots who fought for the Hapsburgs in a war which they knew nothing about presents an interesting contrast to the elaborate comfort of their departed rulers. Outside the Capuchin Church a paralyzed exsoldier sat in a wheel chair selling postcard pictures of the burial boxes of his late lamented rulers, and around the corner there was a line of rusty, grimy people, most of them old and all of them withered and dejected, carrying little buckets in which to receive a ration of soup from the charitable fathers of the church.

Gen. Johnson Says—

WASHINGTON, March 9.—" The right of the People to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.” Nobody invented that. Nobody doubts its meaning. It is a principle of our race, going so far back toward the springs of Saxon antiquity that the “memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Forcing John Lackland to write it on parchment didn’t make it law. Passing it by parliament more than half a century later didn't make it law, and neither did writing it in our Constitution make it law. It has been law in our hearts since our beginning. New inventions have appeared. Instead of keeping our papers in an iron-bound box, we intrust some of them to telegraph companies under a well-under-stood pledge of privacy, mam SENATOR BLACK has used Senate power on a forthright fishing expedition to procure a wide and indiscriminate disclosure of telegraphic correspondence. It makes no difference whether an invasion of privacy is by a booted soldier or a Senate supbena. “An Englishman’s house is his castle” may be a catchword, but we had better not give it up without a thought. We have fought for less than that. Senator Black is on the right trail. Abuses in utilities will be shown to be worse than abuses in railroads. But one crime does not justify another. Asa lawyer, I think the Supreme Court will not review an administrative act of the Senate. But it would be well for Black to reread his own oath. If deliberate promises like the Democratic platform, which averred its own inviolability, and oaths of office, which carry their solemnity on their faces, mean nothing, then our civilization means nothing. From top to bottom it is based on faith in promises. Hugo Black is perilously close to false swearing. (Copyright. 1936, by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.l

Times Books

A MYSTERY story with a half dozen suspects is the latest thriller off the pen of A. Fielding (Kinsey, New York; $2), whose Chief Inspector Pointer already has an imposing list of murder solutions to his credit. The newest is “The Case of the Missing Diary" and it does succeed in holding the reader's interest to the very last page. Nevertheless, it happens to be one of those stones in which the reader feels that he’s been tricked by the author. Intentionally, or not, Mr. Fielding gives as fact something which later turns out to be a story built up by the murderer to free himself of suspicion. Chief Inspector Pointer is his usual alert self trapping the criminal when that gentleman lets slip a few innocent words. (By N. E. I.).

Westbrook Pcgler