Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 May 1937 — Page 14

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PAGE 14 The Indianapolis Times | (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Business Manager

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TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1937

IL CENSOR UPPOSE we were to pick up our newspapers one day and find buried on an inside page along with the gout ads a formal decree signed by Franklin Roosevelt alleging that the British press had been unfair to American armed forces and summarily recalling all American news correspondents from London. : Suppose on the next day, and the next, and the next, we were to look through our newspapers and find nowhere in all the columns a single British news item or picture— not even anything about the coronation or David Windsor and Wallis Simpson. Suppose, also, that we twisted the dials of our radios but heard no mention of anything occurring in the greatest empire on earth, and went to movie theaters and saw newsreels from which all British scenes had been expunged.

If you can stretch your imagination that far, you possibly also can stretch it far enough to imagine what would soon become the American state of mind. And how by word of mouth the most fantastic gossip would spread among us about the doings of the British Empire—from one person that the Canadian armed forces were massing on our northern border, from another that British men-of-war were anchored off Bermuda, preparing to attack our Atlantic shores, and from another the whisper that Hindu regiments had been landed in Mexico and were moving north toward the Rio Grande. ”n 2 ” 2 ” 2 \A7EIRD, isn't it? Yet censorship such as that described above actually has been put into effect in Italy, by order of Dictator Mussolini. In Italy today in so far as the . customary channels of information are concerned, the empire on which the sun never sets has ceased to exist. Il Duce did this because he got mad about what British newspapers were saying regarding Ethiopia and: Italian meddling in the Spanish war. : : But there is one thing which even the mighty Benito cannot control, and that .is word-of-mouth gossip. And we doubt not that fantastic rumors of the sort we imagined above are even now gaining currency among the people of Italy. urs is a continent far removed from the British sphere |of influence, ‘but lItaly’s is a peninsula jutting athwart the British life-line, confined in an inland sea guarded by British Gibraltar at one end and British Suez at the other.

And be they Americans or Italians, when people cannot | ‘ 3 o g . ve get news they create rumors, manufacture suspicions and spread fears. We in America have every reason to be thankful that

Some of his enemies’call Franklin Roosevelt a dictator. But any President who would undertake what Mussolini has done would be laughed at. Newspapers would send more

British news. And if he persisted in any effort to carry out a censorship, courts would enjoin his agents and put them in jail. Congress would impeach him, and courts then probably would commit him to an insane asylum. It has been said that democratic government is not as

efficient as Fascist government. But it is certainly more comfortable,

VV RITIN G of the beauty of English scenery Mark Twain said: “After all, in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have sampled the globe, I am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, and it is repeated in the glaciers and SNOWY ranges of many parts of the earth: there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New England and Alaska; there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in 10,000 islands of the southern seas; there is a beauty of the prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of its beauty; but that beauty which is England is|alone—it has no duplicate. It is made up of very simple details—just grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin—and over it all a mellow dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its own.” And as with the countryside, so with the Coronation; over. it all that haze of history. The anointing oil, the sword, the robe, the ring, the scepters, the crown, the book, the trumpets—each an emblem in a ceremony precisely the same as was the ceremony of a coronation a thousand years ago. For 10 centuries England has been a going concern. Why? While attempting a simple answer may seem presumptuous, we venture one nevertheless. It's that thing which 1s ingrained in the English temperament—compromise, Ability to rock with the punch, to avoid lost causes, to stay in the middle of the road, and muddle through, to yield when yielding is called for, though face is lost—those qualities are as much a part of the typical Englishman as are the hedges typical of English scenery. And we believe they explain why through all the stress and strain and strife that have beset her and the world she is still doing business at the same old stand.

Y. W. C. A. MORTGAGE-LIFTING DRIVE A CAMPAIGN to raise $70,000 to lift the mortgage on the Phyllis Wheatley Y."W. C. A. branch and to replace interest payments taken from the endowment fund was opened formally with a dinner last night. The Y. W. C. A. has been a force for social good in Indianapolis for 42 years. It offers guidance, shelter and companionship to women and girls often not reached by. any other group. Last year 5322 girls away from home were taken care of at a nominal fee at the three branches here. All Indianapolis wishes the fund-raising drive success so that the Y. W.’s efforts may continue unimpaired.

-been impressed with his quiet efficiency.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _

Ain’t We Got Fun!—By Talburt

The Real Coronation—By Johnstone

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1937

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Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler Mussolini Is Angry» at British

Journalists for Telling How Italian Troops in Spain Fled Before Ladies

EW YORK, May 11.—These dispatches have no desire to cause international complications and therefore will ignore the interesting conduct of Benito Mussolini's invincible legions in the Spanish war. The British journalists have been less discreet, for they gave stirring descriptions of the invincible legions in their dashing advance to the rear pursued by the Communist rabble and followed that incident

|with word-pictures of the Duce’s (herces in flight before a platoon of Spanish ladies. It appears that the conquering hosts of the new Italian empire took one look at the Spanish ladies, threw away their rifles— purchased with gold from their mothers’ wedding rings — and jumped into the sea. They did not wait to ascertain the ladies’ intentions. In retaliation for this publicity and for frequent mention of the words Caporetto and Adowa in the British press, the Duce has withdrawn all the Italian journalists from England, a sad blow to the British race. The words Caporetto and Adowa strike an unpleasant note in the Duce’s soul. They are not fighting words, exactly.

British journalists are ornery about some things, however, and whenever the Duce threatens to unleash his invincible legions against Great Britain they inquire whether he means the same sort of invincibles who wrote the names of Caporetto and Adowa in large, if not exactly lustrous, letters in Italian history, and who dashed rapidly to the rear in Spain.

In the way they mention feats of the invincible legions there is more than a faint suggestion that the - British are unimpressed. Their sales-resistance may be due in part to the recollection of the time when they, themselves, pulled out of the war in France and rushed down to Italy to turn the Italians around as they raced toward Sicily, one of the greatest advances to the rear in military history.

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Tx Duce is a proud and sensitive man and though! his own papers at his own dictation constantly denounce the British, he sharply resents unkindness in the British press.

That may be hard to understand, but it is quite logical and fair to the Fascist and Nazi minds, both of which resent interference in their affairs, but presume to impose their censorship on the free press of Great Britain and this country.

The Duce recently made a speech about Adowa in which he said that Italy had a long memory and never forgot a debt. The Italians lost a whole army at Adowa 40 years ago in a fight with a barefoot tribe, but captured the town last year in their great defensive war 3000 miles from home. _

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IE would be a great loss if the Duce should withdraw the charming Italian journalists from our midst, although the blow would be less severe if he would take along with them the Unione Siciliana and a few boatloads of Lucky Lucianos and Johnny Torrios, his Anselmis and Scaleses, his Joe Aiellos and Al Capones.

The Duce’s speech about Italy’s'long memory, while ominous to the British, may be a message of cheer to this country. For 40 years Italy remembered Adowa and finally paid the Ethiopians back. He hasn’t said anything about paying back the war debt to the United States, but it is good to know that he doesn’t forget. -

Mr. Pegler

. ° : The Hoosier Forum 1 wholly disagree with what you say, but will . defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

MODEST LOANS HELD CHECK ON TENANCY EVIL

By “Independent Farmer’

The most hopeful and constructive phases of the report of the President’s Committee on Farm Tenancy are those which propose ways to check the spread of tenancy. Ours is a young republic. Yet in the comparatively few years of its history, our rural population has been changed from one that was preponderantly of the freeholder class to one that is fast becoming preponderantly of the tenancy class. We never worried much about conditions responsible for that trend so long as we had free lands in the West and the nonowners could move on to it and stake out homesteads.

But there are reasons for becoming alarmed today about the causes which are forcing 40,000 farm-owners a year to sink into tenancy. The Govetnment has to provide something more than an equivalent of the homestead.

Would Solve Nothing

For merely to arrest the present trend, by buying up 40,000 farms annually and turning them over to tenants free—which would be a modern equivalent of the homestead method—the cost, at $4000 a farm, would be $160,000,000 a year. And it would solve nothing and get us nowhere. 3 The President’s committee therefore quite properly turned its attention first to remedies for the conditions that have caused so many freeholders to mortgage their land and then lose it, becoming tenants, and then to mortgage their livestock and equipment and lose that, to become ‘croppers and hired hands. : One suggestion is a special cap-ital-gains tax on profits derived from land speculation—to check one of the forces that bring on mortgages, and to help stabilize land prices at a level that will make profitable farming possible, Another is to provide modest loans and expert guidance in farm practices and management in order to help prevent small owners from slipping into tenancy, and to help the masses of tenants, croppers and laborers to improve their living standards and earning power and to begin their climb up the ladder.

Submarginal Lands

A third is to buy up and retire from cultivation submarginal lands that cannot be farmed at a profit. Of these there are millions of acres, unfit for the plow but well-suited for return to forests and grass range. 4A fourth is to improve the leasing system, through co-operation with state and local agencies, with a view to giving tenants greater security of tenure and encouraging them to take better care of the land. Unless these, or similar steps to acomplish the same ends, are carried out, the most advertised part

General Hugh Johnson Says—

For Constitutional Reasons TVA But It Is Primarily a Power Develo

KK josvies, Tenn., May 11.—This column is being written at the end of a day spent at the Horris Dam and in the Great Smoky Mountains National ark. Having served four years in national rks, this writer has at least a speaking scquaintancigin them. Great Smoky is not so well developed in Yoads and trails as Yosemite. It has no such dramatic and spectacular breath-takers as the awful chasm of Yosemite and the King’s River canyon, or the incredible Sequoia gigantea. But its sheer savage jumble of mountains, especially now that they are frosted with dogwood blossoms, is as nearly a perfection of rugged landscape

. as anything I have seen in half a world of wonders.

Last year, I am told, it had about 500,000 visitors, which was more than any one of the other national parks, including Yellowstone. It is easy to go ga-ga about Norris Dam, too. David Lilienthal of TVA took me up there. I have always Here he has crystallized it into a permanent monument in concrete

and steel. It is something of a record in speed and

perfection. The instant impression of the whole place is of businesslike and economical administration.

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HE TVA idea is to take a whole river system from its source to its mouth and change it into, a chain of lakes by a series of dams and locks so that you can control its flow—play it like an organ. Why?

The TVA literatuge, says: (1) For navigation, (2) for:

Is Touted as Navigation Project, pment and as Such Is Magnificent

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

of the pregram—the provision of long-term, low-interest credit to enable the more competent tenants to acquire ownership—must fail of its purpose. It was the weakness of the old Bankhead tenant bill, which almost passed last year, that it provided credit and nothing more.

# 8 =n BRANDS MAINE STRIKE INJUNCTION AS 'TORY’ By Del Mundo

It seems that the State of Maine is determined to be recorded in political history as the “Last of the Mohicans” of the Tory faction cf the Republican Party. Judge Harry Manser of the Maine Supreme Court has given a twisted interpretation to the Wagner act in an injunction in which he ruled, in part, that maintenance of a commissary and a kitchen to feed the strikers was a violation of the injunction.

The enforcement of this feature of the injunction is to be postponed temporarily. If the strikers continue to hold mass meetings, how-. ever, the operation of the kitchen to feed the strikers will have to be discontinued. This is plainly an effort to intimidate the strikers and maintain undemocratic, economic slavery in a democratic nation. I would like to suggest that Congress pass a resolution calling the attention of the judge to the First Amendment to the Constitution, and to the following provision of the Wagner act—“Nothing in this act shall be construed so as to interfere with or diminish in any way the right to strike.” Also it should be brought to the judge's attention that fascism has not yet been established in the United States.

MY PRAYER

By DORA ALLEN

Put your heart into gy hands - Always for me to hold, Until ‘death do us part’ Let me cling to that heart of gold.

Place your lips upon mine own Ardently and yet discreet, Until all life has left me, Let me cling to those lips so sweet.

DAILY THOUGHT

O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.—Psalms 136:1.

50% goodness hath been great

to thee.—Let never day nor night unhallowed pass but still remember what the Lord hath done. —Shakespeare, |

URGES CAREFUL DRAFTING OF LAWS By W. Stone : . The purpose of the first FrazierLemke Mortgage Moratorium Law was the same as the purpose of the second. But.the first law was cut down and the second was upheld, in both instances by unanimous vote of the Supreme Court.

The intention of Congress' was to cope with a real emergency that had arisen: in the farm belt, where a long period of bankrupting prices had brought on a rash of foreclosures, which in turn had aroused resentment and mass resistance. Congress undertook to set up an orderly, court-supervised bankruptcy procedure, to enable farmers to compose their debts and hold onto their farms. The first law was hurriedly drafted and rushed through Congress by the threat of a filibuster. But when the law was applied,’ it was found that its loose language denied substantial rights to mortgage holders, depriving them of property without due process. So the Court ruled it was unconstitutional.

To meet the Court’s criticisms, |

Congress redrafted the law, writing in provisions that safeguarded the mortgagee’'s rights and at the same time extended more liberal terms for debt composition and retirement to the mortgagor. And to this second law the Court has given its blessing. In all this, of course, is an object lesson which should make Congress hereafter more careful in the drafting and enactment of laws. In it, also, I think, is a warning against permitting conditions to get so far out of hand that Congress does not have time to be careful. 8 ” 8

SUGGESTS ACTION AGAINST PRIVILEGED By Bull Mooser, Crawfordsville During the past months we have heard much about that incorrigibly radical group of propagandists in our midst, the privileged interests. It seems to me that now there is opportunity to do something ‘about it. This month most of the privileged interests will be in London honoring the coronation of their King and doing obeisance to traditional lordship of the Bank of England over all high finance. While they are gone why. not pass a law declaring them to be emigres and requiring that before they re-enter the country they take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution? ny Then we would have the schoolteachers, the privileged interests, and the political office holders sworn to protect the Constitution. With that, the Constitution ought to be pretty safe.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round’

Question of Compromise on Court Bill Up to President: Inti Believe’

“medium for the transmitting ‘Hard upon the heels of me as to:

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0 Me By Heywood Broun oe Radio Commentators Tend to Ba Actors Rather Than Reporters Of the News, Columnist | Says’

NEW YORK, May 11.—I first heard of the Hindenburg disaster through a radip. announcement. This is by no means the best 2 tragic news. .

the dead and injured would come the sound of studio applause, shouts of “Hi! Hi!” and the a%e nouncer’s joyous report, “Here comes. Bing Crosby!” I am not blaming anybody for| this. It would’ be difficult, if not impossible, for. all persons on prepared programs" to team up their| scripts and prevent hilarity impinging upon the domain of dreadful detail. : And yet as the evening wore’ on, with its constant switch from*’ casualty lists to crooning, 1 felt that something ought to be done about it. There is a time to keen - and a time to croon. At least, I could make my own arrangements, and I shut the thing off. : Although the radio: in its exe Broun ploitation of personality is supe’ posed to bring al warmer and a more human note than other media of communica=tion, there are occasions upon which |its fundamental setup is far more callous than any printed page. Indeed I am beginning to wonder whether the overemphasis upon personality in both radio’and press Is not essentially a somewhat glacial approach to the" vital problems of life. Autobiographical details about the lives of not very important people can approach absolute zero. when some struggle of men against ~ death is in the cards. And I believe that this accusa=" tion of too great a subjectivity and ego concentration - lies closer to the door of radio than it does to the" portals of the press. 1 re If I ever own a newspaper (and I must point outthat this is not an appeal to “angels’’), I would rule’ that every columnist must devote at least half his’ contribution to an account of news happenings actu= ally seen and observed by the commentator. » EJ ”

AD even so, the commentators of the press ars far more active in getting about than are their - confreres of the air. The gentlemen who do the. nightly comments for the ether are S0{busy preparing. scripts, or having them prepared, that they seldom. get down to earth from their penthouses. Indeed, few of ‘them make any pretense. of gathering news, In fact, it seems to me that the radio commen-. tator, with enough exceptions to include my friends, is not a commentator at all but an actor. I know several first-class reporters who now| give out only through the microphone. At least for the duration. of their contracts they have ceased to be good newss papermen. Their first interest is in vocal production.

: z z = | I TRUST that nobody will insist that Boake Carter A is an economist or Ed Hill an authority on cone temporary labor relations. Both gentlemen do excellent and exciting jobs. Give either of them no mora than a headline and he can make the invisible lis~ tener see. troopships upon the tide and watch the Derby horses in the stretch or thrill to the mental sound picture of a coronation band.’ | : To be sure, those men and women who fulfill a somewhat similar function through the newspapers should not escape scotfree from the same accusa=tion. Frankly, to coin a phrase, I think the “It seems to me” business is too much with us. My advice’ to all those who have personalities, or think they have, is to pack them in their old Bi bag and get out and hustle to find what the other fellow really. thinks. | 5 1 |

He Will Stand Pat on Measure Until Court Rules on Social Security.

national defense, (3) for flood control and (4) incidentally, secondarily for power.

Part of that is hooey. The Supreme Court has thus

far authorized the Federal Government to spend public funds only to improve navigation and defense—not solely to create power. But it has said that when, in this process, power is created “incidentally” as a byproduct, then, and presumably then only, can it go into the power and light business. . Accordingly, TVA is primarily a “navigation” project, only incidentally for power. It wouldn't have been attempted at all, according to this, except that if, as and when all the proposed and constructed 10 dams are built—and only then—there will be a nine-foot slack water channel from the mouth of\the Tennesse to Knoxville—700 miles with a lift of 700 feet. : » #® un DON'T know the total cost of these 10 dams, but it is prodigious. No such project for navigation alone would ever be recommended by any engineer outside of an insane asylum. The installation at Muscle Shoals was a crazy product of war hysteria—to produce nitrogen from the air. It is also now advanced to holster TVA constitutionality as necessary for national defense. For power production and river control. TVA is magnificent. not primarily a navigation project, but a power project. Why does the Federal Government so frequently have to go sneaking around in Jfalse faces?

But like the St. Lawrence seaway, it is |

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, May 11.—Whether there is a compromise on the Supreme Court issue now rests with one man—President Roosevelt. Administration leaders in Congress are ready to make concessions on the proposal for six new justices. Several even believe, privately, that a compromise is necessary to pass any kind of a judicial bill, and what to them is more important, in order to avoid a dangerous rift in Democratic ranks. However, if the President insists on standing pat, the leaders, like good soldiers, will go down the line for him, - J If the President would agree to reduce hisdemand to two additional justices, making a Supreme Court of 11, he could cut the ground from under his foes and his bill would skyrocket through the Senate by an overwhelming majority.

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ITHOUT exception all the waverers and fencestraddlers, like McCarran of Nevada, O’'Mahoney of Wyoming, Hatch of New Mexico, Bone of Washington, Nye and Frazier of North - Dakota, Jonson of Colorado, would plump for such a plan, They are desperately anxious to find a way to line up with the President. But up until the time of his departure, the President was adamant against any modification of his démands, Th won

‘one Presidential confidante explained.

-has come to make terms.

He was firmly convinced that he had the votes to win in the Senate. It is significant, however, that White House intimates did not preclude the possibility of a compromise. They laid great emphasik on the fact that one thing the President was anxioug, to avoid, if at all possible, was a split in the Demos: cratic Party. . “We don’t want to leave any unhealaple wounds,” “If it bes comes necessary we may have to give ground te save the faces of some of the boys.” ’. : x "= i T= big decision facing the President when Hp returns to his desk Thursday is whether the tim;

The decisions upholding the Washington Minimurh . Wage and Wagner Labor Laws, even though 5-to-& decrees, unquestionably have dulled the |edge of his; attack on the Supreme Court. A favorable ruling: on the Social Security Act would further strengthen: the hand of the opposition.

On the other hand, should the oie invalidate:

the law the adverse effect on the opposition would be: crushing, and the President's bill would | be a walke. over. | Ie Insiders, therefore, aré convinced that Roosevelt: will stand pat until after the Supreme Court's ruling: on the Social Security issue, due in the next few weeks, ’ fiir