Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 August 1937 — Page 12

Page PDF (11.03 MB)

Back to issue view

PAGE 12

The Indianapolis Times

NEWSPAPER)

MARK FERREE Business Manager

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY President Editor

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co. 214 W, Maryland St.

Hii

Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bureau of Circulations.

TUESDAY, AUG. 17, 1937

WE CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ELDOM has a country been placed in so quixotic a position as that in which the United States finds itself in the war between China and Japan. China, a weak, peaceable nation of some 450,000,000 people, is invaded by Japan, a nation of 70,000,000 armed to the teeth. We, with our new Neutrality Law, stand looking on. And what do we find? We find that strict application of that law would put us on the side of Japan in point of fact. A proclamation by the President that a state of war exists between Japan and China, as authorized by the

Neutrality Law, would make certain acts mandatory at |

once.

The President would have to prohibit shipment of war

implements to both nations, travel by Americans on ships of either country, floating of loans or granting of credits to either. And he could, at his discretion, put into effect the so-called Cash-and-Carry Law, forcing the nation that needs our goods to come and pay for them, cash at the dock, then haul them away in its own ships. That would not hurt Japan. She is already well armed. Japan, not China, has command of the sea. Thus, we find the Neutrality Law would aid an aggressor and contribute to the doom of a peace-minded country and traditional friend. It would help to destroy the one great remaining undeveloped world market, and to slam, bar and lock the open door in the Far East. We want to be neutral. not permit us to be neutral. If the President applies the law, the United States will no longer be neutral in fact because it will thereby assist Japan. If he refuses to apply the law, he will be accused of being unneutral toward Japan. He thu§ stands to be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

A WISE CHAMPION HILE there may be some disappointment in the decision of young Dick McCreary not to play in the State

Open golf tournament, there is pleasure in the thought |

that Indianapolis’ star linksman adds honor to his record by declining to enter. The 20-year-old golfer already had won the Indianapolis District, and State Junior championships when he stepped out against Phil Talbot of Bloomington, last Saturday and won his third title, the State Amateur.

And while the State Open is going to lose a touch of |

color in McCreary’s withdrawal from the ranks, we think that he has made a wise choice. He will take a well earned rest where golf courses are few, and he will return refreshed—ready for a joust with his books at Wabash College. : Young Mr. McCreary seems to be one of those sports rarities who knows when to call it a day.

EDITH WHARTON RS. WHARTON became a classic long before her death, was revered as a superlative literary artist, was studied and labeled and pronounced a bit dated. Nevertheless she retained to the end the ability to excite and impart a sense of importance which belongs to a high talent. So commanding a figure must seem to its contemporaries as almost eternal. She towered over the ruck of novelists, was certainly one of the most distinguished of America’s feminine personalities, and there is every reason to believe her work will be a part of living memory for a long long future.

A STARTING POINT HE traffic snarl brought into the open by the truck routing row is not just a North Side problem. The need for South Side track elevation presents in itself a far bigger question. When the E. Washington St. road is torn up and rebuilt between Indianapolis and Cumberland another phase of the arterial problem will be brought into relief. Downtown areas are congested. Heavy traffic from the west is concentrated on W. Washington St. In short, we need a comprehensive “use plan” and long-range modernization program to handle traffic. Chairman Earl Crawford of the State Highway Commission advocates the much-needed belt highway around the city and says it is the State’s obligation to build it, beginning in 1938. Engineers say that tomorrow’s highway system will include by-passes or belt lines around all large cities on main trunk highways. Proper and safe use of trunk roads now is hindered by the lack of such facilities. Belt lines, by keeping through traffic out of congested city centers, also would help communities carry on normal business with more convenience and efficiency. Much main-trunk traffic has business within the city.

But the Neutrality Law does |

This calls for improvement of arterial streets to carry such |

traffic into and through the downtown area. The rest of the picture includes super-highways, main trunk roads, terminal facilities, and service roads in rural Today only 373,000 of America’s 3,069,000 miles And

areas. ) : of highway are improved with any kind of surface.

less than half the surfaced roads are high-type paving. Highway safety will not be realized until physical hazards are removed and the traffic flow is freed. No slap-dash plans or fantastic program will achieve the desired goal. We must know the present status of improvements, the distribution of traffic and what it may pe in the future, highway revenue sources. We must know the cost and analyze what the public can now afford. Every attempted project should be justified economically. It should pay dividends in lower transportation cost, safety, pusiness development and convenience. The program should be geared to financially justified needs, and planned to accomplish part of the ultimate objective each year.

: The proposed Sta |

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

The Universal Movement—By Herblock

—rta

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Galluses Demonstration Betrayed, Founding Fathers Think, By Its Adoption of C. |. O. Methods.

NEW YORK, Aug. 17.—Men, I have been having a terrible time lately over a problem which just grew out of nothing. You know I used to like to watch men demonstrate suspenders in drug store windows. Well, a few years ago a friend of mine realized that this wasn't being done any more. So he thought it would be funny to get up a society for the Revival of the Demonstration oi Suspenders in Drug Store Windows, and invite me to join it. He got about two hundred joiners at the start—men of all religious beliefs and political peculiarities. We were supposed to vote for the national officers, but most of us didn’t bother, and the original organizer and a couple of others simply elected and reelected themselves ond changed the constitution and bylaws. to suit themselves, usually in the direction of frivolity, But the idea caught on and two years ago there were 10,000 on the rolls. About that time, politics and personal ambition reared their ugly heads A clique got into the controlling offices and called a convention in Denver, at which it was decided to open the rolls to people who liked to watch men demonstrate exercising machines and razor strops in drug store windows, although our eriginal membership explicitly abhorred exercising machines and razor strop demon-

Mr. Pegler

strations, regarding them as aesthetically inferior to

demonstrations. " 2 E, the founding fathers, resented all this with a slight feeling of betrayal. But there were a lot of Communists and professional organizers at work by now, so we were swamped. The next convention was held in Milwaukee. None of us attended, because it was too far away for most, and anyway we couldn't get any of our people elected. So at the Milwaukee convention the Moscow crowd decided to lean to the C. I. O. The national president made a speech in which he said that only a supercilious and snobbish aristocracy would take literally the original purpose of reviving suspender demonstrations. He said the purpose was to benefit all those who liked to watch demonstrations of whatever kind, not only in drug store windows, but even in windows of empty stores. He was very much insulted toward us founding fathers, and when some of our original number got up and denounced him for a parliamentary trickster and a demagog, a big roughneck of the left wing element, whose passion is watching demonstrations of those jiggling vibrators which reduce the heft of ladies (probably the very lowest type of window demonstration next to the spot remover demonstra-

tion), took a sock at our founding father and knocked him for a loop.

suspender

= un ” JELL, they not only favored C. I. O., despite the fact that many of us preferred the A. F. of L., but they adopted a resolution in favor of Stalin against Trotsky, the Madrid Communist against Franco's Fascist, and oysters against clams. Of course, some of us may have sympathized with Stalin over Trotsky, Madrid against Franco and oysters against clams, but even so most of us thought these matters were not properly the business of our society. Personally, I wouldn't mind, except that I hate oysters and love clams, and will be darned if any bunch of Communists and demagogs is going to make me hate clams and love oysters. You never can tell

what an organization wiil do after you are in. They might come out for tapioca.

Society |

| |

| | | | | | |

| i |

| we are moving toward the Right or | AUTHORS ADVISED TO

i our foreign

, flaunt history.

The Hoosier Forum

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

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY POLICY ATTACKED By W. L. Ballard, Syracuse

Many editorials in the press re- | garding the Asiatic conflict, say our! neutrality law is “futile,” or “a seri- | ous error in the thinking” of the | Administration, or “a law made to | order to promote the cause of the |

» aggressor.” And much more.

| the innocent” reverses the historical | for the motion picture as a medium

American way. It is a stop-gap!

| which may be expected to terminate | masses, it seems there has been a

in “help to the guilty.” We have | simply, and subtly, changed sides. | The point to decide is whether |

toward the Left. Appearances are deceitful, but the fog that surrounds | policy is evidence of Rightism. Subjugating upper and middle classes while catering to the masses is Rightist technique. Being | experts in “morals,” Rightists do not They operate under |

| neutrality laws and parliamentary |

| tion in theocratic Japan, our social- | medical fellows are ditto in Ger-! | many and our Boy Scouts are in

| George III and Lord North ride

| of a formal declaration, find a state ‘of war in China only if and when

| was not neutrality or anything else

paralysis they have produced, until | adjournment, England is as Right- |

ist as Italy, if -we can believe it. |

again. And if England and this country see eye to eye, it only proves them both Rightjst. It is symptomatic that, at this critical time, large American crowds are on French battlefields whooping it up for “peace” when France is flaunted without and wishin by | Rightist war measures; alsu, that | Secretary Hull will, in the absence

Nanking's regulars start to meet the invader! Hull's remark was worth 20 veteran divisions to Japan. It

except Rightist co-operation with Rightists! Incidentally, is it coincident or only misfortune that our religious leaders are now in monarchical Oxford-conference England listen-

[sands of theaters serving cities and

| flatulent garrulity,

ing to Canterbury, our education leaders are now soaking up inspira-

monarchical Holland?

$ #2 » VISUAL EDUCATION BELOW EXPECTATIONS

By Bruce Catton

When the first course in visual education was offered 15 years ago, thoughtful men saw in 1t the promise of great accomplishments in the field of mass teaching. Through moving pictures and slides, they reasoned, large sections of the population could be interested in fields of knowledge otherwise limited to a! comparatively small group of students, Today, according to Gayle Starns of the University of Kentucky extension division, visual education is still in the pioneer stage. Courses are offered in 25 teachers’ colleges, 21 liberal arts colleges, 21 municipal and private universities and 12 state

universities. This is in contrast to the thou-

(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.)

hamlets from coast to coast with a strict diet of amusement films—and some of them not so amusing. In view of hopes originally held

to bring light and knowledge to the

serious oversight somewhere along the line.

un on un

SEEK SIMPLICITY

By Joseph B, Adler

Apropos of the occasion and somewhat in keeping with the cap- | tion in your paper, “Advising All Authors” in writing a novel, I sub- | mit the following: 1. In promulgating your esoteric | cogitations, or articulating superfi- | cial sentimentalities, or philosophi- | cal or psychological observations, | beware of platitudinous = ponder- | osity. \ | 2. Let your extemporaneous des- | cantings and unpremeditated ex- | patiations have intelligibility and | veracious vivacity without rhodo- | montade or thrasonical bombast. 3. Eschew all conglomerations of jejune babblement and asinine affectations. 4. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittacious vacuity and ventriloquial verbosity. 5. Shun double entendress, prurient jocosity and pestiferous profanity, obscurent or apparent. 6. In other words, talk plainly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully and don’t use big words.

#”

” Ld

| DENIES SENATOR WHEELER |HAS INDEPENDENT MIND

By Hiram Lackey

The other day The Times sought to prove that Senator Wheeler was a liberal. So what? Your Tory brothers of other revolutionary days could have proved just as easily that Benedict Arnold was an American, But The Times failed to prove that Senator Wheeler is an independent, unmastered mind. The

ADRIFT

By CLIFF HANSBERRY

You cut my anchor as a last resort; Now I'm drifting far out to sea; Another ship sailed into port, And there wasn't room for me,

DAILY THOUGHT

Be ye strong, therefore, and let not your hands be weak; for your work shall be rewarded.—Chronicles 15, 7.

O know how to wait is the great

secret of success—De Maistre.

reason is that an unmastered mind is a psychological impossibility. A man is either mastered by some noble passion, such as President Roosevelt's passion for justice, or else he is mastered by some mean and petty emotion, such as Senator

Wheeler's jealousy of President Roosevelt. We refer to his cardinal weakness which McNary, the Republican minority leader, took advantage of and thus enabled a minority in Congress to control Congress and frustrated the will of the majority of the American people.

8 & PEDESTRIANS FOUND TO BE AT FAULT By B. C.

A WPA project to study traffic | Massachusetts |

accidents in four cities during the five years ending with 1936 found that of the 356

pedestrian deaths in that time, the

pedestrian was at fault in 286 cases.

In other words, 78 per cent of these | | people were victims of their own

nistakes. While this does not by any means

{ lessen driver responsibility, it does

indicate that the walker should obey traffic signals, cross streets by walking directly from one curb to the other, and otherwise observe the rules of safety and courtesy. Figures such as those obtained by the WPA provide the basis for additions to city traffic codes. And when this is done, the aggrieved pedestrian who is stumping for his

| “day in court” may get it—on a basis of equal responsibility with the |

motorist. ”n un n

FARMER EXPECTS U. S. TO SET PRICES FOR HIM By H. S. The bountiful crop prospect alarms our Congressmen and farmers. Already 42 per cent of the farmers are reduced to tenancy. Price control is their cry. Pegging the market with governmental loans on crops is always fatal to price control. The farmer in America is too independent even when reduced to tenant serfdom, to per-

mit his participating in a National |

Agricultural Production Corp. to produce and market his product intelligently, He always asks “What will you pay for my product?” Whereas all other producers fix their price to assure public consumption and their own ability to pay their bills, the independent farmer leans on the Government to do the thing he could do for himself.

n ” n CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CALLED INCONSISTENT

By James Taxeaten

Perhaps you can tell us why the Chamber of Commerce on one hand is now shouting against the high tax rates and on the other hand is boosting for a two-million-dollar coliseum, which we don't need and which will add tremendously more and more top the tax rate. Why not get an expression from the Board of Trade? Let's have a little conservative thought before the town goes broke.

‘By Heywood Broun

It Seems to Me:

Hunting an Opponent for Battling Hemingway, Broun Considers Using Hair Tonic and Offering Himself... EW YORK, Aug. 17.—I read with great. . interest and delight the stories of th¥"

fight between Max Eastman and Ernest. Hemingway.

There should be more such” houts and they ought not be limited to;a

single round. Whenever a couple of authér§’ get to scuffling, somebody always leaps in and, separates them. I don't know why, “ It would greatly profit American literature ff writers were compelled to put up their dukes every once and so often in defense of the stuff thgy/ turn out. There would be mér sincerity and more true talk if a novelist really had to stand ready to take it on the chin for his emotions and beliefs. Many books are published which would not even justify a four-round preliminary for featherweights. Tons of printed matter can be tossed aside every year, with no more than a slap on the wrist, nr In spite of Hemingway's eagers: ness to post $1000 forfeit, I doubt if he will be able to get a return bout with One= round Eastman. Indeed, the State Boxing Commis« sion should not sanction such a match, because ik. would be no contest. Ernest Hemingway wauld , come into the ring a prohibitive favorite. In fact, I rather imagine that the Key West strong boy has . a pretty clear claim to the championship title in the . American Literary heavyweight field.

Mr. Broun

n T was my good fortune to witness the Sinclaif © Lewis-Theodore Dreiser contest several years ago, . Neither of those battlers could possibly make the. grade. Mr. Dreiser in action strongly resembles: am ancient heavyweight named Ed Dunkhorst, who was known in the sport pages of the day as the human freight car. Mr. Dreiser's ring technique is ponderous. He“ telegraphs his punches. Still that is a step ahead '® of his literary style, He could not possibly telegraph his sentences. They would have to go by night letter” Thomas Wolfe is distinctly a possibility, for he ‘is’ very large and looks husky. Moreover, anybody who - has read his books knows that he can go a route, They say that Jim 'Tully used to be a prize-fighter, But I am skeptical, because there are even people who say that he used to be a writer. : If the entrance requirements can be lowered enough to let in people who write short stories for the magazines, then Quentin Reynolds of Collier's might give Mr. Hemingway a bit of a go. ita

" a

" ”

ATURALLY Mr, Reynolds would need a bout under his belt before tackling. Hemingway, and: I think I might try my man out by sending him: against Cral Van Vechten. Ben Hecht and J. Ps McEvoy might be thrown in as a preliminary. ‘2 I have scen newspaper syndicate pieces hy Japk-: Dempsey. Max Schmeiing has been a contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, and Gene Tunney mostr « certainly wrote a full-length book called “Why Men Fight.” Anyone of these three gentlemen could quite: easily take not only Ernest Hemingway, but my own. * white hope, Quentin Reynolds. 3

Indeed, if there is enough in it I might even pre~.- A»

sent myself as one who is willing to try to bring ther title back to Manhattan. But first I would haveste lose 60 pounds and make myself into a fighter. Andeven before that I would have to try to make myself into an author Ein Moreover, if I properly understand the issue bee: tween Hirsute Hemingway and One-round Eastman, I also might be under the necessity of pouring an” enormous amount of hair tonic over my chest. Mart

ETHANY BEACH, Del, Aug. 17.—In the recent legislative pother not much attention is being given to the President's veto of the Caraway resolution. It provided for a survey by the U. S. Engineers Corps of problems of flood-control, hydro-electric power and erosion,

: It was vetoed on the principal ground that it ignored and duplicated the “co-ordinate planning work already in progress under the general guidance of the National Resources Committee” and that it by-passed the TVA’s proposal to have planning done for seven economic provinces, through the initiation of planning work “in the state and local units,” etc,

This reasoning is contradictory—that the resolution is bad because it does not decentralize planning, and also bad because it does—though not in Uncle Delano’s National Resources Committee, reporting to the President, but rather in the Engineers Corps. reporting to Congress. ” ” = HERE sounds a fundamental of a deeper note than appears at first hearing. The same note was struck in the “Dear Alben” letter and the Brownlow report—that it is the duty of the President to plan |

‘General Hugh Johnson Says—

Veto of Caraway Resolution, Calling for Engineers Corps Survey of National Resources, Strikes Same Note as the 'Dear Alben’ Letter.

laws and for the President to execute them.

If the

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Ex-Detective George Boyd, Senate's Money Guard, Scorns G-Men: Morgenthau Living Life of Fear, Picture-Taking Mishap May Indicate,

(Another Merry-Go-Round Story, Page 1)

| comment on that assignment is:

same authority makes and also executes law, you.have two-thirds of a tyranny. If it also judges the law, you have three-thirds—tyranny complete. “Regional planning” is the embryo of the hinted idea of gradually invading our system of 48 state governments, independent of Washington in local affairs, and substituting economic provinces looking to Washington in all affairs—seven TVA’s!

” = " HE U. 8. Engineers Corps, lent to other departments, has been the engineering mainsprings of the New Deal. Through more than a century that corps has built for itself, in the confidence of Congress and the country, absolute assurance of impartial, nonpolitical, efficient planning and administration. The custom for any Federal project—99 out of 100 of which originate in “state and local units’—is for Congress to call on that corps for surveys before action, as was done in the Caraway resolution. But ever since the advent of that great nationrenovator, Mr. Delano, presiding over the National Resources Committee, there has constantly grown the tendency to take this high-grade service away. Congress, submerge it in the Executive Department

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, Aug. 17~Tourists who peer into the barred doorway of the old Supreme Court room in the Capitol usually miss another spectacle on the other side of the corridor. Big George Boyd sits there watching them, chewing refliectively on the butt end of a cigar. George’s job is to guard the disbursing office, and to carry the money-bags of the U. 8. Senate,

He once was a detective on the Metropolitan Police force of Washington, and has developed a healthy scorn for J. Edgar Hocver and his G-Men. “All they think about is publicity,” says George. “The G-Men are just a bunch of kids who are so nervous they can't keep their fingers off a gun.” He says the Federal Bureau of Investigation once was assigned the job of finding a missing Senator. After two weeks of their “scientific research,” George was called in. He knew the Senator owed money. So he went to the Senators banker, discovered he had drawn more money was at a 8 4 him t and

Bet

‘steps to drop

W ui aS an

“He's just like AT" Smith; you can't help liking him.” 3"

" » 8 A EAR must dominate the Treasury Department and - the life of Secretary Morgenthau more than ARYw »» one suspects, : Recently, while he was being photographed, there:: was a sharp explosion in the rear of the room. Mn Morgenthau, usually soft-spoken and ‘serene, leap-d to his feet with clenched fists, and turned as if, to, defend himself against an assailant. * His face be’ trayed an intense conflict of fear &nd anger. > The explosion was caused by a photographer® defective flashlight bulb. Mrs. Henrietta Klotz, secretary, who had been showered with glass, did no stir. y an hog EPUBLICANS may not have many jobs under the Roosevelt Administration, but they are adroit in keeping what they've got. Not long Secretary of the Interior Ickes tes arrington Carpenter, » Rig blican,

* y ' ‘ Ait A rd r NS teat

his Director of Grazing. But when Stock Associatiap. secret + Bi. MOL