Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 March 1939 — Page 10
The Indianapolis Times
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' SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1% :
EDITORIAL BY PAT HARRISON ~ (OCCASIONALLY anything said here must of necessity be anticlimax to what the editorial itself is about. As for example, opinion on the abdication speech of King Edward VIII would have been an awkward attemnot to gild gold. So we repeated the speech as an editorial. And likewise we are doing with the statement. of our nation’s fiscal situation by Senator Harrison of Mississippi, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. If you already have read it once in a news column, read it again here. The reiteration will be worth while to you as a citizen and a taxpayer. In fact, it’s worth memorizing: “The Government's fiscal picture must be. carefully. | scanned, and that doesn’t mean next year, but now—and it should be done through clear vision, and not through a colored lens. : a . “We are confronted with a budget which calls for over 10 billion dollars in appropriations for the next fiscal year, and the cold suggestion in the budget message of a deficit that will amount to three and a half billion dollars. “This Congress is to consider the legislation that would make possible these large expenditures. We have a. na-
tional! debt of 40 billion dollars and a guaranteed under-
written debt of five billion dollars. “The present law fixes the national debt limit at 45 ‘billion dollars. “With mounting expenditures and: recurring deficits, it is inevitable that that limit will be reached about the first
"of July, 1940. Something must be done now to meet this | orcas because of its stuffy and reactionary but
serious situation. The Government cannot centinue to spend such excessive sums without increasing the limit to which the national debt may go, or without increasing taxes to provide the current revenue to meet the appropriations. Taxes are now so heavy that to increase them would add additional burdens upon American industry and the American people. | “Additional taxes would act as a deterrent to the revival of business, to the increased employment of people, and would handicap the Government's effort fo increase the national income. I am opposed, unless exceptional circumstances arise, to increase by law the present limit of the national debt. The only way, however, to avoid this request coming to Congress or the taxes being increased is to begin immediately a radical and substantial cut in Government expenditures. - “I appreciate the difficulty of the task; but if everyone connected with the operation of Government, whether in the executive or legislative departments, will realize the serious fiscal situation confronting-us, and counsel together and co-operate in mapping out a plan, and unflinchingly and without political consideration work toward that end, we can accomplish results that will bring hope and encouragement to our people and financial stability to our Government, If immediate and unified plans are not laid, and enormous unprecedented expenditures are continued, with the national debt mounting, econonsic confusion and chaos are inevitable.” ;
°
150 YEARS OF CONGRESS
LITTLE group of men assembled in New York City 150 years ago today and began the task of converting the Government of the United States from a document to a reality, Their great experiment is still in progress, but the record of a century and a half should inspire us with hope for the future. There have been times when the American people complained bitterly against their Congress; and other times when-they thanked Providence for the wisdom that ereated this represeniative assembly to preserve our Government of laws and not of men. There have been times when strong men in House and Senate assumed for Congress a disproportionate share of power. There have been times when, under pressure of emergency or in obedience to forceiul Executives, Congress has accepted a subordinate place. And there have been other times when the third branch—the courts—has been too dominant. But always the corrective tendency has asserted itself and ‘there has been a return to the balance intendad by the Constitution. That tendency is making itself felt once more in our times. The presence of President Roosevelt and Chief Justice Hughes as the guests.of Congress at the Sesquicentennial ceremonies in Washington foday is more than a gesture of courtesy extended and accepted. It is a symbol justifying confidence that our form of government will go on as it has for 150 years,
NO BENEFIT TO MOTORISTS
N the absence of any real demand for a reduction in auto‘mobile license fees, especially at the cost of an increase in gasoline taxes from 4 to 5 cents a gallon, we believe the Legislature would do well to abandon the entire su bject at this session. It is a. deceptive scheme at best that the Democrats have been proposing. While they offer the motorist a generous decrease in his license fee, they then propose to raise more than the amount lost by taking it from him a penny at a time. If license fees are unjust in Indiana, the more visible the tax the more certain the motorist will be to realize the unfairness. No injustice is remedied by working the tax around in a form where the motorist is lulled into a belief that he is escaping it because he is paying it only a few cents at a time,
BABIES
FOR years Adolf Hitler has. urged German women to = produce more babies for the greater glory of the Reich, and now Field Marshal Goering announces that the: goal . of Nazi Germany is 100,000,000 population and the higgest air force on earth. It is sadly ironical that this announcement should" k have been made on the same day as one from the British Air Raid Precautions Organization that 1,200, 000 pecially
Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler
Some Who Criticize D. A. R. for Denying Hall to Miss’ Anderson Guilty of Same Discrimination.
EW YORK, March 4—1It takes novery keen nose 4 N for fraud to scent the fake in some expressions of indignation which have been heard since the D. A. R. refused to rent its hall in ‘Washington for a recital by a Negro woman singer. Labor organizations have enforced an exclusion policy against many worthy Americans for years. Some unions have denied Negroes the right to work in certain occupations because they were Negroes and for no other reason. Some have denied white men, as well as Negroes, the right to work in occupations over which the unions have established monopolies. I have a citation of a court case in which evidence - showed that a union demanded an initiation fee of $3000, which would make it one of the most expensive and exclusive clubs in the world. # > 2 x 8 NE union, dominated by a Stalinist group, would, if it had sufficient strength to enforce its program, deny expression to artists in the literary line if they refused to take membership and thereby acquiesce in policies imposed by the Stalinists. Such Americans, artists or not, also would have to contribute maney to the political program of an organization which they believe to be un-American or anti-American. I use the word “artist” in a very careless sense. It is hard to say whether or not a writer is an artist, but, for that matter, is singing ever art? Mrs. Roosevelt resigned from the D. A. R. because by continuing to be a member she would seem to acquiesce in a policy of which she disapproved, to wit, the exclusion of Negro performers from the hall in Washington. In that case she should have resigned from the Democratic Party long ago and would seem to have established for herself a moral compulsion to do so now. I assume, of course, that Mrs. Roosevelt
does belong to the Democratic Party. I have not inquired, but the assumption seems logical and non-
actionable. » f s
HE D. A. R. will find among those who ridicule and détest it for this act of exclusion, men rnd women who make a great virtue of their racial tolerance, but are guilty of political intolerance equally narrow and vastly more threatening to the rights and independence of American citizens. j But among those who most angrily scold the D. A.
always patriotic Americanism are some who would bar
| certain craftsmen or artists from all employment and
artistic expression in print for refusing, like Mrs.
| Roosevelt, to acquiesce in policies which they dis-
approve. ( If the D. A. R.’s action proves to have been correctly reported it will be a pleasure to join in the indorsement of Mrs. Roosevelt’s action. But those who do applaud should be compelled to show clean hands in this test which would eliminate some of the joudest members of the Communist claque, ’
In Washington By Raymond Clapper ‘Mere Gesture by Roosevelt May Yet
. Save Great Advances of His Regime.
ASHINGTON, March 4.—Personal memo on Roosevelt: It's been a long, hard fight, these six years since Mr. Roosevelt stood.on the east steps of the Capitol, on a bleak day, and took over guidance of a nation ‘hat had suffered a complete nervous breakdown. 1 sat in the press section that day, dictating a running description of that first inaugural. Just a few minutes earlier, I had finished writing the advance lead on the inaugural message. During the six years intervening I have seen the New Deal unfold in its early glory of great promise. I have reported its long struggle with' powerfuly hostile forces, seen and unseen, economic and human. 1 have seen it severely set back by the sudden recession in the fall of 1937. More recently I have seen its morale disintegrate until now even many Democrats themselves foresee repudiation at the next election are anticipating a Republican President in 1941. rough all of this time I have seen Mr. Roosevelt sometimes ap, sometimes down, now striking with the flaring of genius, and again blundering into appalling errors, Mr. Roosevelt is the fifth President whose activities I have reported. None has been perfect, certainly not President Roosevelt. Yet to me he stands as a giant of our time, for the mark of a great man is not an absence of weaknesses, but an abundance of strength. And with it one great gift to the country in these times—his buoyant, good-humored confidence that on March 4, 1933, turned national despair into na[ional courage overnight. Por that gift alone the nation should be eternally grateful.
He Need Not Fail
I am convinced that Mr. Roosevelt's own resilient, inspiring personality has to an incalculable degree sustained the morale of the American people, and that it has much to do now with the fact that al{hough uhemployment and the agricultural problem still present discouraging problems, the American people are not licked but have their tails up over the dashboard. Mr. Roosevelt is so clcse to winning that it would be most appalling national tragedy if he should fail now. But he doesn’t need to fail. All that is needed is a push from Roosevelt, action that will give to the capitalist and managerial group the -same confidence that a large remainder of the population has—-or certainly did have—in what he is trying to do. I once described Mr. Roosevelt as a living symbol 9f democracy who is trying to subdue the ugly facts
of society to some more rational scheme of things,
who wants: to ‘bring about in his time a world which shall venture some few paces on into the vistas of fiope which science and man’s ingenuity have opened to us. He has the stuff to make the grade, more of it than anybody I have seen in the White House, and
1 I hope he makes it.
A Woman's Viewpoint
Ey Mrs. Walter Ferguson
(ENaTOR KEY PITTMAN is eager to die for Christianity, justice and liberty—and radios the
news around the world. Probably the world will be no more impressed by the declaration than many of his countrymen who remember that Senators are relieved from active military duty and that high blood pressure has always exempted a man from fighting service, Among those who will be asked to die, however, are your sons and mine. Soldiers who fight for noble causes are usually young men who do not make speeches and who would find it hard to define the
principles for which they give their lives.
When mothers can be heard above the hubbub, we want to assure Senator Pittman that if his kind of cockadoodledoing brings on another war, we haope he can proceed ‘to the front with his innocent betters. Men who are so heroic on paper and platform should never be denied the privilege of suiting their actions to their words. And that goes for women, too. Everything that now goes on brings back bitter memories of 1916. The same fiery eratory was spouted, the same hatreds were preached, the same patriotic attitudes were struck and above the uproar the voices of the Senator Key Pittmans of that era boomed along the Potomac, | | As time passed all honest ones among us must have
been dubious ‘about the value of those vaste lives to the cause ¢ Cl ;
—— BURL
SATURDA
. . ’ : . The Hoosier Forum 1 wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltairs.
TEACHING OF SOBRIETY HELD DUTY OF STATE By Lewis E. Frazeur Society is progressively recognizing its obligations to children—the citizens of the future. The State assumes its responsibility for the intelligence of future citizens by means of tax-supported and compulsory education. Health teaching and health laws with their administration are avowals of the State’s responsibility for the present and future health of its citizenry. Criminality is compelling society to concede its responsibility for moral and character training of the rising generation. Recognition is being granted to thie social obligation to the unborn child that it has the right to be well-born—to come into being with a strong bod and well-balanced faculties. Cultured sobriety and morality are most creative of upright citizenship. Responsibility for the sobriety of our future citizenry is surely as obligatory, as a duty of society, as responsibility for intelligence and health. Intemperance is man’s greatest health hazard. Alcoholic beverages are our most important social disturbants. 4 The consumption of liquor is an enormous economic waste. All the antisocial and ill effects of drink are wholly preventable by the simple method of total abstinence. The intensive inculeation of sobriety for all children of grade and high school ages is vitally essential to social welfare. Yet, sobriety seems to be an elective in the life of present day youth, with the example of parents, the urge of social custom, the pressure of ‘high-powered propaganda and the allurements of display and entertainment, subjecting them to the maximum temptation made possible by genius and wealth. Society pays dearly for indifference to its responsibility for the sobriety of its citizens. ‘The penalty can prove no more drastic than
retribution for intemperance. ® o 2
ARE YOU A HOLOIST? . OR MAYBE A MERISTICIST? By Student Here’s something else to worry about. Are you a holoist or a meristicist? Don’t laugh—it’s important. At least it was important to a group of educators who met recently and indulged in a heated but refined controversy on the subject. So you thought they were diseases did you? Well, they aren’t. A holoist is an educator who believes a school is responsible for the development of the
student’s whole personality. A mer-|.
isticist is one who believes that a school should just teach Johnny algebra, Sanscrit, or the theory of
(Times readers are invited to express “their views in these columns, religious con(troversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can ‘have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)
functions, and let him develop his personality freehand. It just goes to show how ser ally deep-dish a discussion can 3 if you attach a four-dollar name = any little old dime-a-dozen idea. ‘As for the average college student himself, he could probably quickly answer the question of whether he himself was a holoist or a meristicist, ‘He'd say, “I prefer Benny Goodman! I take the saxophone any day!” i » ” » RESENTS - DECISIONS
IN LABOR CASES By R. Sprunger Workers were handed ahokher
blow when the U. S. Supreme Court usurped the power to change the
LITTLE OLD MAN By RUBY STAINBROOK BUTLER
Little old man by the fireside, ‘What are the joys that you knew? Were your fancies and schemes, | ambitions and dreams Just wishes that never came © true? :
Little old man in your armchair ‘With smoke rings ascending above, Did you find life, and have ‘you felt pain And have you known beauty and love? Could she. be somewhere in Heaven? I see such patience and grace, Such courage and disciplined waiting, Deep in the lines of your face.
Little old man by the fireside, |Your story is told when you smile. Your eyes are warm-glinted, alive | and contented. You must have found living | worth while.
DAILY THOUGHT
One generation passeth away, and another: generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.— Ecclesiastes 1:4.
EATH has nothing terrible which life has not made so. A faithful Christian life in this world is the best preparation for the next. «Tyron Edwards.
Senator Key Pittman,
Wagner act. The decision was almost identical with the now postponed amendments to the act. It certainly isn’t in line with democratic principles for the people to allow appointed officials to go about changing or killing laws made by an elective lawmaking body. As long as the present economic system operated for the benefit of one-half of 1 per cent of the people exists, the majority are going to be skinned continuously, In my opinion the Government of the United States is still in Wall Street. ” ® = RELIEF ASKED FROM ‘TOO MANY DOGS’ By Citizen .
Please, through your columns,
help us get rid of dogs, dogs, dogs|
on the South Side. This morning I drove from S. Meridian St. to Keystone Ave. on the north side of Pleasant Run Blvd. I drove slowly and made no stops and counted 68 dogs! , Hounds of all “descriptions and names. Help us get rid of the dogs and keep trucks off our boulevards. t J » ® MANN’S VIEWS BRING COMMENT ON POLITICS By Daniel Franeis Clancy, Logansport A Times editorial - quotes Dr. Thomas Mann to Yhe effect that the intelligentsia cannot gfford to re-
|main above politics. Right, Doctor,—
but in this country if the cultured go into politics they cease to be intelligent or cultured. It’s a question of becoming a member of the hoi polloi if you do and heiling a Hitler if you don’t. » t J ”2
FAVORS RETURNING BUND MEMBERS TO GERMANY By a Reader, Spencer It makes my blood boil to see where the Nazl group had a big demonstration in Madison Square Garden. Why not put that bunch back in their beloved Germany? I am of German descent and am ashamed of them, 1f they are so strong for Germany, let them go there before they ruin our country, . ® o ” - MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD FOREJGN POLICY URGED By Claude Braddick Seems to me a sensible foreign policy would be something about halfway between the “Let’s you and him die for our country” stuff of and the “Let’s crawl under the bed” stuff of
Senators Clark and -Johnson.
THAT would surely be my ewn|of college students showed that this, chan
opinion because several such couples fat 1 have known have
LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND
By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM
too, was their opinion. This survey shows. to how. the :
gretting it all their lives. Better try living without each other first. 0 : IN cases where the injured person has been taking little exercise or his eyes very little there is for a short time a slight increase of strength in the other member simply because it is given more exercise, But an injury to one member of the body does not in itself cause its opposite to increase in strength. pensation” has no scientific. support.
a 3 IN SOME CASES perhaps so, but many schools (and homes, too) do far less for bright children
than the dull child is. Every effort pull up the dull child ) promote the bright one
In progressive schools the bright children are given an equal ce with the dull ones. Brilliant| t:
This notion of “‘com-|
Gen Johnson
Group Reported Weighing Possibility
Of Developing New Nation in Africa ‘For Oppressed Peoples of World.
ASHINGTON, March 4—Both for appeasement of the “have-not” nations by providing them with raw materials, and as a solution for thé terrible problem of the religious, racial and political refugees, an ‘ambitious plan is being quietly discussed among men of such standing, means, experience and responsibility that you can’t dismiss it as a Minnie the Moocher pipe-dream. / It is a proposal to develop by high-power modern methods in a few years or decades, what was created over here in the hard way over a couple of .centuries— a new and streamlined nation as a “haven of safety ang opportunity for the poor and oppressed of every nation.” Just where and how this is to be done is at present pretty vague—but it centers on the undeveloped interior of Africa where there is plenty of white man’s country in all resources. It is now all parceled out in mandates. protectorates, colonies and possessions by nations which have not developed them. Perhaps some of them, like Angola, could be purchased, Perhaps others in British possession could be donated if Britain really intends appeasement. The important . thing is that the land and resources for such a nation exist and the need for it is so pressing that it threatens the peace of the world. os z = N the plan as it is being discussed, there would be no such haphazard settlement and colonization as peopled this continent. The advance guard would be engineers and scientists who would decide when, where and how settlement could be made and what would be necessary for health and economic development on a plan palancéd among industry, agriculture and mining. A constitution guaranteeing both human and prop= erty rights and a democratic form of government would, be prepared as a charter. The peace and neu~ trality-—both military and economic—of the new na=tion, would also be guaranteed by some nation or group of nations. The immigrants would be prepared by at least a year of military service and a year in a labor corps, something like our CCC, to provide training to citizens in every field of labor. ® ” fd HERE would be no such coddling as has been done in some of our resettlement plans, These people would have to make a nation and not have a nation make them. To the objection that the “havenor” nations would see in this no new supply of raw materials, the an« swer is that there is no deprivation in raw materials to any nation now except tariffs, quotas, and restric tive agreements and regulations in modern economie warfare. . It is proposed to have none of these in this new land of liberty and that free access to these resources be guaranteed—even in war. The great question in previous colonization plans was whether colonists would come. The difficulty was that there were not enough funds to finance their coming. Never since the first American colonies was the pressure of persecution so great. Never, at any time, did money in such vast amounts seem so available. It may be visionary but no one yet has said that it is impossible.
It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun
3 Clare Boothe Warns us Against Certain Type of Fascist Blasts.
EW YORK, March 4—In the introduction to the published version of her play Clare Boothe says that “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” “was meant to be a political allegory about fascism in America.” “Buf everywhere,” she ‘complains, “it has been taken as a parody of Hollywood's search for Scarlett O'Hara.” She suggests that certain forms of attack upon fascism tend to promote its growth rather than dise courage it. The New Masses recently carried a piece , along: the same lines, but it seems to me that Clare Boothe has handled it better. . Speaking of fascism, she writes, “Of all national ways of life, it is, perhaps, the most -quickly habitforming. It is the alcohol and the opium of political systems; it will rob us eventually of our ‘physical and mental and even moral powers, but it gives us a tem
‘porary illusion of escape from an inimical world, a lif
of & spirit, a feeling of superiority, of power. . . . Also, we are warned (though not loudly, not often enough) when-~or iI—fascism comes to all America she will come so pretty costumed in red, white and blue as to be practically indistinguishable from a music hall's Pourth of July performance “Rockette,” than which nothing could look more charmingly, happily, unie formly American.
Sharper Analysis Needed “Only the most vigilant and even suspicious critics of our national manners will then see that this bunte ing really adorns somebody else’s baby doll. So in the popular parlor game of searching for the vanguard of American fascism it seemed to me that the hunt had best be directed first, not at these elements in our nation which we most regularly criticize as dangerous alien, but rather at those which we most eagerly gloss with the sentimentality of the familiar.” 1 think that Clare Boothe writes wisely and éloquently in these paragraphs. I do not know whether we are thinking of the same plays, publicists, pictures and patriotic orators, but surely there can be no doubt that much skullduggery, both unconscious and conscious, goes on among those who begin by verbal attacks upon Hitler and Mussolini end then proceed to pound out programs for American life which have all the essentials of German or Italian dictatorship. And so, instead of looking under the bed for the foreign invader, it might be a good idea for every American to look into hearts nearer home and do a little surveying to discover the imperfections in the blasts of many who protest too often that they alone are patriots.
Watching Your Health
By Dr. Morris Fishbein ;
GAIN and again it is reported that an x individual who has lost an eye had been able te have an eye transplanted into the body from some other human being. Unfortunately there is no truth in these states ments. Even if the entire eyeball should be transplanted from one human being to another, the new eye would be unable to see, because the nerve which is associated with the sense of seeing and the retina ¢ the eve would have to be cut, and there is no to indicate that Tegeneration of this nervous tissue .
occurs, There is, however, one type of Gatplant of in relationship ‘to the human eye which can be cessfully made and which has been made in inn able instances. That is a transplant of the cov or cornea of the eye, which is sometimes sare otherwise damaged as the result of so thai scar tissue covers the pupil of the a impossible for the person concerned to see. Nowadays whenever there is an opacity. over pupil of the eye which prevents suitable vision, operation can be considered. On the other hand, when the blindness is due 0 some other cause or when there is a disease of the eye, ‘the operation can do little, if any, good. It is now possible to take the eye.of a person W has recently died and to keep it under proper . for a few days until the patient who iste have in transplant is ready. for .the Spars tion. the covering of the eye of bi the cornea of ey. t
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