Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 May 1939 — Page 12
PAGE 12
The Indianapolis Times
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ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager
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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way
MONDAY, MAY 22, 1939
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE F the new formula for a British-French-Russian alliance proves acceptable to Moscow, and is quickly consummated, it looks as if a decisive blow for peace may have been struck at last. And none too soon, judging from the week-end incident on the Polish-Danzig border, which appears to contain the ingredients of a crisis. The situation in Europe begins to resemble more close-
ly than ever that of the midsummer of 1914. But there are |
vital differences. Italy, on the one hand, appears to be a much more
reliable ally of Germany than in 1914. But on the other, |
Britain, which in 1914 had not made it plain that she would
fight, has served warning this time, and backed it up with | This time France's fortifications to the west |
conscription. of Germany are impregnable or nearly so. To the east, Poland, nonexistent in 1914, is a military factor that even
Hitler cannot disregard. And beyond Poland is the Russian |
Army, damaged perhaps by the purges but incomparably better trained and equipped than the Czar’s ill-starred legions of 25 years ago. Russia's policy is always unpredictable. Perhaps Stalin will draw back still further, now that Chamberlain has advanced more than halfway toward meeting his terms. We hope not. For today the world looks—reluctantly perhaps, but inescapably—to the Kremlin's man of steel for the word that will take the initiative in Europe away from the little house painter of Munich and clear the tracks for a negotiated settlement of mutual grievances.
CONCERNING THE ROYAL VISIT
E have just been going over the cast and the schedule of events arranged for the King and Queen after they cross the Canadian border. That comes Tuesday, June 6, and it should be remembered that the royal party won't have been exactly idle while in the Dominion. The schedule runs until Sunday night. And how it runs! feet tired to read about it.
In the cast there is a conspicuous lack of the lower |
one-third to which so much official attention in this country up to now has been directed. But for those and all of us we recommend no feeling of jealousy: instead a great sense of contentment in the 44-hour week. There would be a sitdown sure if royalty had even availed itself of the NLRB.
Talk about the speedup! From Suspension Bridge to Washington, to the White House, to the Lincoln Memorial, the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Rock Creek Park, the garden party at the British Embassy with 1300 more hands to shake and curtsies to absorb, the Capitol and the Congress, the Navy Yard, the U. S. S. Potomac, Mt. Vernon, Ft. Hunt, Arlington, Red Bank, N. J., Ft. Hancock, Sandy Hook (formal dress), the Battery, New York and all that means, World's Fair and Grover Whalen with Columbia University and Nicholas Murray Butler thrown in, Grant's Tomb and Hyde Park. All in “six days shalt thou labor” and scarcely a chance to take off your shoes. All we can say is to paraphrase “Green Pastures’— bein’ king ain't no bed of roses. In view of which we think it bad taste, poor hospitality, or, to be more British, just not cricket to make too much fun of the report that an inquiry was made as to whether the White House would provide hot water, or to jibe at solicitude over the availability of linen blankets and down puffs. Or for that matter to get sore because just 1300 instead of 130,000,000 were invited to the garden party.
We've got company coming. And it doesn’t look like any |
treat to them. So let’s act as hosts should act and not as if we were afraid they might go south with the silverware.
RAYMOND C. THOMPSON
EATH has written journalism’s traditional “thirty” after the name of Raymond C. Thompson, long-time sports editor of The Indianapolis News. “Ray” Thompson was a newspaperman of the old school. He was courteous, reliable, relentless in his search for accuracy, completely honest. He was loved by those
who worked with him, admired and respected by those who |
knew him, We extend our sincere sympathy to our friends at The News. They have lost a gentleman and a sportsman.
AN ERA BEGINS
WITH none of the wild excitement aroused by Charles A. Lindbergh's flight to Paris just 12 years before, the Pan-American Airways’ Yankee Clipper completed a trans-Atlantic crossing to Portugal yesterday. We're glad that aviation has reached the stage where so epochal an achievement is taken calmly, as a matter of course. For the Yankee Clipper’s trip is epochal. The goal toward which Col. Lindbergh and many other bold spirits have pioneered has been achieved. Commercial plane service, to operate on regular schedules between America and Europe, has been established. Most of us of this generation probably will continue to think of flying across oceans as an adventure. But it will become as rountine as travel by steamship is now. And the 41-ton Yankee Clipper, carrying 17 men and 1600 pounds of mail on this first trip, to be followed within a few weeks by passenger flights, has ushered in trans-Atlantic aviation’s era of practical utility.
THE ‘MAILOMAT’
WONDERFUL new machine is now operating in New York and soon will be installed in postoffices throughout the country. Say you have letters to mail. Instead of buying and licking stamps, you put the letters into the “mailomat,” drop the appropriate amount in pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters into the right slots, and the machine does all the rest. No technological unemployment among postmasters is ‘anticipated. There'll still have to be somebdy to sort the incoming mail, read the postal cards and run political er-] Tands for Congressmen.
It makes our |
1 for materials
a ta ae an a Ah
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Dies Probers to Scan Tax Returns, A Practice Which in the Past Has Led to Some Grave Abuses.
EW YORK, May 22.—This business of pulling income tax returns out of the Treasury files and blabbing the private details in Congressional inquiries is not only of doubtful legality but a means of political intimidation. President Roosevelt prompts this observation by another of those executive orders authorizing this frisk by the Dies Committee in the further course of its investigation of anti-American activities by Communist and Nazi-Fascist groups and individuals. This kind of executive order makes a handy stick with which to kill a snake, but it can be used to whale Americans as well at the pleasure of a President and any committee with a hate on. The income tax returns are supposed to be absolutely confidential between the victim and the Treasury and subject to no scrutiny by anybody, including the courts, except where the Treasury has some ground for proceeding against the taxpayer on charges of taxlaw violation. Even a criminal, operating a chain of brothels and transporting women across state lines in violation of the Mann Act, is required to report his earnings and permitted to deduct his probable costs of operation. And the statements which he makes in the process of obeying one law are supposed to be privileged and not available to any other department which would like to use them as a confession that he violated another law.
2 = ” HEORETICALLY the Department of Justice can’t even look at the returns for leads which would
| now and again I just don't know what can be done | for you. Naturally. any American would like to know how much money the Nazi Government has been piping into the Anti-American Bund to pay for sedition and the sabotage of the American form of government according to the Henlein method which wrecked Czechoslovakia. The Henlein conspiracy was the very model for the Bund operations here. The Communist method is almost identical, and it would be equally interesting to know how much money the Moscow Government has eased into the bolo conspiracy and in what guises. ” ” ”
OW, if this authority were used only in such cases there would be no serious objection, because the country should use all its weapons to slap its enemies, especially
laws. But it is not used sparingly.
| the returns of those who lobbied for the bill as well, | including Jimmy Roosevelt, the lobby committee was | not inquisitive about his returns or those of any other | Administration lobbyist. Income tax returns are confessional documents. They search the private lives of the victims, and there is no more excuse for the public inspection of yours, except in a tax case up for trial in court, than for the inspection of the President's own or his mother's or | Jimmy's.
|
Business By John T. Flynn
Roosevelt, Apparently Too Late, Has Discovered Investment Problem.
EW YORK, May 22—The President has at last got around to a realization of the fact that | private investment in this country has about come to | a standstill and that the revival of private invest- | ment is the central problem of the whole crisis. | The writer was called before the Monopoly Investigating Committee in February. At that time I devoted practically the whole of more than three hours of testimony to laying down that very proposition, attempting to trace the reasons for it and to examine | the nature of it. For several vears in these columns | I have tried to enforce the ever-growing seriousness of this. One of the great errors of the liberal throughout the whole New Deal episode has been their failure to realize this. The problem of the Administration at its outset was to correct at least some of the great abuses which had grown up in our society and to produce recovery. The Administration did bring about some social reforms. But it did not deal very seriously with any of those maladjustments in business which actually stand in the way of recovery. It seemed to think that if it would spend enough money to prime the pump that in some way the pump would start working, utterly ohlivious of the | fact that the pump had certain fundamental de- | fects.
A Beginning Can Be Made
One or two things were obvious from the beginning of the Administration. It was clear that, since liberals were supposed to be in command, they would be judged at the end of eight years not merely by their social reforms but by their success in bringing about economic recovery. The eight-year period is nearly up. The recovery is still not here. If it is delayed another year nothing can save the liberals from collapse and discredit for years. The time to have recognized that there could be no recovery without the revival of private investment was in 1933 and | 1934. It is too late now for this Administration to | do much about it. | However, it can make a beginning. And the first thing it must do is to recognize that the chief obstacles to private investment are to be found in certain maladjustments in certain great kev industries. The two where it can do something is in the railroad industry and the construction industry. One of the amazing and, indeed, almost unbelievable omissions of the Administration has been its complete refusal to deal realistically with either of these problems. And now the President is trving to hustle Congress out of Washington, which means he has no plans dealing with them now.
A Woman's Viewpoint
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
SPEINoTIME is dress up time. It's the season when the housewife answers the call of the wild in her blood, as she drags the old furniture into different corners, rehangs her pictures and makes plans to change her interior color schemes. In this enterprise the entire commercial world cheers her on. Papers and magazines are filled with advertisements suggesting home improvements: “Give the ‘house a fresh coat of paint!” “Rescreen the porch!” “Build a rock garden!” “Lay a terrace!” “Why not put in that extra bathroom you've wanted so long?” And how ardently we desire to take their advice. But the thing is a practical impossibility, unless you happen to have several thousand shares of profitable stock, or some bonds in the strong box, or a movie star's salary. I fell, as usual, for the blandishments. There were scores of decorative schemes I had in mind to fix up the old place, and so I called in—one by one— a dozen or so contractors and workmen. And here I am, a disappointed, disillusioned woman, facing another summer with all my improvement urges unfulfilled. Why? Not because I wouldn't be willing to spend a reasonable sum to buy them. Certainly not! But because the prices are prohibitive. Lumber is sky high, paint is sky high, labor is sky high and everything else is sky high, and I'm sunk. Heaven knows, I don’t want men and women to work for nothing or merchants to make no profits, but when you've listened at your own door to the many pleas for work by people who knock there,. you have the feeling you are living in a lunatic asylum as you face the fact that your pocketbook
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
lead its young King Bradys onto dead-sure evidence. | but if you believe that the D. of J. doesn’t take peeks
those who operate within and | claim for their operations the protection of American
Last year it was used as a weapen of political pun- | ishment against individuals who had opposed or in | the sinister phrase, lobbied against the reorganization | | bill, and although the order was supposed to expose |
(be so unfortunate as to become an inmate of our City Jail and should |
ibowl of gruel, I am sure our big,
member, Mr. Keach, would be able|about this. . [to accomplish their arduous duties
groups | land Mr,
| ON COLUMNISTS
MONDAY, MAY 22, 1939
Another Page Out of t
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.,
{DOUBTS CITY JAIL DIET ADEQUATE By A Citizen If a modern Oliver Twist should
(Times readers are invited to express their 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.)
views in
(be so bold as to ask for another
bad, bold Police Chief would screw his face up into a severe grimace and reply in very harsh tones, “On-| lv one bowl of gruel to a prisoner.” And, in stentorian tones, “Mr. eration by none other than Arturo Keach will be mad if I give you | Toscanini.
not to feed prisoners too well. . . .”| Recently Boake Carter made the [ Some prisoners have been incar- | suggestion that we should ship our (cerated in our City Jail for long criminals, along with our Fasicsts {periods and we wonder what their and Communists, to some distant |appearance would be after a diet of | country, This as yet unnamed {soup (bean soup at that). ... |country would probably be anxious We wonder how our Police Chief to receive these desirable persons, and also our well-fed Safety Board although Mr. Carter isn't too clear
Any college freshman could tell jon a diet of dried bean soup and Mr. Carter that one doesn’t remove [scared water.” We wonder how | deep-seated problems by removing (Mr, Keach would like to spend a|people he doesn't like. . . . Remove |day in a cell with the prisoners en- |the alien, or bar the immigrant, and | joying, as he so aptly puts it, the |another consumer is lost. Remove results pleased. Whose fur would fly? Cer- a new crop of them. These people tainly not the prisoners’ . don’t create the problems; the We feel that if Chief Morrissey problems create these people. Keach consider this an| . . Time was when the Scripps‘adequate diet they should by all Howard papers were the objects of [means live on it themselves and | fierce and loyal love on the part of
[turn the difference in cost over to|their readers. The Times shouidn’t
imagine that its gradual change in
(some worthy charity. 181N¢ policy has gone unnoticed. . .
” » | AGREES WITH ICKES
COSMIC AWAKENING By MAIDA L. STECKELMAN {Beside a quiet stream, I dream—
| By Robert K. Taylor
Of course what Harold Ickes has | Birds upon the wing make a joyous
'said about American columnists is| sound unto the Lord— | true, however unpleasant a truth it|God's quickened breath is murmurlis; and it is for this very reason | ing through each living thing, that the columnists and the press| Whispering “spring, spring, spring!” which hires them has attacked Rhythmic as the steadfast beat of Ickes so viciously. ’ | The American public should un- Rising, falling, constantly. |derstand by now that columnists Earth heaves her gentle breast and are not chosen as authorities in sighs econcmics, political science, what not. Their appeal is on the “Spring, spring, spring!” basis of force of speech, satirical Excitement ‘'mongst the crawling subtleties, and all that makes up | things, and so to whisgerings, “style.” The fact that these re- Angleworms and bugs and bees, spectable gentlemen pose as having search beneath the stirring trees greater knowledge than the author- A new house for the spring.
{ities in the various fields about| DAILY THOUGHT
(which they expound is not uncomI am distressed for thee, my
{mon. On the benches of Univer|sity Square sits many good citizens brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love
|just as eager to expound deep to me was wonderful, passing the 1
bs
| truths, but not so beautifully loove of women.—II Samuel 1:26.
quacious. . . . Pegler recently referred to Miss OVE gives itself; it is not bought. —Longfellow.
this woman whose voice has been! acclaimed the greatest of our gen-|
(Probably Toscanini, | more than one because I promised |too, is unknown to Pegler.) . . .
with which he is so well |present Communists and you'll have
and To feel life's flow and quickening,
FAVORS ROOSEVELT FOR THIRD TERM By Affectator Your editorial of Saturday May 6 is worthy of the condemnation of all just men. When the press is wrong is it not proper to condemn it or suppress it? When it is right, is it not entitled to the praise of the populace whose
| piciously as secret radical sympathizers. | it is permissible to point out similarly the weakness in
opinions and views it molds? Those who condemn the New Deal | in toto are biting the hand that | feeds them. No other President Since/ Lincoln has done so much for the country at large, for the common man and the poor and neglected, as President Roosevelt. ; Who may we justly ask has] reaped the ultimate gain of the so-called “vast expenditures” of the past eight years? Hasn't it| been the money barons and the | (food barons and the hard-shelled, | greedy industrialists? Countless thousands of our citi- | zens of the great middle class, who | were enjoying the fruits of their | labor 10 and 15 years ago, have | been reduced to penury and de- | pendence, not by the New Deal, but | by the greed, the fear and inhu- | man behavior of that small minor= | ity of capitalists who usurp the right of ruling or ruining financially and socially all who are out- | side their particular financial | group. These care nothing about prin-| ciple, about politics, or the com- | mon good. To them Republicans, Democrats and other political divi- | sions of this great country mean nothing, so long as they may hoard | and amass profits. . . , If God gives him strength we hope he will run for a third term or see to it that his successor is a man like-minded as himself. But on the! horizon of political - aspirations {there looms no such individual.
| ” » ” | BLAMES PROFIT SYSTEM FOR IDLE MILLIONS By R. Sprunger Apparently Governor Chandler of Kentucky is using the old “right to work” alibi as an excuse to use National Guardsmen as strike breakers.
Well, let's see how a politician answers this: What about the rights of millions of unemployed to work and earn their living, and who are deprived of doing so by the profit system of the employer-owner class?
LET'S EXPLORE YOU
S Limes MATIONAL ne TEMPER~
AMENTS AND PERSONALITIES? YOUR OPINION
(Prtwset wv Jobe ¥ DW Co)
4 & YOUNG PEOPLE 2 D COL <€ Now BESEN
ING Po OF SCHOOL GREA AND SYMPATHY THAN OF SRE GENERATION? YES ORNO
1 and sympathy that it is hard to! organized by Robert Darling, a choose, but certainly the postwar | Boston advertising man. You can't
men and women are now nearly all get in unless past 40 and jobless past 40 and vast numbers job-|/but the members go about seeking
oR 3
simply won't I the strain of the sums they ask . 3 es |
A wonderful
less—some have never had | jobs, not for
By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM
THEY all deserve so much help: Forty-Plus Club of New England
themselves . but for|
R MIND
a job they suggest to the employer their fellow members who are specially fitted for that job. Often this results, too, in a job for themselves. More power to them! ”n ” ” WELL, Jack, it’s a bit hard to prove, but there seems to be some evidence for your statement. Kipling was speaking from unusually wide observation when he said that the female of the species is more cruel than the male. The packing houses report that when a group of men and women visit them, twice as many women as men insist on going into the abbatoirs and witness the killing. One gathers from history that far more women than men during the French Revolution crowded aro the guillotine and watched the executions. ” » ” THERE are no important differences between races in abilities and temperaments. If there are any differences at all-—and even that is not certain—these differences are so slight that they are easily overcome by the environment, so that any race can assimilate the culture, manners, education, habits and design of living of any other race | where they happen to be placed. | This is obviously true of the advanced races and we are not at all sure it is not true of the more backward races as well. All the
| ances.
| undistinguished element of our population,
In Washington
By Raymond Clapper
Latest Dies Blast Good Example Of How Press Can Err in Putting, Too Much Stress on 'Objectivity.' «
ASHINGTON, May 22—The chief reason that demagogs thrive is that the newspapers—and the radio—pretend to take them seriously. Not editor= ially perhaps, but in the news columns, which is what counts. If you asked newspapermen here or elsewhere, what they really thought of this latest blast out of the Dies Investigating Committee, I suspect that most of them would say it was 90 per cent hogwash, played up out of all proportion to its real importance. The offense of the newspapers is that making a fetish of “objectivity” they present this kind of dubi« ous material exactly as if they actually took it seriously. I find in the latest editions of the Washington newspapers, several columns, played in the lead position, with headlines giving it additional importance, the latest blast out of the Dies Committee describing an “anti-Jew crusade.” High up in the accounts in headline or in blackface type is the word that John D. M. Hamilton, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is to be called before the Dies Committee because, according to a witness, he “gave the names of Republican committeemen to participants in the (anti-Semitic) campaign.” ” ” o
VERY newspaperman in Washington knows that anybody, by writing to the Republican National
Committee, can obtain a printed list of the committee members. He can get the Democratic names by write ing to Jim Farley. There is no secret about that.
But the news accounts kick off with the flat, unexplained statement of a witness that Hamilton sent a committee list to the anti-Semitic agitators leaving the inference to be drawn by the average reader that in some way Hamilton was mixed up in the activity. When some of us months ago said the Dies testi mony “exposing” Red activity was trivial, unverified stuff blown up with hot air, we were regarded susI hope that
the present smearing treatment of John Hamilton without being regarded as a secret sympathizer with the Republican National Committee. u n yd
HOSE outside the newspaper business complain that the press “distorts” the news, meaning that
it is twisted and given an editorial slant. That is not
the trouble. Newspapers have made a fetish of “factual objec« tivity” and have carried it to such extremes that as is seen in this instance. A “dead-pan” straightaway statement, all literally correct, leaves a completely erroneous impression with the reader. And if the reader is left with an incorrect impression, the reporting, no matter how “factual” it may be in the literal sense, is misleading. Is such misleading of the reader to be justified on the ground that “Dies said it and therefore it is news”? It is this kind of “objectivity” that builds up demagogs. Newspapers don’t do it intentionally. The cry that they deliberately “distort” news is itself a gross distortion. The distortion comes about, in such instances as this one, through a technical, literal accuracy which unconsciously leaves a distorted impics= sion on the reader. The trouble arises because a demagog hands a half-truth to the reporter who thereupon, trying to be accurate, relays the half-truth to the reader in exactly the same literal manner that he would reiay a whole truth.
lt Seems to Me
By Heywood Broun
Royal Visitors Leave Him Cold, but Hopes They Have a Pleasant Time.
EW YORK, May 22.—1I am sorry to say that so far I have made no plans to meet either the King or Queen. I just can't seem to get excited about the royal visit. This reaction implies no lack of merit. According to report, the young man is somewhat diffident and has no great flair for public appearThey say he means well, and I am sure his wife is a good woman. But, after all, in the course of a year or week many persons of far more definite attainments pass through our portals without any pare ticular fanfare. It is true, of course, that the King and Queen of Great Britain have an importance as symbols, and symbols are not to be sneezed at. But America frequently has had contacts with Britishers of far moire substance and power. Inevitably that loose and mysterious group known as society will be in a dither. But no matter how thick you slice it, society still remains a small and Indeed, I sometimes suspect that there really isn't any such thing. Society is a myth invented by society reporters who don’t want to go back on rewrite, I would not leave Stamford, Conn., on a fine day to get pushed around for the mere opportunity of saying, “Here they come and there they go.” If I am to be pushed around I'd rather have it done to me in the betting ring at the race track. The sport of kings is more fun than the kings themselves.
A Roman Holiday for Some
The people who are outraged by this pilgrimage puzzle me even more than those who are about to swoon. I just can't make any sense out of the talk of the person who says, “Don’t you see this is all part of the subtle British propaganda to induce us to send our soldiers to die on foreign soil?” In the first place, where is it subtle, and, in the second place, where 1 it persuasive? Twisters of the lion's tail will have a Roman holi= day, and all the isolationists will complain at military pomp and begin to think up new apologies for Hitler, Since we live largely on headlines and cartoons, we are inclined to think of nations solely in terms of their rulers. But Chamberlain is not all England, and Germany is much bigger and more varied in its virtues than the little man called Hitler. Peoples sometimes are dwarfed under the shadow of a potentate, but in the long run it is the masses of mankind which count. It is through the many and not through the few that the ties of fraternity must be created.
Watching Your Health
By Dr. Morris Fishbein
ITAMINS held the stage at the recent meeting of the American Medical Association. Some doctors describe all sorts of vague digestive disorders due to vitamin deficiencies, some of which may actually produce changes in the walls of the intestines. . Prolonged lack of certain vitamins, alcoholic excess and reducing diets without the necessary vita« mins are leaders among the causes of digestive dis= turbances. : The nervous system may also be subjected to changes because of the lack of vitamins. In this case. vitamin Bl is the important element. In foreign countries where people eat polished rice and lose this vitamin a serious condition called beriberi develops. In this country people seldom go on to that stage, but do have minor symptoms affecting the nervous system which are definitely related to a deficiency of vitamin Bl. In fact, there are certain inflammatory conditions in the brain which have now been to some, extent related to such deficiency. " Vitamin K which has now been shown to he asso-. ciated especially with hemorrhage when there is jaundice was considered by investigators from the University of Iowa and from the University of Mins nesota. : A new test was described for determining whether. the person who was jaundiced needs vitamin K. If it is found that he does need this substance, it can be provided in a concentrated form as it is derived from alfalfa, kale, spinach, carrot tops, tomatoes and oat: sprouts. : It has been found that jaundiced patients whos have bleeding after operations on the gall bladder in-. variably have an insufficient amount of substances: in their blood necessary to bring about coagulation, The giyjng of vitamin K will prevent this condis.