Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 August 1939 — Page 12

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PAGE 12

The Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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hdc TUESPAY, AUGUST 20, 1939

BRING HAM HOME! .

OMEONE ought to start a campaign to bring the Hon. Ham Fish home from Europe, and we stand ready to contribute any amount up to 95 cents to that worthy cause. In calmer times we wouldn't be so worried about Mr. Fish. Indeed, we usually don't care where he is. We just accept him as a phenomenon of nature, like dust storms or the boll weevil, although we do occasionally wonder why the Republicans of the 26th New York District keep electing him to Congress. Even when he persuaded his fellow Republicans to choose him chairman of the Congressional Delegation to the Interparliamentary Union at Oslo, we saw no cause for real concern. Someone was going to get that free trip to Norway, and it might as well be Ham Fish. What we didn’t foresee was that a few people in Europe would listen to Mr. Fish with an appearance of polite attention. That was an experience he had not enjoyed in America, and the consequences have been unfortunate. For the last month he has been burbling around over the unhappy continent, growing daily more excited, volunterring his opinions as to the imminence of war, coyly proclaiming that he would be glad to accept the job of arbitrating the Danzig dispute, calling on somebody to do something quick. The Oslo Conference received his suggestions coldly, but that didn't discourage Mr. Fish. Last week-end he appeared in Berlin, sent word to the American correspondent that he had an important statement for the American press, and informed them that Germany’s claims are “just,” that he favors liquidation of the Versailles Treaty in the East. and that he still thinks all can be settled by arbitration if Hitler is given Danzig, the Polish Corridor and anything else he wants. Mr. Fish also said he was trying to arrange for transportation out of Germany. His evacuation, from Germany and from Europe, should by all means be expedited. Even if nothing else blows up over there, we're afraid Ham Fish will. He ought to be rushed home, where we understand him even if we don’t appreciate him,

POURQUOI? VERY few days announcements come from the War Department like the one just received. It reads: Posthumous Award of Silver Star. To McCager B. Fomby, private, Third Trench Mortar, Third Division, American Expeditionary Forces, For galJantry in action near Mozy, France, July 15, 1918. When the detachment commander became a casualty, Private Fomby assisted the non-commissioned officers in reorganizing the detachment and in directing resistance to the advance of the oncoming enemy until he himself was mortally wounded. He died July 26, 1918, He was born in Alabama and lived in Alabama until he enlisted. He died in France.

JUST ABOUT ENOUGH »Ng§

HE country made the mistake of laughing at Governor Luren D. Dickinson of Michigan, and that encouraged him. : It was undoubtedly amusing to read his excited account of procurers in uniform, devilish designs and the city of sin after he got home from enjoying the hospitality provided for the Governors’ Conference in New York, But attention was red meat for him. As he retold his story, the Governors’ Conference became a “Belshazzar's Feast.” Tales of high life began to trip over his tongue on every public occasion. He became the national scold. And now he is scandalized at the shorts of the Boy Scouts summer uniform, To the gubernatorial eye a Scout’s bare knee is immodest. He abhors it. That brings us to the point, it seems to us, at which the Michigan Governor is due to subside. Or, if he must talk, why can’t he just mutter to himself? No matter what official title he may disport, a bore remains a bore, and the Dickinson crusade should be recognized as having worn out its welcome.

YARDSTICK IN A BOOK x

NE Government report that should be in great demand is the Electric Rate Book, now being completed by the Federal Power Commission for publication early this fall. The book will standarize for the first time the rate terms used by 3000 utilities—private, public and municipal and including the Tennessee Valley Authority—in rendering their monthly bills to consumers. It will contain more than 15,000 rate schedules affecting 10,000 towns and cities with populations for 1000 up. As the FPC points out, a hodge-podge system of rates and billing has grown up in the electric utility business, to the confusion of consumers and even of members of the industry. The average citizen who wants to know whether the electric rates he pays are higher or lower than those in other cities often has great difficulty in finding out. He has to compare rate schedules made on different bases, using different descriptive terms for electrical units. It's a good deal like trying to compare the prices per unit of food value of bread sold by the loaf, eggs sold by the dozen and butter sold by the pound. The FPC, for purposes of its new book, has adopted uniferm terms, simplified to the greatest possible degree, to express the factors that enter into the making of electric bills. It won't require all utilities to use these uniform terms in making out their bills, although many of them are expected to do so voluntarily, and it won’t attempt to pass on the reasonableness or unreasonableness of specific rates. But it will supply the electric consumers of 10,000 cities with a better yardstick than they have ever had by which to measure the rates they pay against the rates paid elsewhere. And this, while it may not settle all arguments such, for instance, as whether publicly-owned utilities make proper allowance for the taxes they don’t have to pay —ought to be an effective weapon in the fight for fairer rates ‘everywhere, :

-_

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

On the Basis of Soviet-Nazi Pact Browder and Kuhn Must Stop Kicking

Each Other Around and Be Pals.

EW YORK, Aug. 20 —There are a couple of details in the military treaty by which naziism and communism confessed their identity and their community of interest which should be hung around the necks of both parties and their adherents. In this country it would be nice if Fritz Kuhn and Earl Browder could be produced on the same platform at the same time to receive the Order of the Albatross, but, as that is not just now feasible, it will have to be done symbolically. : Browder, it will be remembered, was caught flatfooted by the news of the confession and neither he nor the Communist paper knew the answers until sufficient time had elapsed to permit communication with Moscow. He and the paper then came out with an excuse as long and about as straight as a ball

of string in which they said at one point: “In each and every non-aggression pact which the Soviet Union concludes there is a basic clause of the Soviet peace policy which provides that in the event that one of the parties invades or commits an act of aggression against a third nation, the other party (the Soviet Union) is not bound to the treaty, is free to act in defense of peace.” Get that, now. Browder and the Communist paper says this is a basic clause of the Soviet peace policy.

UT get this, too. There is no such clause in the Hitler-Stalin confession, and this means that if Germany attacks Poland Stalin doesn’t have the right to revoke the treaty. On the contrary, Stalin obviously repudiates it. He gives Hitler an unwritten but, nevertheless, plain assurance that when Germany attacks Poland, Russia will not feel obliged to do anything about it. Just what he will do, they don't say, but from the smell of the deal it may be ussumed that he and Hitler will divide Poland between them. In fact, kinship constitutes a gimmick whereby Stalin emphasizes his invitation to Hitler to attack Poland. This article says that if Germany or Russia is attacked by a third power, neither Germany nor Russia will assist the offender. That gives Hitler and Stalin the right to decide between them that, Poland was the aggressor when the war comes and to%act accordingly. But the little pet of the document is article four, which says that neither party will associate itself with

any other grouping of powers which directly or in-

directly is aimed at the other.

2 = ”

OW what is the spirit of that one? Tt is that |

the anti-German boycott is off, and that Brow-

der and Kuhn, in this country, are placed under an |

obligation to quit needling one another, and that their

respective followings, such as they are, must abandon

their reasons for political existence. Kuhn exists to combat bolshevism, or as he and Hitler have been calling it, Jewish bolshevism. Browder exists to com=bat Nazi-fascism. He has said so hundreds of times. This clause in the treaty says ‘‘directly or indirectly.” It means that the mock-feud is absolutely off, and that followers of Hitler and Stalin are obliged to cease nagging and faking and co-operate. They are comrades now, though it may gall them to realize as much, and the Americans are the winners. The Americans now have the admission of their respective bosses that the whole feud was an act and a fake, that it wasn't a contest to save us from naziism or bolshevism, but an attack by one enemy on. two fronts against American democracy.

Business By John T. Flynn

U. S. Should Prepare for Monetary

Collapse In Europe if 'War Comes.

EW YORK, Aug. 29.—The American—businessman and all others—may well pause to visualize at the moment that war starts, what will confront him when the war ends. That will necessarily cove. a lot of visualizing. But among the subjects which will loom large at the end of the coming war will he the subject of money. When the last war began all the nations of Europe were carrying what was then considered large debts —mostly the heritages of other wars. England owed

about two billion pounds—roughly 10 billion dollars. That seemed large by the debt standards of that simple day. But when the war was over England's debt was over 35 billion dollars. It was reduced to about 32, hut has been increased again. Germany's debt was extinguished by her inflation, but has been rapidly built up again until today it is some staggering sum which it is difficult to fix exactly. Much the same is true of France. Now these countries seem headed for war with debts already too large to be borne. Even if there were no war some way would have to be found to meet the crushing burden of these debts.

Two Possibilities Are Cited

But if a war of any duration should devastate Europe, the borrowing during the last few vears and in the last war would be mere chicken feed by comparison. At the end of the war the debts would be of Jick stupendous bulk that they would be unendurable. . When that moment arrives several things might happen. A complete disorder may shake Europe to its foundation and a destructive inflation may un away with all the debts and wipe them out, thus cleaning up that situation. But on the other hand this may be averted and the whole orgy may be followed by a period of profound conservative organization. In that case there would be no alternative for these countries to escape the peril of decades of inertia and suffering from government burdens but devaluation. If England fights a long war—a year or two—England will have to face the facts and devalue the pound. France will have to do the same thing. Beyond doubt Germany and Italy would face complete inflation, What would be the effect of a general monetary devaluation in Europe upon our economic life? It seems to me that this is the question which economists, financiers, investors and public finance authorities must begin to examine now,

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

FTER a series of little journeys into city back streets or certain farm sections of our wide open spaces, the notion that Mother is queen of the home gets a jolt. In many instances she looks more like a slavey. Yet most people who write about women and their problems have only one picture in mnid—the same one. It is a composite of a Vogue advertisement and a movie mag. illustration. The proverbial Home Woman, the exquisite wife and mother type, is glimpsed wearing a gorgeous $150 creation and pouring tea from a silver pot. Or she moves about some inagnificent terrace, where her guests—all at home in the society column—bask in the light of her countenance. Or she sits surrounded by her washed and curled little ones, all of them dripping with charm. There, we say, is woman as she ought to be. Queen of the home, mistress of her husband’s house, lady of the manor. Wouldn't it be fine if we could all fit ourselves into the picture? But how about the other 99 per cent—the women who exist in hovels, hardly fit for animals, who are so toilworn and poor that the light has gone forever from their eyes and the song from their lips? And, for the sake of our souls, we ought not to forget that some of the loveliest of the creatures, who trail bright garments over marble floors get their finery and their beauty from the poorly paid labor of millions of their sex. The analogy is not good, anyway, for in spite of the charming Elizabeth of England, rovalty is out of fashion. It's better for women to be human beings first— even working ones. Queens live too much upon other people's bounty and hardly ever earn their keep. They are out of place in the democratic scene, _

the second article of the confession of |

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| Axis powers makes it more so. | as a result, Rumania are cut off as anti-Axis supply

The, Hoosier Forum

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

| PROTESTS SMOKE IN BROOKSIDE PARK AREA |By P. M. S. | Isn't there something that can be

{done about the offensive odor and

[smoke fumes that are making our | days and nights hideous? We who (live in the vicinity of Brookside | Park have endured this pollution of the air we breathe for months, but this summer it grows worse and worse. It nauseates us when we sit down to a meal, and awakens us from sleep in the middle of the night. These fumes come from a rubber factory located just northeast of the

my little daughter and a group of her friends for a picnic in Brookside Park and the smoke and fumes permeated our picnic table until our heads ached and we couldn't stand the food. For years we nave loved the trees and the many beautiful birds in own yards or porches. Is it all to be ruined? ” ” » NATIVE OF HOLLAND WRITES ON HOUSING By a Visitor I am from Holland, so Mrs. Ferguson's kind remarks on my country's leadership pleased me very much, particularly because that leadership manifests itsel{ in such a sensible attitude toward social problems. We Dutch are self-reli-ant, individualistic and independent, but where such principles obviously

to the point of absurdity. America, due to a wealth of natural resources and a remarkable energy in availing itself of them, has many luxuries that we in Europe do not so commonly enjoy, but, frankly, delight in those things is overshadowed by appalling poverty so widely evidenced in your slums. In Holland we do not permit such conditions to exist. We have not permitted it for 20 years, and for good reason. We found the health and well-being of our poorer citizens could actually be more cheaply maintained by subsidizing their housing than by paying their doctor and police bills. Loans for rehabilitation are made available to property-owners who have shown a decent regard for their responsibility in the past, but those who have permitted their property to deteriorate into slum conditions we do not consider very good citizens, and for their tenants

park. About two weeks ago I took |

Brookside--lately we can't enjoy our |

fail to work we do not carry them |

(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

| we do not hesitate to provide Gov- { ernment or municipal housing. | The taxpayers’ money must not {be invested in cracker boxes, so we (build strong; otherwise our model housing of today would be tomorrow’s slums. . Many American cites have made a fine beginning in slum clearance, and, once begun, you do things, as you say, in a big way! The American scale of action is tremendous. Therefore it surprises me that Indianapolis, with its many ugly sections, has made only one attempt to correct them. But no doubt you are planning others. I wish I could stay to see them. One thing—you have utterly magnificent trees. They make even the shabby streets beautiful! I hope your citizens will arrange that those lovely trees will soon shelter even your poorest people in homes worthy of the name. , » NOT SUPRISED AT RUSSIAN-GERMAN PACT By Mrs, E. Hershson. The Russian-German agreement [should not surprise anyone. Hitler

(and Stalin have always been “brothers under the skin.” Neither Stalin's |lies about universal brotherhood,

nor Hitler's lies about anti-com-munism should any longer deceive us. - Americans—Christians and Po reject all foreign propaganda—Communism, fascism, anti-Semitism. All are insidious poisons that seek to undermine us from within. Let us all live together peacably in this great free country.

#8 8 SEEKS EXPLANATION OF | IDEOLOGICAL ABOUT-FACE

| BY R. Sprunger

{ During the so-called Spanish Civil | | the |

| War, E. F. Maddox repeated [nonsense that Fascist Italy and | Nazi Germany were saving Europe {from “bolshevism” by destroying the Loyalist Government of Spain. Italian newspapers now claim

themselves what democratic social{ists knew long ago—that Germany, | |Italy and Russia are “ideological | allies.” Now, Mr. Maddox, since you | are carrying on a campaign of “ex-| posures”’ explain this about-face of the “saviours” of Europe. ” ”n ” HOLDS BONDS ARE BRAKE ON RECOVERY By G. O. Davis. Brazil, Ind.

Prosperity and lower taxes can be had by converting all public bonds into money. Stop the issuing of any more public bonds and finance all public affairs with cash from the Treasury through local branches of government. Eliminate all taxes but a Federal income or sales tax. This will cause the billions of dollars that are stagnated in bonds to flow into and increase private enterprise, making

greater national income on which the rate of taxes can be lower.

New Books at

the Library

mental reaction. Some will recall a framed diploma hanging on some

wall certifying that so-and-so completed the reading prescribed by the Chautauqua Reading Circle. The traveler in the group will pic~ ture a little town and lake in western New York bearing the same name, where in 1874 the Methodist Episcopal Church gathered for a summer feast of reason, which gathering became the mother of the

Side Glances—By Galbraith

® copa 1539 BY NEA SERVICE INC TM REG U8

"Meet my

819

SAT, OFF.

friend, Mom—he would like some bread and peanut : butter and Jelly on it—and so- would I." :

AY the word “Chautauqua” in a|far-flung and influential institution group of middle-aged-and-bet- (of Chautauqua. To practically all

ter people and get the flashes of Lig |the

will suggest a big canvas tent set on the high school campus or village common and a week of awe-inspiring and glorious entertainment. Some will recall the elder La Follete's interpretation of Hamlet. Some will remember the oratory of William Jennings Bryan as he boomed forth on the state of the nation. Others will say “The ventriloquist and the bag-pipers—they are what I remember,” or “Oh, the lovely Schumann-Heink—she sang in our town.”

The circuit Chautauqua has come and gone. Marion Scott was one of “the talent” and in “Chautauqua Caravan’ (Appleton-Century) she tells the story of those days. She was in the work because she loved it; she loved life, she loved people, she loved seeing new places, she loved adventure. Whether in a “rude [08 town of Texas or a dust-blown settlement of Oklahoma or a shady village of Indiana, she played with the same enthusiasm. She, with her troupe, gave per-| | formances under almost incredible conditions. They reached the all but | inaccessible spots. They played| Shakespeare where Shakespeare had never been known, and they made their audiences like Shakespeare. No survey of the cultural development of America can be complete without some consideration of Chautauqua.

HI YA PAL!

By ROBERT LEVELL Hi ya pal, I'm glad I know A friend can be so grand, To fill the world with happy glow, So far across the land.

Where a joy, time and again Can make life be worth while, When there's a real-for-sure friend For each and every mile.

DAILY THOUGHT

And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all.—Luke 21:2 and 3.

T is the will, and not the gift that makes the giver..—Lessing.

TSTAY AUG. 20, 19% Gen. Johnson Says —

War Sure to Bring Boom to U. S.; Behavior of Markets Indicates Valuable Lesson Has Been Learned.

ASHINGTON, Aug. 29.—One of the most encouraging outcomes of these days of crisis is the calm behavior of the stock and other exchanges. In former war threatened periods there was almost invariably a crash. As this column has constantly maintained, it was incredibly illogical. In every single instance of war the initial nose-drive and shaking out of suckers was followed first by a general rise and finally by a crazy and inflated boom. :

As a matter of fact, impending European war is about the most bullish tactor imaginable. In the present case, the Rusisan double-cross of the antiRussia and perhaps,

bases. This country is bound to become the principal supply base against Germany, not only because it has all the necessary stuff to sell, but also because it is closest. o » » HE only usable naval powers of the Axis gangsters are submarine and air forces—but they can be very effective against ocean shipping. The longer sea routes to such sources as wheat, meat and cotton as the Argentine and Brazil and to South American oil and nitrates are more exposed than the path to our ports because of distance and difficulty of convoy service. This country and Canada are about the only sources for iron, steel, chemicals and all the products of industry. The anti-Axis powers have several billion dollars of ready-made purchasing power in this country. It resides in the ownership by their citizens of American securities and also of bank deposits and gold. If general war comes, they will force these owners to take anti-Axis government bonds for these. Then they will hock or sell the American securities to provide bank credits or cash for their governments. This with whatever other credits may be extended would make a vast buying of the products of both our industry and our agriculture. The only depressing effect would be possible panicky selling by foreigners of American securities to avoid seizure by their governments. This is less likely than formerly because these forces are now better understood and there are ways to guard against such an effect. "

O far as they have been made known, the policies of Mr. Morgenthau in the Treasury and Chair-

” un

| man Frank of SEC seems to be in highly intelligent recognition of all these things. | of the reason why there has been no crash yet and | the fact that there has been none at all in spite of ’ | all the alarm seems fo be a pretty good promise that

That is perhaps part,

there wili be none. Nobody wants war, but it is an ill wind which blows nobody good. European war would have some elements of a Godsend fo the Fourth New Deal. It would be almost certain to boom industry and agriculture. It would come close to ending unemployment. That, plus the emotional appeal, would probably insure to Mr. Roosevelt a third term. Of course, it would all be an inflationary bubble and, unless handled with far more care and conservation than this Administration ever handled anything, would surely collapse in ruin. But who ever ° thinks of tomorrow's headache at 12 midnight on

| Dec. 31?

U. S. Roundup

By Bruce Catton

Gannett Says He Fears New Deal Is Paving Way to Dictatorship. (Twelfth of a Series)

OCHESTER, N. Y., Aug. 29.—There aren't many men in America who are more bitter, de~ nounced by the strict New Dealers than Frank E. Gannett, publisher of a thriving chain of New York newspapers. It was Mr. Gannett who first scented perils in the New Deal court-enlarging program, in its government reorganization plan, in its spend-lend bill. Furthermore, he organized opposition to them and beat them. Now, it happens that Mr. Gannett is neither a crusty reactionary nor a blind Roosevelt-hater. Instead he is a thoughtful, sensitive person who dislikes the present drift in world and national affairs and thinks it's up to him to do something about it, according to his lights. “Liberalism,” he says, “implies an open-minded-ness, a readiness to change. A liberal, fundamentally. has sympathy for the mass of the people; he wants a world of things as they ought to be, and is ready to change the things we have—if he can thereby get something better. “First of all. he wants the freedom of the individual. He doesn't want to be regimented or oppressed, either from Washington or from anywhere else. “I'll fight any reactionary swing. The men who framed our Constitution were not conservatives. They were liberals; they stood for the freedom of the individual as contrasted with the oppressive government regulation they'd known in Europe. “So, I say the Constiution is the greatest liberal

| document ever penned, and I contend that we who de-

the men who

fend it are liberals just as were framed it.

Sees Threats to Liberty

How are those liberties principally threatened in America today? In two ways, as Mr. Gannett sees it. First, by the fact that—in his belief—the great tendency of the New Deal program has been to concentrate increasing power in the hands of the executive, upsetting the old system of checks and balances and--to an extent, at least—paving .the way for a totalitarian regime. Even more important, he feels, is the fact that our continued depression is increasing the economic pressure on the mass of the people. Yet, the economic problem, Mr. Gannett believes, cannot be solved by any government which operates —as he believes the New Deal does—on a so-called scarcity program. He denies that America has reached its last frontier: its inherent richness, its active and ambitious people, its tremendous productiveness in all fields, give it a limitless succession of frontiers.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

F vou have been reading or hearing anything about, treatment of tuberculosis lately, you are likely to have run across the word, pneumothorax. This is one of the many words doctors have taken from the Greek, and it means, literally, air in the chest, or more exactly, air in the space which surrounds the lung, separating it from the ribs and chest wall. The condition of air getting into this pleural spaca may arise spontaneously but artificial pneumothorax, used in treatment of tuberculosis, is produced inten= tionally, by injecting air into the pleural space. The air injected does for the lung what a splint does for a broken bone—put it completely at rest by making it impossible for it to move, and so gives it a chance to heal as quickly as possible. When the air is injected, it reduces the lung to inactivity by com pressing or collapsing it. The collapse is partial or complete, according to the amount of air injected into the pleural space. The lung may be kept in this collapsed, resting state for as long as one and one-half to three years by regular refills of air into the pleural space. Pp The procedure is safe, simple, and practically painless when done by an experienced physician. The question of when to use pneumothorax, must of course be decided by the physician who will know whether it is likely to help a particular patient. The operation is not successful in every case, chief rea+ son for failure being the presence of adhesions ow bands holding the lung to the chest wall. The average adult patient under 45 finds very lite tle change in his “wind,” even after the one lung. is temporarily put out of use. He often feels much bet= ter and stronger, his fever disappears, cough and | sputum diminish and frequently entirely disappear, sputum becomes negative, and his color and general

appearance improve markedly.

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