Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 October 1939 — Page 10

’) L FE

g I | 3

The Indianapolis

LIMES (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARE FERREE President : Editor . Business Manager

Price in Marion Coun- _ ty, 8 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 gente a week.

Mail subscription rates | outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

RILEY 8551

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The ‘Indianapolis Times Publishing - Co., | Maryland St.

Member of United Press, _ Seripps - Howard = Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and’ Audit Bu reau of Circulation.

Give Light and the People win Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, OCTOBER, 2, 1939

~ LET'S PARK OUR GLANDS

"0 debate in all history ever was more vital than the one which starts today in Washington. And since debate is the essence of democracy it is well that what we shall

| © do in our relationships toward a world at war. be id

discussed. But since debate itself i isa highly volatile thing, since

© it stirs men’s blood, and since our nation’s policy should be

determined by reason rather than emotion, let’s park our

~ glands “for the duration.” Let's read and listen with eye

and ear to the substance rather than to the rhythm and the sound. Let’s distinguish between oratory and elocution.

- For if we don’t watch out we may be floated off on a wave

of rhetoric, and be left to wonder why, after we have landed on some distant shore. What takes people into war is not thinking but feeling; ‘bands playing, feet marching, speakers shouting. And “not the least of these is elocution.So, while following the great debate, let's. be cagey. Let's realize that we are all inclined to be susceptible to the cadences of the human voice. Let’s keep graven in our minds that this is not our war; that the date is not: Nov. 12, 1918, and that itis not for us to take up where we left off. Let’s paste in\our hats this, from one of the great lords of speech of all time. Robert Ingersoll said:

“If you wish to know|the difference between an orator and an elocutionist—between what is felt and what is said —between what the heart and brain can do together, and what the brain can do alone—read Lincoln’s wondrous speech at Gettysburg, and then the oration of Edward Everett. The speech of Lincoln (will never be forgotten. It will live until languages are dead and lips are dust. The oration of Everett will never be read. “The elocutionists believe in |the virtue of voice, the sublimity of syntax, the majesty of long sentences, and the genius of gesture. The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural. He places the thought above all. He knows the greatest ideas should be expressed in the shortest words—that the greatest statues need the least drapery.”

THE CITY AND THE MERIT PLAN

VERY thinking citizen hopes, of course, that the time " will come when the entire administrative personnel of both the State Government and the City government operates on a merit system. By that we mean no one system in particular. + We mean simply that government employees be selected on straight out merit and capacity to do their jobs. All of us want our government to operate on as business-like a system as possible.

The old political plunder system of giving jobs to the

~~ deserving party members is dying all over the United

States. Progress is being made in Indiana. It takes time. At best, the process of transformation is a slow one.

It is regrettable that the City Administration last spring did not see its way clear to installing the merit system in park personnel appointments. The opportunity was there. Abuses had been reported. There was strong public sentiment for the change-over. But the City Administration felt that it could muster up a ypalined personnel from the ranks of the party.

Summer is over. It has been learned that there was

- at least one unfortunate accident at a City playground. A 19-year-old instructor who had gained his job through

the support of a precinct party leader started a fire as a prank. The resulting explosion injured badly a 13-year-

: old lad. There may have been other incidents.

But regardless of whether there was one accident or

. a dozen it is clear that it is up to the City to start studying

. Plans for a merit system for playground personnel. The ' Mayor’s Committee, headed by Mrs. Thomas Sheerin, only ~ Saturday recommended adoption of such a system. The Mayor disagrees. We hope he will permit the study and that a merit system will be in operation by the time next

: ‘playground season rolls around,

Vy as wh

“ADMIN ISTRATOR SLATTERY

OU may not have heard much about Harry Slattery. He is the quiet kind. ‘ He speaks seldom. He is rarely interviewed.

3. But those who know American govertonen best—men

Fair

Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Compared With Spirited Work of World War Reporters, On Present Conflict Seem Tame.

EW YORK, Oct. 2—The newspaper coverage of this World War to date has been “strangely sedete and matter of fact in comparison” with the

high-toned and spirited work that was turned: out.

in the early days of the last’ one. The ‘public has been warned against hysteria, and that: ‘warnihg seemed in order at the beginning, ‘because . it was natural to expect that the people ‘would -be fiercely

Writers]

partisan. But since the first few days emotions have | ~~ subsided, and just now there seems to be more puz-| =

zlement over the intentions of Josef Stalin than interest in the fighting or the original issue. : It is true that the fighting, except in Poland, has resembled the early sparring in a heavyweight championship bout. But the German ‘counter-attack with pursuit” in Poland has been reminiscent of the ruthless and cold-blooded cruelty of the German invasion of Belgium, which was covered magnificently by a number of star American writers. Bill Shepard, Phil Simms, Wythe Williams, Richard Harding Davis, Irvin S. Cobb, John McCutcheon and James O’'Donell Bennett wrote stories with blood in them ‘and with the emotional power of men who had seen cruelties through the eyes of sensitive human beings. ” o 2 5 N this war, by contrast, the American correspondents who followed the “counter-attack with pursuit” have written with the unfeeling detachment of men covering a small fire in disused premises. A routine spirit pervaded those stories which reported the herding to the rear of squads of young Polish civilians, bound for the firing squads. The facts and the allegations were faithfully told, put there was no indication that any writer was personally aroused, and nobody dropped in any description of the faces of the Polish boys nor any suggestion of the suffering and woe among a people whose only offense was a love of their homeland. I do not presume to criticize men who were on the spot, knowing that they had to placate censors to hold their credentials, and realizing, too, that the world now is accustomed to war. The American correspondents have seen so much killing in the last few years and the public has read so much of atrocities’and fiendish destruction of cities that the human race may have lost something. 2 8 8 i N 1914 the execution of innocent hostages and men I selected at random from the Belgian civilian population shocked the American journalists who came by and picked up the details from survivors and the American people poured out their sympathy to the Belgians. That this early disgust later affected the American decision to go to war cannot be doubted, but nobody ever disproved the accounts. This sort of thing was new then, and the men who were dodging around among the Germans behind their lines could not refrain from writing into their narrations of fact something of their own horror at occurrences which were at that time inconceivably brutal. Restrained reporting, such as that of today, may help to keep this country’s emotions in check, but for the world to become accustomed to recurrent atrocities on helpless, unorganized, bewildered civilians is no gain for humanity.

Business By John T. Flynn had

Falling Bond Prices Due to War May Cause New Deal Serious Trouble.

HICAGO, Oct. 2—One of the first real irritants of the war in this country is the effect on the United States bond market. Bonds have dropped: several points and it is obvious they would have fallen further if the Government had- not supported them by stepping in and buying several hundred million dollars worth. But the great question must now be settled— should the Government go on buying its own bonds to keep the price up or should it let them find thelr own level? It's a pretty serious decision and some very serious

consequences may flow from it. It may indeed be the beginning of a whole train of serious consequences. This Government is a borrowing Governs ment. It can’t go on issuing notes and buying them up at the same time. If those who now own bonds want to sell more than the public will buy, what will happen when the Government adds to ‘the supply by offering new bonds? The effect might be to tend to drive bond prices down in a series of declines. There are a good many reasons why this would be disastrous to the New Deal—might indeed actually wreck it at home while it is toying with the problems of Europe. - The Government cannot support ifs recovery efforts with borrowed funds while its securities are going down in price because the sellers outnumber the buyers. Therefore there is nothing left for the Government to do save to step in and peg the price of its bonds.

Currency Inflation May Result

Conservative bankers will storm at this. And with good reason. But this is the inescapable consequence of operating the Government on deficits." The Government has to go on borrowing. It cannot go on borrowing while its bonds are sinking in price. It is therefore’ driven to support an artificial price. To do this it is forced to buy large quantities of its obligations in the open market at the same time that it is making fresh loans. Thus it expands the supply at the very moment when the supply is already too large. But it is caught. Having set out on a plan to control the volume of income by artificial means it cannot stop, but must apply the control at whatever point the plan tends to break down. One other effect is that the Government now gets around at last to converting its bonds into currency: If this should proceed at a very large and continuous rate we would soon find ourselves with a billion or two Federal Reserve notes added to our money supplies. We would have our bond inflation converted into a currency inflatidn.

The Hoosier Forum

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

URGES GREATER REWARD FOR WAR HEROES

By Daniel Francis Clancy, Ind.

The Times recently ran a story on Capt. Sam Woodfill, who was designated by Gen. Pershing as America’s outstanding soldier of the World War. The Times reports that in two previous sessions—and for a third time in the last session—of Congress the Senate has passed bills increasing Woodfill’s retirement pay from $138.75 to $150, and that all three times the action was stopped in the House by War Department opposition. If my memory is correct, you will find in Lowell Thomas’ “Woodfill of the Regulars” that after the Great War, Woodfill, reverting from the wartime rank of captain to noncommissioned regular, was forced to retire and ‘dig ditches to pay off the mortgage on his home—until a theater chain finally rescued him by taking up a collection from patrons. And today, The Times reports, he is without a job. .. . I have pointed out the sad case of Woodfill before. Again I hold him up ‘as a personification of the proverb, “The memory of a republic is short.” In at least the case of the last session of Congress the grounds for War Department opposition to a pension increase for Woodfill was that his gallantry had already been “duly recognized ” by bestowal of a Congressional Medal of Honor. This is not the accepted view elsewhere, such as in Great Britain where I recall at least one case of a soldier who had rendered exceptionally valuable service to his country having been given a grant of $150,000. I recommend that outstanding service in the armed forces be rewarded. with grants of money and pensions as well as bestowal of decorations. With, I add, grants and pensions in’liberal proportion to the value of services rendered, ” ” ” OPPOSES LICENSING

OF ALL SOLICITORS

By James M. Gates I am opposed to the ordinance to license all solicitors. The excuse is that some solicitors steal pocketbooks from downtown office buildings. The license on them should be so high that they would leave the city. : There is no harm done by honest solicitors. The real object of this ordinance is to keep honest men and women from making a living. We have so many such laws and licenses and high taxes that it is

- Logansport,

(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.)

almost impossible for the taxpayer to exist. Everything under the sun now is taxed or licensed, except cats and canary birds. My cat died, and I gave away my bird to escape more taxation, which will soon follow under the New Deal. I have been in the same plight that the old Psalmist was in the days of yore, when he was burdened with high taxes and poor relations, and he said, “Oh that I had wings like a dove, that I could fly away and be at rest.” Many officials want this: depression to continue. Recently the School Board granted an increase in pay to all teachers. They have always been well paid. The county is not financially able at present to stand the increase and it was deferred until 1940. . . .

» » ” THINKS FATHER DIVINE HAD THE RIGHT IDEA By 8. K. L. Judging from America’s reaction to the war, 90 per cent of the nation

has adopted Father Divine’s slogan —“Peace, It's Wonderful!”

SEES PROFIT MOTIVE AS BASIS FOR WARS . By Viola Nash War—think what this word means to you and millions of others. Is there any other word in the entire English language that carries with it so much misery, devastation, suffering, bestiality and broken lives? . « «» For what? I think the workers of this country realize that there is one’ purpose behind capitalistic wars, and only one purpose. Profits for the profit-making class. For every four million dollars made by one American munitions mantifac-

were slaughtered.

A country with such amazing wealth as this country has—and yet it cannot take care of its 12 million unemployed. A couniry that refuses to invest some of its capital for the purpose of necessary homes for its people. There is something wrong some place. I have the greatest love ahd respect for my country, but I do not feel that our men and boys should have to fight across the waters to protect the huge profits of its manufacturers while its workers are crying for food, clothing and shelter and even begging for, jobs. We must have the truth, not propaganda. Our battle field is right here; our weapons are edu-

tion for the necessities of life, a bigger, brighter, happier life in which

war will have no place! Let's keep America out of war.

New Books at the Library

JERE Mata Hari, glamorous spy of World War days, here in the flesh, her methods, dangerous and subtle as they were, would be as outmoded as a car of her day compared with its current model, says Joseph Gollomb in his hairraising record of our present technique, “Armies of Spies” (Macmillan) Difficult though it is for any book on the current situation in Europe to be absolutely up fo.date, this expose of international espionage, off the press in July, seems fairly to project itself into the future, so precisely have the armies, both legal

and secret, which threaten Euro6-

Side Glances—By Galbraith

pean democracy: moved along the grooves of its planned pattern. Beginning with the plan which fomented in the brain of a certain lance corporal, in 1918, one Adolf Hitler, lying gassed in a hospital in Pomerania, Germany’s modern. spy system now numbers some 45,000 paid workers in its ‘combatant secret service.” In Germany and elsewhere, elaborately organized and trained, groups comprise “termites,” which spread rumors, devastate with whispers, and “torpedoes,” which| move - in after the termites have prepared the way for violence. -The dreaded Gestapo in action, both at home and in Spain, the violence of the order of the Cagoulards in France, the honeycomb of plot and counterplot in Vienna, add horror to horror with sabotage un-

der the Soviets, and the fairy tale|-

of the lambkin which was. Czechoslovakia in its contact with the Nazi wolf. “Hitler meets a Tartar, female,”

-| Britons, Franks, Latins, Teutons and Slavs.

turer in -the last war, 100,000 men}

cation for our fellow workers, agita-

Jen. ohnson

Pa,

~ Stalth Gets Most of ‘the Loot in European Plundering While His Pal Hitler Does All the Dirty Work,

TLANTIC CITY, N. J., Oct. 2—The boy with the longest .pole who gets the European persimmon seems now to be Joe Stalin, Hitler, who astonished the world by making more bloodless conquests by double-crossing than Napoleon made with cannon, is

| beginning to look like a poor piker at his own game, | Stalin takes what he wants of Poland, free-gratis.

From a military viewpoint, he apparently takes much. more. The small Baltic states seem suddenly to be in his bag. With hardly a blow struck, he outflanks Rumania, stands between Hitler and the Ukraine and touches Hungary. In: a word, in the twinkling of an eye, he has gained a strategic posi‘tion that leaves Hitler's entire dream of self-contain-ment by conquest to the eastward at his mercy—at least for as long a time as Hitler has the western Allies at war with him in his backyard. For Russia is not at war with Britain and France. Hitler alone is holding that sack.

” » 2 ITLER got Russia’s help but Russia, rather than the Nazis, apparently got a completely dominate ing position in both the Baltic and the Balkans and— if she sticks with Turkey for.the sake of the Dar-

| danelles—also on the Black Sea. Adolf seems to have

raked more chestnuts out of very hot coals for his strange associate than any international ‘sucker ever did before—not excepting the good old U. S. A., ever since 1917. The identity of the real boss-man in that setup is pretty well indicated by the place whence the orders ‘come and the guy all the statesmen go in the back room to see. That place is Moscow, not Berlin, and the head is Stalin, not Hitler. If Stalin suddenly looms as a military wyalons from the Black Sea to the Baltic, the western world will have to declare a new Public Enemy No. 1. For he represents, and is seeking to sow, a set of ideas— bolshevism—which could collapse every Government he- faces, even Germany. This is worse for Germany than for the other tortured states of middle Europe, because the Nazis are in the doghouse with most of the rest of the world. They are being rubbed off the face of the ocean and have the heaviest artillery in the world pounding all along their western border. ; s #2 LL this is still conjecture, but the tgs of it ara strong. It may eventually be bad news for the Nazis, but how good might that turn out to be for Britain and France? - All these nations are busted, taxed and regulated to the point of virtual enslave ment. That is the most fertile sort of soil for bolshe vism. How would western Furope like to confront a new wave of communism coming from the east—more powerful and threatening than ever? Perhaps we have learned that we can’t settle these treacherous wrangles among savage European tribes— They have been going on since the beginning of recorded history. The wrapping of the package is always different—religious differences, royal differences, dif ferences of political ideas—but the contents are always the same—racial hatreds, jealousies or suspicion and a constant quest for power. We have no interest in the contents of that packe age and we will be the world’s worst suckers if we are fooled again by the current container in which it h offered for sale. ’,

Aviation By Maj. Al Williams

_ British Invited: ‘It - Bub Didn't: Like Being Told of Nazi Air Supremacy.

ASHINGTON, Oct. 2.—Professional. opinion in military-and naval circles in Washington seems to be turning toward the conclusion that England and France, regardless of warnings‘ by disinterested parties, have bitten off more wings than they can chew. ‘When I mention professional opinions and “naval and military circles,” I am. referring, necessarily, to army and navy airmen. I shall never forget the contrast between my reception by the British when I first landed in England, before my survey of the other European air forces, and after I returned to England, fresh from a close-up study of German airpower, They forgot that I had thoroughly inspected the airpower plans, equipment and even. experimental projects of Italy and Germany in 1936. They passed my qpinions as to the threatening aspects and poten tialities of German and Italian airpower with the usual apathy. But when I returned to England in 1938, having checked the latest developments of Italian and Gere man air forces, the reaction of British political and air leaders was one of intense curiosity. And when I told them that I was the only pilot outside the mem bers of the German Air Force who had flown. the dreaded single-seater fighter Messerschmitt-109, the curiosity was redoubled.

Flew in German Fighter = ~~ "7% |

I had ‘managed to get a flight in the Messers" schmitt-109 by the desperate resort of permitting a German ‘pilot to fly’ my Grumman single-seater fighter, the Gulfhawk, in exchange. He was the only . pilot, except myself, who has ever. flown. the Gulfe hawk. I remember telling flatly that, considering avails able numbers of fighting and bombardment ships and training of personnel, in addition to mass production records, this was no time for the British to tackle the German Air Force. Although they had worried me na .end in obtaining my opinion, they “raised Cain” when they got it, and refused to believe it. This permitted me to resort to the language of “coaching from third base,” in which I most adee ‘quately expressed myself. “If you insist upon tangling up with that airforce, there’s going to be a grand drying of hides at a thousand feet.” That was my realistic opinion, stripped of sentiment or sympathies. My impatience with the British, then and now, is ‘that they’ve followed: their admirals and generals ine stead of their air force. leaders.

= like Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Norris—rate him J tops. That is not strange. For 30 years he has been a ? fearless and brilliant guardian of our natural resources.

It was Slattery in the early days who fought along

leaves that all conquering gentleman temporarily in abeyance, the lady of the story being none: other {than King Carol’s red-haired friend, Magda Lupescu; while the exploits of Kenji Hoihara, the Japanese|

Waiching Your Health

A Woman's Viewpoint By Jane Stafford

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

& fw

#

2

: ¥

side Gifford Pinchot against graft in high places. It was } Nagery who led Senators: to the Teapot Dome trail.

-He helped to write and pass most of the Federal conRR ervation laws of the last quarter century.

As Undersecretary of the Interior he has shared with Mr. Ickes the task of keeping clean the biggest big business job of the national emergency.

L. ‘Now the President has called upon him to take over

the Rural Electrification Administration.

The other day he was sworn in under the fond eyes of Senator Norris and others of the conservation army with whom he fought battles of Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals.

It is an unspectacular job for an unspectacular man.

It is a big job for a big man,

WRITE—OR WRONG?

THIS week, by decree of Postmaster General Farley, is . National Letter-Writing Week, the idea being that if

7 everybody will write plenty of letters the country will be

ed up and the Postoffice business will boom.

We suspect that many a Congressman, snowed under v huge piles of mail from constituents telling him how to

eutrality, would rather Jere it be called National{

ote: or n't-W ite-Letters Week.

HOUSANDS. of boys and girls are back in college, the vast public. school system-is functioning

smoothly. As a people we are committed definitely to |’

the idea of free education for the masses. It’s one of

the principles upon which we have built our Republic. Yet this year, it seems to me we ought to begin to question, with all seriousness, the common sense of that attitude. And perhaps we can best begin by putting forth’ this query: “What do we educate the children for?” In Germany most of the great universities are closed. In England infants have been sent from their homes and kindergartens so they may be safe from bombs. Yet, in the past, both Germany and England were Meccas for intellectuals. They built great schools which were the-pride of all the world. Well, what's superior about them? Is this

where our fine education leads? If so, then we'd bet-| - ter close the schools a while, for if savagery is to be |

our lot let's ‘be real savages and not fakes dressed. up to look like civilized beings.

Does all this sound pessimistic and absurd? It| | shouldn’t, when we consider how much ‘' money: we |: spend to lift ourselves from the mire of the common- |.

place and to instill into the coming generation a desire to lead good and useful lives by means oPour schools. Can’ beauty, culture or even plain decency exist. much longer in a world where war is the accepted ‘method for settling disputes among educated men? ‘Unless learning can release us from the compul-

‘sion of flinging" away. our substance and the lives of |

our. children in war’s folly, and unless we can train ourselves in the money.

spend on education is wasted 1 wrong again? wm

i \e

peace, then it looks as if most of |

super-spy, the author declares, make |: the Hitler variety seem “childish and humane.” A final chapter, pat as this week's

‘ Inews reel, asks and answers “What |

do they want of Uppe “Is there,” asks Gollomb, “suc ume as a ‘small’ malignant growth?” et ———

‘A SMILE. : By KATHERYN MAY What is worth a million: dollars, Yet doesn’t cost a on

What comes so very

"Ana 5 never whally spent? nerves. us. on to 3 ys interest

" dhiraciod your - father, tho, with flirting and de mostly now about my, roast beef and

HEN Johnny starts to school he is dlinoh cers tain to be exposed to measles, chicken pox: and other germ diseases. If his parents were wise, they would have had him vaccinated -against ‘and given toxin-antitoxin or toxoid injections to protect him from diphtheria, But he cannot, unforfue nately, be’ protected against all the diseases of child hood: : In measles, for example, ‘convalescent serum, from

| the blood of someone who has just recovered from | measles, may ward off an attack of this disease, but | its protective effect does not last longer. than four

weeks, 50 it is only useful in an emergency such as an

emic. pide the old days, many parents took the attitude | that children had to have these ailments and the

a a Ue

other

“keep ehiliren i a : family, to get sick. That is 1 practice today.

Bok oun ;