Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 15 December 1939 — Page 24

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FRIDAY. TEC. 15, 18 Gen. Johnson Says—

Congress Likely to Probe Lack of

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PAGE 21 THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _______ The Indianapolis Times Fajr liath Finds His

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MARK FERREE | Business Manager |

Enough |

By Westbrook Pegler

U. S. Communists Violated Terms of | Soviet Recognition Leaving Us Free

ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER President

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1939

WORTH GOING AFTER NDIANAPOLIS is ready to go places as an aviation center. Already located here are the Allison Engineering Division of General Motors, the Civil Aeronautics Authority aviation radio testing station and Col. Roscoe Turner's new flying school. . Add to that the fine Municipal Airport, plenty of space to expand and a supply of high-grade skilled labor for any aviation industry that might desire to come here and you have some pretty convincing reasons why the Government should locate its proposed $10,000,000 new engine research center right here. Allison alone, which is just swinging into production on a significant new military engine, is sufficient yeason for considering Indianapolis as the location for this laboratory. It's the coming military engine. We are glad to see Myron Green and his associates at the Chamber of Commerce already working to bring this development here. But they will need help. Help of Congressmen, Help of influential men in the community. . It will take work and planning to present Indianapolis’ case properly in Washington, but from a long-range point of

view we know of nothing that will be more influential in | bringing other aviation activities here than this new |

laboratory.

WILL SHE MAKE A BREAK?

OTH Berlin and London seem to think the pocket battle- | ship Admiral Graf Spee will try to shoot her way |

through the little cordon of British warships that is standing guard off Montevideo. Assuming that Uruguay does

not intern her, and that she has not been too badly damaged |

by British gunfire, such a sortie seems inevitable. Even | He said also that if the United States opposed the | “peace” policy of Soviet Russia, a policy now expressed | | by military invasion of both Poland and Finland in the | role of “peaceful” aggressor, he would be obliged to |

if the odds are desperately against her, the alternative of

eventual internment for the duration would scarcely be |

attractive to a commander schooled in the German naval tradition. If the break is to be attempted, it will be done soon. For British reinforcements are being rushed. that one or more British battleships is proceeding at top

speed to supplement the cruisers now keeping a death |

watch at the mouth of the Plate. And once the 14-inch guns of a capital ship are trained across her path the Spee will be up against it.

It is a great naval chess game, with thousands of lives | and millions of dollars’ worth of steel as the pawns of luck | And much as we dislike it, the scene of com- |

and gunnery. bat is inside what we presumed to denominate the Western Hemisphere's “Security Zone.”

IN ATLANTA HE shades of John Bell Hood and William Tecumseh Sherman must be looking down on Atlanta with some astonishment today. The damyankees are thick along Peachtree St. The Rebel yell is heard again. Proud Georgia belles once more

meet invaders from the North, and both mingle with strange |

people from a strange place called Hollywood, undreamed of in 1864. There is excitement rivaling that of the November day, so long ago, when Sherman's army fired the city. And all this because of the first public showing of the movie version of a story about a struggle, an era, a romantic and heroic episode in American history, long since “Gone With the Wind.” What, indeed, if the whole amazing celebration is a trifle on the synthetic side, smackihg of commercial ballyhoo and the press agent's art? The fact remains that a great book has become a great film. And those Americans who are in Atlanta today, those who read of the doings there, those millions who soon will see the picture in their movie palaces and neighborhood theaters, can be glad that their country still is able to preoccupy itself for a little while with a war story that is not immediate and sordid and menacing.

WHY YOU ARE FREE N this day, 148 years ago, the first 10 amendments weve added to the Constitution of the Unitea States. They are the American Bill of Rights. By adopting the Constitution itself, two years earlier, the people of the 13 original States had surrendered great powers to the new Federal Government. But they had done so with grave misgivings. Their fear of tyrannical government—their passion for individual freedom-—had been inherited from England as it had so recently been challenged by England. The memory of Magna Carta, of the English Bill of Rights which grew from the tyranny of the Stuarts, of their own Revolution against George III, was strong in the minds of the Americans who demanded,

when they consented to the Constitution, that a Bill of |

Rights be written into it without delay.

And so the first Congress, in 1789, submitted the pro- | posed amendments to the States. The necessary 11 states |

hastened to ratify, first New Jersey, then Maryland, the Carolinas, New Hampshire, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and finally, on Dec. 15, 1791, Virginia. The Bill of Rights is as important to you now as it was to the men and women of 148 years ago. Because of it you are free—free to belong to any church you please, or to none; free to speak or print or write your opinions; free to complain against and to the Government: free from unreasonable search and seizure of your home, your property and your person; free from arbitrary, cruel or unusual punishment; free to demand a prompt and public jury trial if you are accused of crime; free to own property which not even the Government can take from you save by due process of law and with just compensation.

But these freedoms are not for you alone. They belong |

to all, and all must be permitted to use them or none can long have them. That is what we must remember today. Even those who despise the Bill of Rights, even those who would destroy it if they came to power, are entitled to its protection. For denying freedom to them would be the first step toward denying freedom to you.

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Mail subscription rates 65 |

It is likely |

| To End Relations if We So Desire.

ASHINGTON, Dec. 15.—Entirely aside from the | outrages against Poland and Finland the ques- | tion whether to continue relations with Soviet Russia | rests on a comparison of the promises of the Stalin | Government with the performances of its agents here. | If its agents have violated the promises given by | Maxim Litvinov in November, 1933, as the price of | recognition, the United States is released from the bargain. This country recognized Russia on the basis of a | pledge by Litvinov, as Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, to “respect the indisputable right of the United | States to order its own life within its own jurisdiction | and in its own way and to refrain from interfering in | any manner in its internal affairs.” He wrote, further, | that it would be his country’s policy to “restrain all | organizations under its direct or indirect control” from | any act, overt or covert, “liable, in any way to injure | the tranquillity, prosperity, order or security of the | whole or any part of the United States.”

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| © INCE then the Communist Party has taken a lively | part in American international affairs. By the ad- | mission of its own general secretary, Earl Browder, in his testimony before the Dies Committee, it is sub- | sidiary and subservient to the Communist Interna- | tional in Moscow, which is controlled by the Soviet | Government. This party indorsed President Roose- | velt for re-election, its agents have engineered a revo- | lutionary political movement in organized labor, and only recently, in California, it gave active belligerent | support to a proposal to abolish the American form of | Government and establish a dictatorship in the guise | of an old-age pension proposal called Ham-and-Eggs. The proposition that the Communist Party has in- | terfered in the internal affairs of the United States | need not be argued. They concede it. It is their | boast and reason for being. . | Their defense is, however, that they are not part | of a foreign organization. There is no objection to | activities here of organizations allied to foreign organizations. The Salvation Army, the Catholic Church and the Y. M. C. A. are international. The present question deals with activities hostile to the tranquillity of the country and of a nature voluntarily renounced by Litvinov.

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S to whether the Communist Party is part of an organization controlled by the Soviet Government, Browder finally was compelled to lay it on the | line before the Dies Committee. After many slippery evasions Browder admitted that the American Com- | munist Party was affiliated with the Comintern, that its members were required to agree with all decisions of the Comintern and that any member who disagreed must be expelled.

support Russia rather than the United States, The case of interference and the traitorous character of the Communist Party being established, the question remains whether severance of relations with Russia would hurt us or them the more, But it is up to the American Government, by application of its own laws, to smash this hostile conspiratorial body.

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Inside Indianapolis

Mr. Sallee Isn't Fooling When He Says He's Ready to Quit His Job.

HE Park Board “blow-off” vesterday was simply an inevitable sequel to what we were talking about the other day when we mentioned the odd manner in which certain City boards operated This one has been coming for some time. . you can put it down that A. C. Sallee is 100% earnest when he says he’s ready to quit.

Mr. Sallee was originally appointed by Mayor Sul- | livan in 1930. . . . He's been superintendent in name | only for the last few years. ... He's constantly finding out about his department after things have happened. . . . He's taken the heat from the public and he has been getting fed up with the business for a long time. This last summer's operation of playground personnel didn't sit well with him either. ... He's on record (and has been for a long time) as wanting | merit system operation. . . . He wants to run his de- | partment as superintendent and he wants co-opera-tion from the Park Board. Whether it will be patched up or not is purely guess. . . .Park Board members Albert H. Gisler and Mrs. Louis R. Markun have swung to his support. ... It may finally come up to the Mayor for decision. . . . 4 And if it does, it will be a tough decision for Sullivan to make. . . . Our guess is that he's going to have to make it. . . . Add guess: He won't let Charley go.

w » » THIS IS THE time of the year when the Indian- | apolis Clearing House has it problems. . . . They had | the banking problems of the city well in hand the | other day when in breezed a rosy-cheeked Butler co-ed. . . . “I want a whole bunch of names of poor | families,” she said excitedly. ... Calmly, they di- | rected her to the Christmas Clearing House a few | blocks off. ... Folks keep calling the Indianapolis

| Clearing House on charity business at the rate of a |

| dozen a day. ... This is the time of year, too, when | you see strange things. ... Like the three pretty young ladies, arms locked together, dancing down Washington St. at 6 p. m. . . . We said dancing. » ” » | WALTER I. LONGSWORTH, presideat of the Lilly Varnish Co., who has just been elected president of | the C. of C, is a distant relative of the Nick Longworths of Cincinnati (Alice Roosevelt). . . . But some- | how a few generations back somebody slipped an “‘s” into this branch of the clan’s name. ... A lot of Indianapolis people are busy “out of town” lately. |... It seems that the State Police are picking them up fast and furious for crossing the yellow lines, etc., i . .. And the .J. P. Court | down there is fining ’em $5, $10, $15 and $25 a crack. |. +. At least, that's the word coming back home.

| | loa fina | in the Greencastle vicinity.

A Woman's Viewpoint

| By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

AlERICAN women simply ooze charm, but only about one out of 10 has personality. And this in | a country which offers every opportunity for the de- | velopment of talents and character. _ The truth is that we—meaning especially the mar- { ried women’s club groups—are rank conformists, scared to death to behave naturally or express opinions which are not given the sanction of the “best people.” Although we are apt to have fainting spells if we g0 to a dinner party and meet there another guest with a dress precisely like ours, we are proud to be seen in groups made up of individuals whose behavior, ideas and conversation are identical with our own. Worse still, we have succumbed in a body to the conviction that any member of such a group behaves in an unladylike manner when she disagrees with pres ent company. A startled movement invariably goes over the meeting if a daring soul voices a sentiment contrary to the general policy of the organization. The member who openly questions or opposes the majority encounters a prim disapproval from those whose main ideal for organization life is to keep it harmonious, whatever the cost to originality or good works. Isn't it the truth, sisters, that a great many clubs | actually retard rather than encourage feminine progress? And why not? It would take a goodsized earthquake to shake many of our ladies from | their charm pose. About the only thing that can electrify them to life is the advent of a new idea in | their circle. Personally, I'm in favor of one good hairpulling a year. I believe it would do more to clarify issues than | a thousand weeks of effort to keep “controversial sub- | jects” out of the meetings. Ladies litter the club landscape, & very nice most of them are, but for the sake of variety can't we have a little more personality with our charm?

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The Hoosier Forum

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

{ NEWCOMERS TO CITY ATTACK SMOKE MENACE By Tom and Betty Tyner We are newcomers to Indianapolis. | We want you to know what the soot {of your city has done to us. In a few | short months it has ruined our

| home, contaminated our food,

{coarsened our voices, undermined our health. It has overshadowed with its menacing mantle every

minute of our days. Its greedy, (grimy fingers have clutched at our | dearest possessions. We raise our windows; the soot settles on curtains, furniture, food. | We take a walk; the soot surrounds us, embeds itself in our clothing, our akin, our lungs. It hangs heavy over (the city, dimming the sun, the moon, covering everything with a creeping curtain of corruption, a shrouded imposter, taking its toll in the health and wealth of an indifferent or unsuspecting populace. Why don’t your citizens come out {of the fog? Why don’t they demand {that the correct sanitary measures {be outlined and enforced? Why don’t they raise their voices in pro- | test before they are choked and {gagged by this insidious destroyer? | Why don’t they band together to re{move this filthy blot from the fairest city of the Midwest?

|

with dry cleaners and funeral parlors. No wonder your very newspaper is gray with grime. We're strangers here. Could you direct us to the nearest health authority? « » » » FINDS WAY TO GET 25-CENT HAIRCUT By G. W. M., If the Barber Law advocates believe they have forced the public to accept a staggering increase in price and like it, they are sadly mistaken. I and many others can and do go to the barber college and get a 25-cent haircut. This doesn’t {hurt me, but it sure knocks the {bottom out of the little barber's

(trade. Of course the aristocrat barber {who caters to the well-to-do won't |be affected, but as I see it the little barbers will be forced out of business and on relief. Is this what | the Barber Board wants? I think it’s a raw, unjust deal all the way through. I don’t believe {the public wants this “New Deal,” either.

(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.)

PREDICTS RECKONING FOR COMMUNISTS By Edward F. Maddox Bungling diplomacy, power politics, national and personal pride and old, long-entrenched envy and jealousy have mancuvered England, France and Germany into an impasse of fruitless and futile warfare which has caught them with their hands tied at a critical moment. It is a travesty that the very nations who ordinarily would rush to the aid of Finland in its hour of need are rendered helpless by their own folly.

It may well be stated that Chamberlain, Daladier and Hitler are

| equally opposed to Bolshevism and | | regard it as the common enemy of. No wonder your streets are lined

European security. Mussolini is also bitterly opposed to the spread of Communism to other nations. The war in Spain, in which Mussolini and Hitler interfered to save Spain

from communism, was an internal or civil war against the Reds, while

Finland is being invaded from without by the hordes of communism. Maybe it took a direct, bloody invasion by the Communists to show the world the real aggressive character of that so-called “peace-loving country.” Those who are fellowtravelers with the bloodthirsty Communists will rejoice at the slaughter of the Finns because they once drove back the Red hordes who tried to overrun their country, as did Poland. Poland has been punished for resistance to communism and now the Finns feel the iron heel of the Red aggressor, , . . Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier had better wake up to the fact that Stalin has tricked them and is using them as cats-paws to further his revolutionary aims. But “there is a just God who presides over the

destinies of nations,” and the way of reckoning with communism is sure to come,

New Books at the Library

SJ. B.PRIESTLEY writes in the study of his manor house on the Isle of Wight, he has but to look out toward Godshill to see the rain sweeping down. Here the personal reminiscences and provocative speculations and social criticism flow from his pen into his second autobiographical volume, “Rain Upon Godshill” (Harper). It is limited to the two years since he wrote “Midnight on the Desert” (published 1937), in which his observations are mainly of American Life. Following the reilections of this inquring mind, the reader may expect consideration of a variety of subjects. Of course, he has much to say about his own plays, how they came to be written and circumstances connected with their production; for, he tells us, drama is the form of writing he most enjoys.

Side Glances—By Galbraith

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men,”

In particular he devotes much space to his two Time plays, “Time and the Conways” and “I Have Been Here Before,” both based on the theory of Time, the theory chiefly associated with J. W. Dunne, over which he is giving to brooding. He is worried about the present condition of England, and especially about the quality of contemporary English life. “Our peculiar vices, which are complacency, hypocrisy, snobbery, stupidity, are flourishing.” He bemoans the fact that England lacks an ardent creative life. Or he may vouch upon the American scene in general as when he describes his lecture tour, or he may limit himself to a given locale, such as when he discusses New Orleans. Again he writes eloquently of Arizona, of the Painted Desert, the Navaho Indian Reservation, the Petrified Forest, of Rainbow Bridge in tOtah. . . . “With science, we are helpless children. Without poetry and deep natural piety, we are blundering fools, reeling in our new and terrible cocksureness into one disaster after another. That is what I learned beneath Rainbow Bridge, and though now, on a rainy morning in the Isle of Wight, I can hardly believe I saw so great a shining arch of stone, I have not forgotten.”

THE BLESSED CIRCLE By ELEEZA HADIAN

If cup of the heart Is brimful of wishing And wanting, Of a drop From the flood of getting Can find room or lodging In its depth, To assuage the longing.

If the cup of the heart Is brimful of giving, Not one part Of a drop From a flood of longing And sighing —Hunger of getting— Can find room or lodging In its depth, To waken lust for wealth,

For, the brew of having, For mother, has GIVING.

DAILY THOUGHT

For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.—Psalms 73:3.

NVY has no other quality but

that of detracting from virtue. -Livy,

| peace. | international relations, a really hard-boiled investiga | tion could lay the ground for a hot political crusade.

Efficiency in Army and Navy Unless Administration Acts of Own Accord.

EW YORK, Dec. 15.—Any possible sore spot—or apparent sore spot—in any Administration is fair game for the outs of the opposition—especially as elec tions approach. There are at least apparent sore spots in both the War and Navy Departments. As soon as Congress comes back, agitation for the investigation of both is certain. There is no hint of graft or monkey-business with money. Both services are as clean as a hound’s tooth in this regard. But on the military side, as Gen. Drum so fearlessly made plain, we just haven't got an army, We have as good a general staff and chief of staff and corps of officers as there is. But the Army isn‘ equipped in the modern sense. Its strength and organization are not effective. There has been interior bickering and pulling and hauling as between the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of War which has affected the morale of the whole Army. Too much money has been spent for so small and unsatisfactory a result in actual striking power, As to both services, the amount of defensive protection procured for the billions spent wouldn't stand comparison with similar costs to any other nation, There are many good reasons for this—and some not s0 good. Reason or no reason, a comparison of relative per-unit costs of defense would shock the country and astonish the world. ;

HERE is not enough effective co-ordination hee tween the Army and the Navy. Each has a responsibility independent of the other. It puts them into competition rather than co-operation. The War Department is misnamed. It should be called the Army Department as its sister service is called the Navy Department. There should be a true War Department to make the two services work as a team. The same indefensible and absurd division cole tinues even in Congress. There are “military affairs" committees in both houses and also “naval affairs” committees, but there is no “defense affairs” commit« tee. Just as officers in each service become jealous partisans of their own against the other, so do Senators and Representatives on these committees. o ” »

ONSIDERING human nature nobody can be hlamed for this. Here is at least one great governmental shortcoming that can be traced directly to faulty organization and nothing else. Ordinarily op position tom-tom beating on this glaring weakness in our Government wouldn't get much recognition as a political campaign issue because it is a technical field to which our people pay far too little attention in But in the present magnetic mine-field of

It will be no defense to say that these matters are “war secrets,” or that, at such a time, patriotism com= pels silence. Patriotism compels nothing of the kind, It compels, if anything, just the reverse, for this is a matter of national security in the face of a threatening world. There is, moreover, no reason for Congressional ace tion if the Administration will bestir itself and act. It has unified social security, public works and public lending—but not national defense.

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

Christmas Story Is Repeated, Earlier This Year Because of His Bronchitis,

EW YORK, Dec. 15.—Quite often I reprint an old Christmas story about this time of year at my own request. I wish to have indulgence to do it earlier this year, because I have bronchitis. The story is called “Frankincense and Myrrh.” Once there were three kings in the East, and they were wise men. They read the heavens, and they

saw a certain strange star by which they knew that in a distant land the King of the world was to be born. The star beckoned to them, and they made prepara=tions for a long journey. From their palaces they gathered rich gifts—gold and frankincense and myrrh. Everything was in readiness, but one of the wise men seemed perplexed and would not come at once to join his two compan= ions, who were impatient to be on their way. They were old, these two kings, and the other wise man was young. When they asked him he could not tell why he waited. He made no answer to the old men, who shouted to him that the time had come. At length he smiled, and he ordered his servants

| to open the great treasure sack upon the back of the

first of his camels. Then he went into a high chamber to which he had not been since he was a child, He rummaged about and presently came out. In his hand he carried something which glinted in the sun, The kings thought that he bore some new gift more rare and precious than any which they had been able to find. They bent down to see, and even the camel drivers peered from the backs of the great beasts to find out what it was which gleamed in the sun,

A Gift for the Child

And the young king took a toy from his hand and placed it upon the sand. It was a dog of tin, painted white and speckled with black spots. Great patches of paint had worn away and left the metal clear, and that was why the toy shone in the sun. The youngest of the wise men turned a key in the

side of the little black and white dog. The dog leaped high in the air and turned a somersault. He turned another and another and rell over upon his side and lay there with a set and patient grin upon his face. A child, the son of a camel driver, laughed and clapped his hands, but the kings were stern. “What folly has seized you?” cried the eldest of the wise men. “Is this a gift to bear to the King of Kings in the far country?” And the young man answered and said, “For the King of Kings there are gifts of great richness—gold and frankincense and myrrh. “But this,” he said, “is for the Child in Bethlehem!"

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

O COLDS THIS WINTER is the slogan which determined Minnesotans’ hope to turn into a

proud boast of achievement by next summer, it appears from a statement by the Minnesota Publia

Health Association. Inhabitants of that snowy, frosty northern state are not depending on the climate, either, to protect

them from colds. Neither are they relying on any newly discovered cold remedy. They are using methods which you and your community can adopt to escape spending the winter with the sniffles. “For one thing,” says the health association in its publication, Everybody's Health, “The Minnesotan who mixes his infectious hacking cold with his business, social or school life, will be considered a major criminal. He will be shunned by self-respecting citi zens when found in public conveyances, in movies, at school or at the office, until it occurs to him that the proper place for him is in solitary Confinement at home.” School children will not only be taught the ime portance of the stay-at-home cure for colds but will be supplied when necessary with paper handkerchiefs, to be deposited after use in a paper bag and burned. This measure is designed to cut down the spread of cold germs from coughs, sneezes and runny noses. Children will also be trained to wash their hands frequently as a further deterrent to the spread of cold germs, since hands make frequent trips to mouth and nose where they can pick up the germs, Anyone, no matter how healthy, can get a cold! if he comes in contact with someone who has a cold. He is more likely, however, to escape colds or to have less severe ones, it is believed, if he has kept up his health by proper diet, plenty of sleep and exercise and by following other health habits. :

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