Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 December 1939 — Page 12
PAGE 12 The Indianapolis Times
(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)
ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER President Editor
MARK FERREE Business Manager
Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.
Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.
RILEY 5551
Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co., 214 W, Maryland St.
Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bureau of Circulation.
Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1939
POLES APART SO much by print and speech about peace and good will at this war-torn Christmas time— There are two biblical versions. One—"“On earth peace, good will toward men.” The other—"On earth, peace to men of good will.” We submit, there's a difference; wide as space.
MEN WITH SWORDS NCE when Pompey mobilized his army at the toe of Italy preparatory to invading Sicily, the Sicilians sent a delegation to plead with him not to lay waste their island. To their petitions, the general replied: “Don’t you civilians know better than to argue with men who have swords at their side?” : This story is recalled by week-end headlines touching on the world’s wars. Japan's Ambassador Horinouchi, in Washington, discusses with unusual canddr his Government's desire to negotiate a satisfactory commercial treaty with the United States. Before Tokio can make any ironclad commitments, he explains frankly, it will be necessary to gain the assent of Japan's military forces in China. It was the Army which slammed shut China's open door to trade, and caused the United States to renounce the old treaty. So Foreign Minister Nomura is sending a delegation to treat with his own Government's armed forces to see how wide that door may be reopened. Off the same bolt of cloth is the news from Moscow that Gen. Meretskoff, head of the Red Armies in Finland, has been promoted to the Leningrad District Soviet. The General's record is certainly not one to entitle him to preferential honors. He has sent his troops to one inglorious slaughter after another in Finland's snows. Nevertheless he is at the head of “men who have swords at their side.” And when a government goes to war, the civil authorities have to treat with such men. Doubtless the knowledge of that reality was behind the widespread purges of Russian generals two and three years ago. Stalin sought to make his own pre-eminence more secure by liquidating the strong leaders of the military, But once war starts, any man at whose orders regiments march is a potential “man on horseback”—in the political sense. And when things are not
going well the civil hierarchy must look to its power. Nor has there been any lack of indications that the | Nazi High Command is alert to this threat. How else is it | possible to explain the mysterious shooting of the brilliant and popular tactical genius, Gen. Von Fritsch, in the early days of the Polish campaign? One way to keep a military hero from seeking political command is to shoot him in the back.
DRAMA CRITIC, NEW STYLE
JAMES C. PETRILLO, who draws $26,000 a year plus numerous substantial perquisites for his services as head of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, has some unusual notions about how to earn his pay. He has just served notice that a skit involving John L. Lewis must be cut out of George White's “Scandals” — or else the show won't be permitted to go on, so far as Chicago is concerned. Apparently Mr. Petrillo does not care for Mr. Lewis. That's his privilege, of course. A great many other people do not care for Mr. Lewis either. But is it a proper privilege for a union hogs to be able to set himself as a one-man board of censor over the theater? The question answers itself. At this distance, it seems to us that Mr. Petrillo’s adventure in drama criticism is of a piece with the conduct of the editors of the Daily Worker in firing their critic for refusing to pan “Gone With the Wind.”
THE MEANING OF LIBERTY " HAT, exactly, is this idea of individual liberty? What do we mean when we talk about the beauty and the dignity of the human personality? “Why we mean that unknown fellow, mounted on | his soap-box in the city street, speaking his piece about the ! way he thinks the country and the Government ought to be | run. We mean that editor or author, writing as he pleases, condemning or commending the Administration as his | opinions dictate. We mean that little group of Mennonites or Mormons or Quakers worshiping in their own churches in the way that their consciences tell them is right. We mean the ordinary citizen expressing his frank opinions to his Mayor or Congressman or President, and getting consideration of them. We mean the businessman setting up shop for the kind of business and in the kind of community that he prefers, with nothing but the public welfare to say him nay. “We mean the workingman at liberty to choose his own occupation ahd to move when he pleases into another. We mean the scientist free to search for truth, and the educator free to teach it, unhampered by the fear of some ‘super-man” who makes his own truth and allows no competition. “These are ordinary things to a people that has done them pretty much without interruption for a century and a half, They seem elementary and commonplace—so simple that it seems unnecessary to speak of them. But actually they are not ordinary things. They are the hallmarks of civilization. They stand for the gracious way of living that humanity has always been groping for, through even the blackest nights of tyranny and barbarism that history has recorded. “Looking at it that way, we have a powerful, positive argument why we in America must cling to these things with all our strength, no matter how great the cost. In a very definite sense, we are trustees of civilization. We are guardians of the idea without which civilization is a hollow shell—the idea that every man, no matter how meek and humble and inconspicuous, shall have his place in the sun.” —From “In Defense of Democracy” by U. S. Attorney Gen-
| It's really
eral Frank Murphy.
Aviation By Maj. Al Williams
Campaign in Finland Underlines Shortcomings of Russian Army in Mechanical Skill and Co-ordination.
HE little Finnish Army is still holding its own. Masses of men and blind pounding may have won other wars, but the modern struggle depends on machinery, technical training and co-ordination. Machinery won't operate itself. It demands highly trained men and expert maintenance service. The Russians, lacking technicians, are getting a first-class lesson in big-league warfare. Thousands of airplanes, hundreds of thousands of infantrymen,
masses of artillery, anti-aircraft batteries. ete., mean little more than a gesture unless each unit is trained and the entire plan is co-ordinated. The history of Russia is made up of just such stalled campaigns as the present case in Finland. For wears Russian armies have been called cannon fodder by the military strategists of Europe.
T'S interesting to compare the Russian invasion of Finland with the German campaign in Poland. Germany, a much stronger military and air-power nation, went through Poland as if on a time-table. And I presume the Russians calculated that they could imitate that schedule. But it's not in the Red cards. . Russia, the most regimented nation in the world, cannot seem to make its manpower machinery click beyond the paper stage. Time and again I have heard European military men accord the Russian his place as a brave soldier. But modern warfare requires mechanical background and technicial training. The Spanish War demonstrated that an air force could be effectively used as an advanced arm of the artillery for disorganizing an enemy's back areas, upsetting the flow of supplies, ammunition and reinforcements. The records of the German campaign in Poland demonstrated that co-operation between an air force and land troops could stand or fall on the success of the “timing.” » » HE warplane is the fastest piece of machinery the world has ever seen. Its use in collaboration with land forces requires the greatest precision in training and co-ordination. It means maintenance of contact with the troops by radio or signal system. It means strict adherence to a time-table. Lacking mechanical background, the Russians are also deficient in mass co-ordination. There's no short cut to raising the mechanical intelligence of a people. The Russians have made great advances in this direction, but they are still obsessed with the psychology of “make it big'—no matter how inefficient it is—and they are a long way from the bigleague war standards of Europe.
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
Bear or Jack Rabbit?
EIA ao
Americans seemed surprised when I returned home |
from Europe some time ago and stated that the Russian air force was a myth and a conglomeration of air junk. There's no substitute for brains, and for technical training.
Inside Indianapolis
Police Department Changes Simply In the Interests of Efficiency.
HE announcement of wholesale changes in the detective department of the police force does not mean that there is something mysterious going on. all very simple. The force has been going through a more or less steady modernization for the last several years and every once in a while the process necessifates some drastic moves,
picture has come short-wave radio, patrol cars, scientific crime detection, traffic analysis and a score of other improvements. ~ There has been a great deal of yammering around town that the “old cops” are on the spot. It's not true. The executives of the force have got to have experience as well as youth. But they've got to have efficiency, too. You name an old officer who is keeping up with nis profession and you'll he naming a man who has a good ranking. And that's your answer.
» = » YOU WOULD be surprised to know how many small-time petty little rackets flourish around Indianapolis. The Better Business Bureau in its most recent report issues 16 different warnings. There's one about the insurance swindler who approaches a family recently bereaved. He tells of an insurance policy the family knows nothing about, say, in the
$10 for expenses. Only heaven knows how many times it works. Then there's the always flourishing racket of selling press cards. Folks buy them on the theory thev can get into movies, fights, etc, all by simply waving their card. "Taint so. Sports writers,
events or they can't get in. That's something a lot of people den't know. Sometimes (don't faint) when a reporter hasn't got a ticket, he pays his way in and then puts it on his expense account, Honest!
THERE HAS BEEN a good deal of interest in ent in a system of unearned in- | comes. They made a Hitler thinking ERE is a situation that spellsjan excerpt from a confession: “I
the appointment of the Very Rev. Msgr. John O'Hara to Bishop since he is an Indianapolis man. Bishop O'Hara comes from a grand family. ‘The family home is at 3164 N. Illinois St. Mrs. O'Hara is a
lovely, quiet woman. The Bishop has three sisters and two brothers.
One of his brothers, Joseph, is the head of the hat department at Strauss’. The younger one, Bob,
| once worked for The Times but now is in Washington. | He's connected with the Government.
Last we heard he was with the tobacco division of the A. A. A. All three, the Bishop, Joe and Bob, have a lean handsomeness. 'They’ll never grow old. That's the kind of folks they are.
A Woman's Viewpoint
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
POPULAR innovation in radio is the Pot of Gold program. And no wonder; it offers a honanza to everybody, including the A. T. & T. Moreover it promises to accomplish something which neither moralists, preachers, nor female reformers have been able to do—it keeps men, women and children at home one evening a week. Tuesday night is now sacred to Tums. Papa, Mamma and the kids are frozen in their chairs waiting for the ringing of the telephone bell which will in-
'that there was only standing room starvation—good paupers and bad money to pay the needy aged somefor them. Many left disappointed.
lan Police departments can't be what they used to be. ara but Mr. and Mrs. Public hope |
After all, the FBI has proved that good cops aren't ;,. the future . . Just old-fashioned flatfeet swinging a stick. Into the ,..4e more explicit.
| (AS ©
{ i {
|be given at the Murat Theater Dec.
I wholly disagree with what you say,
The Hoosier Forum
defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
but will
REGRETS FAILURE TO GET SEAT FOR THE “MESSIAH” By Leona B. M. Ross For six weeks it appeared in all the Indianapolis papers that the] presentation of the “Messiah” to
(Times readers are invited to express their 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.)
views
20 . .. would be free to the public.
However, it was not stated that all seats in the theater would be
reserved and were for the most]
[part passed out to friends and rela- | [tives of the two organizatio [volved and Mr, and Mrs,
ns in- more trade barriers or wars of exPublic | pansion or aggression and no more
were informed when they arrived depressions, over-production and
criminals without end until we come
The presentation was beautiful |to the end.
the singers did their work] ss 8 =
OVERPRODUCTION CITED AS CAUSE OF HARD TIMES By W. H. Edwards, Ind.
. that publicity is |
Spencer, =” = = SEES UNEARNED INCOME AUSE OF WARS
fulminations in The Times against anything and everything that tends
|By L. B. Hetrick, Elwood, Ind. to bring modern practices into gov-
|
[ca {nize Franco as soon as the demo- | Other half” | eraticaily { vanquished ? | tell the world that their victory or (defeat meant an international strugamouht of $4000 and then seeks to collect $9.95 or |&I€?
| Hill and suffered at Valley Forge t
| | hot the same evil European oli-
movie reporters, ete, have to have regular tickets to (garchy come in at our back door |
| American arteries of trade
{
Why did the humane powers of ernment makes it ciear that he is a the world remain silent while the hide-bound reactionary who would Italian armies, aided by the half- carry government back even beyond civilized Moors, destroyed the great) the “horse and buggy days” to the city of Madrid, laid waste the land |time of ox carts. of Spain and killed more than a|{ His argument that the increase of million noncombatants by bombs? persons beyond the age of 65 would, And why did all the leading nations in 40 years, have “one-half of the
lled civilized make haste to recog- People living at the expense of the if there is an increase
elected Lovalists were in old-age pensions, doesn’t make Did not the Lov lists | economic sense because it is modern ya machinery that would support the
The able-bodied workers of today My own kin fought at Bunker| are creating 10 times as much of o commodities as they could a generaand | tion ago; far more than they, the , workers, can buy. And the possibili= ties for the creation of a still larger amount of commodities is lying
defeat a European oligarchy, before their wounds were healed,.did
Voice in the Crowd’s almost daily |
dormant and millions of able-bodied men are out of employment because, with the help of modern machinery, the workers in industry and agriculture can create the commodities in much larger quantities than the) one-third of the people can buy them. The original Townsend Plan of $200 a month for the aged is probably unworkable under present economic conditions, but V. I. C. {should know that the amended | Townsend Plan calls for a 2 per cent {transaction tax, with that money, |nothing more, going to the aged. Such a tax might raise enough
thing around $60 a month which, | with the present cost of living, { would be only enough to provide the ! simple comforts of life for those | who spent their early life working |at such a low wage that there was] | no chance of their saving for old| ‘age.
| » » 2 | THINKS NEW DEAL ‘DID A GOOD JOB By David Wright | I can’t understand how these ear- | to-the-ground Republicans figure | that our President caused America
to drop out of civilization. All of the American people haven't grown dumb in these last few years, I hope. : | I don't see how the G. O. P. can do any more than F. D. R. has done. | Why didn't they pull us out of the | tragedy we were headed for in the | years of '31 and '32 when the Demorats came into power? | I hope that the people of these (good United States will think very strongly when they go to the polls [the next election. They should not i bite the hand that has been feeding them for the last seven years.
2 ‘
and establish financial control T 9? The financial and industrial im-| perialists of the world have killed New Books at t their own market by concentration | of wealth and trade barriers inher-
he Library
he would fight Russia. They made] mystery and intrigue and a Stalin who came up in a land of death from the first words. Six orphans, whose fathers were slain women, each with reason to hate anby the Allied imperialist armies, and | other, spend one week in the same counter revolutions, fed by interna-| house, year after year, eat the same tonal financiers. . {food on the same days, and sleep Who ever did recommend a hu-!in the same beds in the same rooms mane method of war? Do away —all because “Old Emily” estabwith the cause of war, i. e., unearned lished the custom in her regime. incomes, and then there will be no{ Anita Boutell opens her story with
Side Glances—By Galbraith =
form one subscriber that the wheel of chance has | selected his name from millions of others for the |
weekly prize of $1000. Maybe the chosen individual is out—unlucky wight that he is!-—but even then all is not lost, for one hundred smackers will be wired him the same evening. But can you imagine the gnawing of fingernails, the anguish of soul which follows the thought that if you had not decided to join the gang at the corner drugstore, or had refrained from running over to Mrs. Jones’ for a bridge game, you might have had nine hundred more? Who knows, this program may be the start of a real back-to-the-home movement. As time goes on perhaps we shall discover that staying in on Tuesday night isn't such a hardship, and having begun the habit we may relax and make it permanent, . Anyway the fellow who thought up the idea knows his Americans. We like to feel noble (stay= ing at home is one way of doing so, nowadays), and we are gamblers to the bone; thus the program satisfies two profound national instincts. : And in the virtuous Victorian manner, it may also be said to point a moral. For search where we may, even to the rainbow’s end, our real pots of gold are to be found only at home, and for that iittle homily I think I geserve to get next week's thousand.
19°26
COPR. 4835 BY NEA SERVICE. NG. T. MW. REQ. U. 8. PAT, OFF, v rn—_——
"Now that we've lived through Chrsitmas, shall we keep that New - Year's datayor stay home and be sensible?"
|took the revolver from the table in the hall... went back to the li(brary . .. she was laughing. ... {shot her as she sat there in the big | chair.” From this beginning, the author spins a tale about these six women: Claudia, tyrannical owner and ruler of the house, as well as dispenser of | the Hetherton fortune; her sister. Luculla, and her niece, Philippa, in rather needy circumstances; Emily, her weak-willed sister who is in-| clined to dramatize her position as] a neglected wife and mother; Frances, the last sister, quite the opposite with her iron will and her appearance of a successful business woman, and last, Rita, the unwelcome but dazzling beauty of the! group, who had schemed her marriage to Claudia’s only brother, The rule for “Emily's Week” permits no man to come near the house, but that doesn’t prevent the lawyer's arrival to persuade Claudia to make her will, nor secret meetings of David, adopted son of Claudia, and his sweetheart. This is a story of hidden emotions and desires, life-long loves and hates. “Death Has a Past” (Putnam) will carry its spell-bound reader along to the inevitable result.
GREATER GAIN By ELEEZA HADIAN The gift you give Will ever live Safe in the fold Of memory, Always new. But that which you Grasp, hoard and hold Will lose glory Soon, become old, Fading with you.
DAILY THOUGHT
Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.— Psalms 75:5.
T is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because it is impossi-
ble to divest one's self of self-love. —Horace Walpole,
—. TUESDAY, DEC. 26, 1939
Gen. Johnson Says—
La Guardia a Real Liberal and Still His Favorite for President Despite Some Impulsive Remarks.
ASHINGTON, Dec. 26.—The spectacle of Harold Ickes and Fiorello La Guardia standing on the White House steps and spouting about a convention of “Liberals” to insure the election of a “liberal” President (meaning Mr. Roosevelt) is too illogical to be as sinister as it seems. Both admit that no party of what they call “liberals” could come anywhere near electing a President, But Mr. Ickes says: “The ‘Liberals’ might call for.a sacrifice hit. Sometimes you can ‘show strength negatively as well as positively. The ‘Liberals’ hold the balance of power.” He even hinted at a revolution if a “Liberal” (meaning Mr. Roosevelt) is not elected President—“we may run into an:internal situa-
tion that would be as disastrous as the things that have happened in the democratic nations of Europe.”
To what does all that add up? In the first place, it amounts to an assertion that a small group who call themselves “Liberals” threaten ‘by political secession and even threat of revolution to strongarm, bulldoze and subvert. majority rule in a democracy. You can’t read it any other way. Of course, it is a third-term cavalry charge conceived and engineered by, the White House janissariat with Mr. Ickes, out in front waving the green banner of their particular Islam and ululating of Mr. Roose= velt “Allah il Allah, Allah, Allah"—there is no God but God—again meaning Mr. Roosevelt, : ” ” uo THINK I know what a Liberal is. I.am sure that the little Washington rule-or-ruin camorra of political nondescripts whose. tactics compare . more closely to Nazi, Fascist and Stalinesque political methods than anything this country has ever seen, are not “Liberals.” I hate to see real Liberals like Fiorello and, with some reservation, Harold, manipulated by these illumi« nati, Both of these guys are too busy trying to do a good job in public service to spend much time in reflection on spur-of-the-moment public utterances sug gested by professional “thinkers.” ' When I say ‘real Liberals,” I mean it—with my fingers crossed on Harold, but with no reservations whatever on the Little Flower, ie Mr. La Guardia may rant {o his dynamic heart's content, but he can't rail away his record—which is one of masterful scientific government. No man’ has done more to put social consciousness into hitherto socially inert government. ; " ” 2 SAID here recently that this column could have no pre-convention candidate, That overlooked its perennial exception announced Jong.ago. Of all the figures, prominent or obscure on the political scene, Mr. La Guardia is head and shoulders higher— (no joke intended). I don’t care what he says or which party nominates him, this column will support him in preference to any possibility it yet has seen, : He says he can’t get any nomination because. of his name—Fiorello. If, in times like this, our. country hasn't more sense than that, let's change it by act of Congress to W. J. Lincoln—Mr, Washington Jefferson Lincoln—and call him Jeff, But I do wish that this pinch of high explosive— La Guardia—would guard his impulsive utterances, They don't mean a thing to me, because I know him, His second thought is always right and he always takes one. I know it and he knows it, but does the public know it?
Rare Gem
By Bruce Catton
Head of U. S. Conciliation Service Doesn't Want Any More Power.
ASHINGTON, Dec. 26.—That rare gem of gove ernmental bureaucracy, a department that doesn't want more power—shining jewel as seldom found as a Kohinoor or a Junkers—has been pulled from under its bushel. . It is the Conciliation Service of the Department of Labor. At a time when its labor policy generally is under fire, the Government is beginning ‘to realize that this quiet outfit is an asset and there is talk of strengthening the Service. To which its New Deal director, John R. Steelman, says that while the Conciliation Service might like to be expanded a bit, it doesn't want to be strenghened.” : : “We don’t want authority,” he announces. The Service has no power whatever to intervene:in any industrial dispute unless both sides to the dispute want it to intervene; and this very fact is the source of much of its effectiveness. One veteran member of the Service remarks: “I go to a city where there's a strike and call on the industrialist involved. He looks up and says, ‘What authority have you got to mix up in this?’ I tell him: ‘None in the world. If you want me to, I}! get out. I just wanted to come in and chew the fat with you and see if there's anything I can do to help.’
Keep 'Em Talking
“That usually takes him by surprise—I mean, just the idea that there's somebody in Washington who isn't trying to make people do things—so we get to talking, and first thing you know we're talking about the strike, and before long I've got this man talking to the union people. And if you can keep 'em talking to each cther long enough, there's usually a settie=ment.” That's the theory the Conciliation Service works on: keep ’em talking. No matter how far ‘apart the parties to an industrial” dispute may be, the. con=ciliators have found that they can generally’ reach an agreement if they can just be kept conferring. Conciliation Service now costs about $400,000 a year to operate. Steelman would like toc have 100 commis sioners, instead of the 63 he now has, and would like to have enough money to raise their pay a bit, Bevond that, he thinks the outfit doesn't need much of anything. It isn't enforcing anything . .. just settling quarrels. .
Watching Your Health
By Jane Stafford
EARSIGHTEDNESS, or shortsightedness as itis sometimes called, is the most common eye error. About one-fifth of all adults are nearsighted. People with this eve error can see objects that are very near the eye, but things a little distance away appear blurred. What happens is this. The image of an object the ordinary distance away falls in front of the eye's retina, instead of on it. (The retina of the eye'corresponds to the plate or film of a camera.) The light rays may focus in front of the retina for either of two reasons. The eyeball, instead of being nearly spherical, as it is in the normal eye, may be too long so that the retina is an abnormal distance from. the lens of the eve. Or, the lens itself may bend the light rays too sharply. In either case, the effect is the same so far as vision goes. The light focusing apparatus of the nearsighted eye bends the rays together .too sharply for the rest of the eye. ii * ‘ Correction of the condition is fortunately very simple. By placing a concave lens, in the form of eye glasses, in front of the nearsighted eye, the rays of light are slightly spread apart before they enter the pupil. This extra spread offsets the extra concentration of the eye lens, and the image falls right on the retina where it belongs so that one can see clearly and distinctly. ° : ' Nearsightedness is almost entirely an. acquired defect. Very few habies are born with it. Most of them, on the contrary, are born slightly farsighted. During the school years, when the eyes are used a great deal for reading and studying nearby objects, nearsightedness increases rapidly. By the time people reach the age of 20 years, 20 per cent of them are neare sighted. : Nearsightedness is especially prevalent among peo-= ple whose work requires much focusing on nearby objects. This includes tailors, bookkeepers, stenographers, watch makers and the like. Such people who use their eyes for close work much of the time are advised to be on the alert to cdtch this defect and have if corrected.