Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 January 1940 — Page 14

"PAGE 14 - | The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER Editor

MARK FERREE

President Business Manager

Price in dn County, 3 cents a copy: delivered by cart er, 12 cents a week.

Mail . subscription. rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

> RILEY 5551

. @ive Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

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 Bu--"reau of Circulation.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1940

HE'S NO HUEY ARL K. LONG is not another Huey P. That, atleast, séems clear from the Louisiana primary. The present Governor, seeking to succeed himself, did a lot of tall claiming before election day, but the returns show him with something. like 30,000 fewer than the combined | votes for the four other candidates.

Huey wouldn’t have bragged so much in advance without also making sure that the necessary ballots ‘would be in the boxes.

‘We don’t know much about Sam Houston Jones, who was a fairly strong secend and won ‘the right to oppose Governor Earl Long in a runoff. Whether Mr. Jones has. any chance for final victory is something at which we won't venture to guess and, except for a suspicion that any change in Louisiana probably would be for the better, we can’t be sure that it makes much difference. The people of that _ state have abundant reason for disgust with the mess they got themselves into by accepting Huey’s dictatorship, but evidence that they are determined to achieve genuine and thorough reform appears, from this distance, still pretty slim. However, even if Governor Long wins a runoff victory and so maintains his place at the head of the bedraggled remnants of his brother’s dynasty, he has shown no signs of ability to climb into Huey’s unbeatable class. That much, we think, is to the good.

HISTORY REPEATING

AITHFUL to the pattern of making a lot of economy ~ gestures early in the session, the first of the regular appropriation measures—the Independent Offices Bill— comes out of committee marked for $90,000,000 in reductions.

You may remember that the same thing happened last year. And you may remember that before the appropriation completed its course through Congress most of the reductions were restored. And that in the second, third, fourth and succeeding appropriation bills economies were less and less noticeable. And that when Congress got around to something like farm-parity payments, it abandoned all pretense of economizing, and voted hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the President’s budget—and refused even te consider the President's request that it raise the revenue to pay the extra bills. - We can’t help being skeptical. We've seen ‘this same . show so many times before, and can’t forget that in the last act, when considering economies and taxes that actually touch the constituents back home, the boys on Capitol Hill always rise above principle.

GENERAL DUMBNESS

TALIN, having purged the weatherman who failed to call ~~ the turn on how cdld it would be in Finland, now has personally taken charge of the Finnish campaign—by telephone. Seated in his commissariat back in Moscow, he is long-distancing the Red Army staff in answer to a plea for reinforcements that they had better advance and that a victory is demanded, or else. Other instances in a single day: Recall for trial and liquidation of 105 Red officers for failure to stage a pushover. Removal—probably just below the ears—of the Soviet Commissar for aviation, Mikhail Kaganovich, brother of Lazar Kaganovich, intimate friend and confidant of Stalin. If blood in Russia is thicker than water, which doesn’t rank so high, brother Lazar may | be a bit peeved. The parachute act is tried again and Russians in squads of 50 are picked off by Finnish riflemen. Many are winged : on the way down. A considerably larger target than a duck. . Just what's the idea of this business of dropping pavchutes behind the enemy front probably will remain foreve mystery to military students, whose rule number one is never to break your lines of communication, which is precisely what happens in this maneuver. Booklets on “How to Ski” are found in .a captured Russian supply wagon. The theory being perhaps that it’s never too late to learn. = Commissars from Leningrad are reported to be taking personal charge of activities at the front. Something like sending a pot-bellied councilman from the Eronx to direct the New York police during a riot. What this all adds up to apparently is that the greatest Finnish ally is not General Winter but General Dumbness. . Address, Leningrad, Moscow, and all points East.

MORE HATCH LEGISLATION

HE movement to rid the civil services of politics—a movement which took an enormous stride with passage of the Hatch Act by Congress last year—is making further progress on two fronts. In Washington, hearings have started on Senator Hatch’s bill to extend to certain employees of state governments the prohibitions and protections applied to Federal employees in his original legislation. His new proposal would apply, however, only to persons paid in part with Federal funds. Other state employees are untouchable as far as Congress is concerned. - * But from the National Civil Service Reform League comes word that “little Hatch Acts” are being put forward in at least 11 states. And these would not be confined to state employees who depend on Federal funds. Te Only a relative few state legislatures are meeting this year. But if a beginning can be made—preferably a twoedged beginning, by passage of the Hatch Amendment in Congress and by passage of a “little Hatch Act” in one or more states this year—the way may be blazed for a tremendous advance in 1941 when most of the legisiatures will be sitting, Voters who remember the politics-increlief ‘scandal in Kentucky in 1938 should not let their Congressmen: or their legislators forget that shocking episode, or put off doing

-

"sion to penetrate groups of American students and

|- bill for other reasons, but the attitude illustrates our

dies als : THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Needs Something Harder Than a Sponge

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Older Members Took Initiative in Fostering Immorality Among Young Communists; Author Gitlow Says.

EW YORK, Jan. 18.—I want to emphasize a NX point in the case of those Russians and foreignized Americans who debauched American girls and boys in the furtherance of the Muscovite conspiracy and assigned the victims of their vicious example to the task of contaminating others by mingling with them in the American Students’ Union and the American Youth Congress. ’ "The point is that these older Communists took the initiative. The young people did not seek them out. On the contrary, the elders cultivated relations with susceptible girls and boys, the majority of them between 16 and 20 years, and this work was an activity of the Russian Government directed from Moscow.

Benjamin Gitlow, the former general secretary of the party in the United States, writes in his book,

the immoralities of the young ones were never seriously discussed or considered. As long as they could be used in the ‘service of the conspiracy profligate relations among them could be ignored.

ND even now that he has blackslid Gitlow asks us to believe that he regrets that state of affairs

as much for its reflection on the Communist movement as for its consequences to the victims. Possibly, if it had not tended to discredii the movement in the eyes of the American people, he would have deplored it less. He leaves no doubt that the adult conspirators im-

posed on the inexperience and adventurousness of the young ones. ‘The older partly leaders courted the support of the youth by going out of their way to play up to them,” says Gitlow. And, again, “They (the youth) became most malleable morally as well as politically in the caucuses of the most unscrupulous of the party leaders,” and saninism, a party word for immorality, was rampant among them. The youth were taught to regard chastity as a bourgeois and therefore shameful condition. tJ ” » LTHOUGH Gitlow makes frequent pious and longing references to idealism, his confession seems to me to have been prompted more by a desire to discredit the party for revenge than by moral or idealistic regret. He was a mature man at the time, but he gives no evidence that he possessed the active human decency to cofrect matters. Moreover, he was an important leader and therefore responsible for conditions which were suffered to continue because it was thought that interference might hamper the movement, . ; When one comrade threatened to demand an investigation of immorality among the Communist youth the subject was dropped because, Gitlow says, the charges were true. And even that threat to demand an investigatign was not prompted by any decent regard for moras. rey, it was made to silence embarrassing ¢liscussion of the dissolute conduct of the elders. \ This was the youth group which was given a mis-

young workers and whose success in this corrupt work was hailed by various Communist leaders, including the same Otto Kuusinen, the Finnish traitor, whom Stalin recently appointed head of his puppet govern ment of Finland.

Inside Indianapolis

About the Growing Feud Over All - Night Parking on Streets.

HAT'S going to happen in .the growing feud over all-night parking jis anybody’s guess. But no matter what results corne immediately, the net is bound to be ‘all to the good. All complaints to the contrary, all-night parking is not a good practice. Milwaukee, for instance, which has a great ‘deal of wel-igketved fame for its law enforcement, has ‘an’ iron-clad rule on the subject. Out-of-town visitors who want to leave their autos on Milwaukee streets have to phone the Police Department for permission. Milwaukee's unbending vigilance has resulted in respect for the law. The principal discomfort here is directed at the apartment dwellers. A survey conducted by George R. Popp Jr. the City Building Commissioner, disclosed that there is garage space for only 21 per cent of the autos belonging to Pelsons who live in apartments. This obviously puts the Police Department in a disquieting position even though it is trying to do a good job. The Popp survey may force a delay in enforcement of the ordinance. But don’t think it’s going to be shelved. The drive is on. It wil wey on,

2 #

FIVE GIRLS keeping hou a party recently for one of their members who is going to be married. . All o the girls work so they arranged for .a maid to get everything spic and span. . . . Except all five forgot [to leave a key out for the maid. It was a grand party. . Now that the police ‘and the firemen and the City Hall are resolving to make 1940 a banner year by instituting courtesy in answering phones|it might be a good idea to pass the idea on to the Sanitation Division, the place you call when you want your ashes or refuse hauled away.

[# on the North Side gave

8 = a» THE OFT-REPEATED story that Indianapolis won’t support entertainers turns out to be another myth. “Gone With The Wind” opens on Jan. 2 at Loew’s and Sonja Henie comes to the Coliseum Feb. 6. . Both places are hard put handling reservation ‘requests. . The price doesn’t matter, they just want seats. . One of the nicest of gestures comes from Mrs. Louis R. Markun, who has just retired from the Park Board. A very worth-while member, Mrs. Markun has let, it be known that she’s ready to help out whenever she’s needed. . If you're curious, Tom Ochiltree of The Times

has resigned to take a position with the Louisville Courier-Journal.

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

ATIONAL defense” is an overworked phrase these days. And it bids fair to be more so now that Congress is sitting. We may expect to hear the usual alarms about mythical enemies. Nobody knows exactly who is going to come over and attack us, for such foes are never specified by neme. : Yet, ‘in spite of the fact that most of those who might be dangerous are pretty busy with other matters at the moment, we are exhorted to appropriate a great deal of money for armaments and battleships and soldiers. All citizens of the United States realize the need for national defense, I believe. Only we aren’t in accord as to what foes we must prepare to fight. + Our country is in grave danger, but not from foreign armies. We are headed for the same mistake for which we have denounced Herr Hitler—the mistake of sacrificing the people’s welfare to the manufacture of armaments. There is hunger in our land, and sickness and unmeasured poverty. An economic system which limps more painfully toward chaos, and in which no man or woman, however industrious or honest, can feel secure; the termites of unrest and revolution gnawing at the foundations of democracy; millions of people exploited. for political expediency— are these not the intangible foes we should prepare to fight? ! As has been often pointed out, 80 million dollars, the cost of one battleship, would make the Wagner health bill function, yet certain of our leaders say it is too expensive to consider, Perhaps you oppose ths

usual maudlin approach to the question of defense. The health of a nation, the comfort of its people, their prosperity and Sappiness, are possessions a

“I Confess,” that the adult party leaders set the young. Communists an example of loose morals and that

‘lin the decades to come, the Social

to 20 years, so the yearly cost is not

.

The Hoosier Forum

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

PAYS TRIBUTE TO SOCIAL SECURITY ACT

By the Sage of Main Street, Kokomo, Ind. I fail to see how even an ultraconservative can find serious objection to compulsory social security. It «is all very well to tell people

dent; but experience teaches that millions will neglect to do so, in spite of all our warning, and the mere fact that we warned them will not absolve us in any way from a full share of their burden. It is my sincere conviction that

Security Act will be acclaimed by everyone as a great step forward; and the Republicans, likely enough, will be claiming they invented it. 8 8 ” GOVERNMENT CONTROL

TOO COSTLY, IS CLAIM By Voice in the Crowd If Times Reader understood industry he would not advocate more government control of the steel industry because of the fact that it takes $10,000 of investment to make each job. The Government cannot change it, except to make it cost more. The steel industry requires massive, costly equipment in order to produce economically. This equipment, except for obsolescence, has a life of 10

so high. Not any higher than the $700 annual taxes per worker that the industry must pay. Bear in mind also that the steel industry today has the highest wages and the largest workman personnel of its history. Not bad, is it? In all industry it costs between 5 and 10 thousand dollars to employ each worker. But all people do not work in industry. They never did and they never will. Industrial employment is on a par, or higher, than in 1929. Industry is paying higher wages and triple the taxes that it paid in 1929. Not a bad record in depressed times. How would government control better it? With all of the control and exp diture of the Government in 1 years the Government has made no real jobs at all, except for those employed by the Government. How much is invested in each of those Jobs? Tt might be $100,000 and not paid for. How much is invested in each professional job with its education and reference library? How much is invested in each job in a five million dollar department store employing 2000 people? And the

neate

they should be foresighted and pru-|

(Times readers are invited to express their views these columns, religious coniroversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names wiil be withheld on request.)

in

the misunderstanding to say, “let the Government control it.” A fellow could say, let the Government control “Times Reader's” affairs, but that is not American and that is not the way America was built. The

| Government did not build the Amer-

ican system of production and distribution, and a generation hence people may know that Government

control cannot maintain it. The more Government control you have the more Government expense you have, and that is one basic reason why higher industrial employment still leaves large unemployment. High Government expense is cutting down real buying power, because the luxury end of wages is going for taxes. You don’t buy consumers’ goods” with the money you pay for Government. Our problem is more basic than politics, so let’s have some respect for those men who struggle with business problems and make real jobs.

RECALLS BREAD LINES OF HOOVER ERA By Times Reader, Thorniown, Ind. I was just wondering if the Republicans who ate their 25-cent supper at the Claypool of milk and

crackers wouldn’t have appreciated |

the meal just a little more if they had taken a bucket and loaf of bread and gone tp a nearby fire station and stood jn line three or four hours in zero weather—just to see how people did a few years ago. Of course Hoover couldn't help it; he had his hands tied, they say.

But he came out of the White]

House looking pleasingly plump for a man who had his hands tied.

” ” s

RESENTS DEFENSE OF THE DIES COMMITTEE By Albert W. Rash - I can’t understand how Col;=anist Raymond Clapper vindicates S==. 1 analyze the Dies Committee thus: If the Communist Party is wr American and subversive, it should be declared illegal and all its members should be declared traitors and of course condemned to death. And at the same time the Constitution should be changed so that only the Republican ‘and Democratic parties would be legal and also free speech should be stricken from the Bill of Rights. Dies might also condemn all the sciences and arts of foreign origin just as Hitler has done.

New Books at the Library

YOUNG American couple residing in an English farmhouse in Sussex observe and analyze the Englishman’s. reactions to the September crisis of 1938; and “Night Over England” (Harrison-Hilton) by Eugene and Arline Lohrke, is the result. + They conversed with the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Of evenings they sat by their own fireside and talked with their village callers.

admitting catastrophe until it is imminent. ‘Appeasement’ appeases him for awhile, for he is very patient. But the conservative govern-

store is non-productive. , It is easy for the Qisinteresied and

ment’s repeated acquiescence which first became evident during the

Side Glances—By Galbraith

democracy maust Aght, for, and if they are not. safe- |

Instinct of the Englishman forbids

Ethiopian dispute, then in the

Spanish War, then in the Czech]

crisis, finally loosened tongues and unleashed fear. Everyone was convinced that Hitler had some special horror up his sleeve, else he wouldn’t be so cocky about being ready to fight England and France and Russia all at once. Men working in fields looked up at lowering skies, for it was from there IT would come. They remembered the Zeppelins of the lasu war. The Lohrke’s brief and incisive exposition is not a bitter diatribe but a sympathetic and restrained attempt to mirror the British mind. To them it seems that an almost obstinate vagueness clouds that mind; that the ruling class is weary of an active and inventive leadership; that the ruled class, accustomed to security in return: for labor was bewildered by the submissive policy so long followed by the government;

that the mind in power is not the

mind of confident youth but that of cynical old age. Contemporary England; they say, maintains her imperial facade, but behind that facade they see rust and dry-rot.

The authors have respect and|

praise for the finest qualities of British tradition. They pay tribute to the courage and integrity of the British common people, and it is from - the furrows and workshops that they expect the courage to face the issues and to confront, a world of

* | change.

A FIGHTING CHANCE By ELEEZA HADIAN

Heard its whisper In my ear, ‘ And felt its breath Upon my cheek— I have a rendezvous With death. But, love, If you, Would give For transfusion Your fighting blood, I can try to win. Will you reconsider, Love, and stay . As donor? - Or yet you wish To go your way!

DAILY THOUGHT

As for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief of their own lips cover them. —Psalm 140:9.

of pure air outside and spend as short.

{ THURSDAY, JAN. 18, 1940

Gen. Johnson: Says—

G-Men Did a Good Job in Nabbing 17 Plotters, but It's Silly to Claim Government Was in Serious Peril.

HILADELPHIA, Jan. 18.—1f there are 17 or 34 or 340 screwey nuts planning to explode bombs in - public places and planning to kill Congressmen or even draymen, it was a fine 4hing to nab them as’ G-Man Hoover has done for 17 of them—and t6 do it before they hurt anybody. . But to spread this stuff out in the oceans of piblicity which dignifies it as a. serious plot to overthrow the Government, seize the arsenals and institute a7 dictatorship, is both silly and contemptible, Di§patches quote Mr, Hoover as saying that he made the announcement “at the behest” of retiring "Attorney General Murphy. This may be Mr. Murphy’s idea of “going out in a blaze of glory.” It is ny idea of going out in billows - .of bunk. There are 130 million people in tHis country and no less than 129,500,000 of them are so loyal'that

| it wouldn't be safe for any screwball §6 much as to

suggest to 99-plus per cent of his neighbors a Guy Fawkes plot or any modern putsch against eithér the Government of the United States or the assassination of any individual in it. : | #® » » : . | . “HE vice of this kind of ballyhoo is that: it suggests a very different state of affairs to the whole world. It hints that the highest officials of. our Gaqvernment are really apprehensive ahout the growth .of . revolutionary sentiment here. Some fourth New Deal speakers have openly said that but for the New Deal hand-outs we could have expected revolution here long ago and if they are not contjmed, can expect it in the future. Stepping on this abortive gunpowe plot was good. The revelations of the Dies Committee were: good— and especially its temperate moderate report. The - bad feature of both efforts was the use that was made _ of the scummy material that was skimmed off to convey an impression that there is any ‘subversive move=-

a violent revolution, . The fact is, that there is nothing which, if it came out into the open, couldn’t be subdued. in short order by a platoon of cops armed with night-sticks.. Trapt isn’t what we have to fear and neither are Bunds, Communists cells, Columbus Circle soap box squawkers : and various other forms of - dwarfed, bwisted and in< flamed mentalities. 2 2 = HE only real danger to our form of Government from foreign isms is the -hospitality with which they are received and experimented with by. public officials who would loudly and justly’ resent being . called either Communists or Fascists—from the President down. J. Edgar Hoover with all his splendid ° efficiency can’t do anything about that. ‘You.can't

and resist them in the court of public opinion. The effort to do that isn’t helped by exaggerated emphasis on any such incidentals as calling the paddy

such phony title as “Christian Front.” I hold no brief for Mr. Dewey for President’ But. if, as seems quite probable, this kind of publicity is: in- : tended to parallel his public service in running real rats to their holes and going in after them. I think . it is cheap, undignified, partisan ang, ynwortiy ‘use : of a high office. =

Road to Aotks

By Bruce Catton

Proposed Highway Helped by War; Joint Commissién to Meet Seon.

ASHINGTON, Jan. 18.—The movement to build a through highway to Alaska is progressing in

mg the hemisphere-defense angle.

States Governments ‘meets in Ottawa Wednesday. : $zueh explanatory work has been done, and the actual 7 route will probably be chosen at this meeting. Then ° ground parties will go out to determine costs. Congressman Warren Magnuson of Washington, i. chairman of the commission, hopes a definite dollars-and-cents proposal can be offered Congress and the Canadian Parliament within a year. Current esti- : mates, he says, run to about $20,000,000 and call for : a 24-foot gravel-surfaced road ‘tying U. S. highways to the ‘existing highway system in Alaska. : One scheme being considered is to have Canada 2 build the road across Yukon territory, with U.S." funds helping on the 400-500 mile section in British {

Columbia, - Ld 2

Debt Limit Headache iy ; You could really scare yourself by Sean what |

~ | might happen if this: Congress should. go over. the ‘budget enough to ‘send ‘the total:

above the $45,000,000.000 debt lintit, ‘without. at’ the. same time - voting to raise that: Hmijt. Treasury then would be in thé’ “position ‘of being obliged to pay the bills but unable to bo; ‘® dime anywhere. ‘Something less than two. lon is available in the Stavtization fund, of course, But Ty lawyers say that: couldn’ t be tapped Withouk & ete act of Congress. = ; : ‘Rather more than two billion eculd be taken But i of the lending agencies—hut they'd all have to shut = up shop, which would be rather bumpy. ‘Some $000,- : 000,000 in silver certificates could be issued . :.. atid the - Treasury does have the putlioiHy wo. issue three. bil lions in unsecured greenbacks. - a IR § ® ».

-~

» 3 8 2 ? , The Administration may dislike: ie: ‘Dies comet tee, but it doesn’t seem to want to make the front | pages by fighting the committee's request for another : year’s lease on life, Arrangements were made recently for a debate on the subject between Congressman Dies and one of the top Administration flagbearers. Just as everything was “hom the. White withdrew—apparently by requesy rom: the , White ; ‘House... - . : Dies, incidentally, has beet a Pretty lek man, *

‘Overwork last summer, and: fall ‘told on. his heart. * +

Rest has fixed hin; uw. snd ‘He'll be. back here soon. |

Watching Your: : | Ith By Jane Stafford er

G= poisoning is a hazard you may ehicounter “dring these cold.days of winter.” Gas cooking ° stoves.are sometimes used to add warmth to the. dwell. 4 ing, and the short hours of daylight require longer use * of artificial light which, in some localities, is. furnisheq : by gas burners. Praperly used, and kept in good - order, "such #

pli-

‘ances are not dangerous. But a gas Burner .s uld ‘never be turned down low and allowed to burn: all: night in a room where people are sleeping, {2 the flame may be extinguished by a ¢hange in p re

or a slight draft and later the room may become 5 filled with gas. If you are called on to remove a suffbontsd p from a room filled with gas, take several déep Res a time iff'the : room as possible. The patient should ‘he: remaved:to - a place where the air is good as soon as possible. “If he is only slightly affected, walk him up and down in the open air and give some effervescing drink; such as | soda water, beer or a teaspoonful of baking soda in a ;

‘glass of water, advises the U. 8. Public Health Service. -

This, it ismexplained, will cause belching” of gas and :

and sleepiness, 15° an early sign of gas‘poisoning.- a In more severe cases, when the patient is uncon- i scious but still breathing, sprinkle a few drops of ammonia water on a handkerchief and let the. Patient | take one breath with this 1 ‘his

one-half teaspoonful of aromatic spirits -of - in half a glass of water. Never give ahyt

heart to

legs briskly Yoward Tae the blood. =.

THE DEFECTS STS of. the * under-

ment in this country robust encugh really te threaten :

quarantine, deport or imprison ideas.’ Nobedy cando - anything about them except those who debate: them

wagon for a handful cf zanies operating under. any :

Vth

Ra AER

snite of the war. ‘The war helps it, in fact, by stress- :

A commission representing: Canadian and United g

relief from nausea; which, with dizziness, headache . 5

minute. If he is conscious and able to swatlow; ee 3 8

&

’

J

J

mouth to an unconscious patient. un his “arms ahd : promote circulation