Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 28 February 1940 — Page 14

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1940 0-0-0-0-ETC. en R EFERRIN G again to Senator Ashurst’s observation that

dential politics, as with Woodrow, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt— i 5 It seems possible that a national debt rapidly nearing the $45,000,000,000 limit will provide the country with all the double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple, septuple, octuple and even nonuple Os that it can well handle this Presidential year.

WAR IN THE CAUCASUS? ODERN war is impossible without oil. Germany, even with her great plants for extracting oil from coal, does not produce more than half of evenher peacetime needs. She got only about one-fourth of Poland’s oil wells, yielding the rest to Russia. She is cut off by the blockade from American oil. She is having trouble getting as much from Rumania as she would like. So, she counts on Russia. The Soviets have little oil to spare, as a matter of fact. They need it for their Finnish war, and for their tractors. But they will probably let Germany have a share of it. = Now most of the Russian oil is produced. in the Baku field, along the western shores of the Caspian Sea. Thence much of it goes by pipeline and rail.across some 500 miles of rough Caucasus country to the Black Sea port of Batum. So, when we hear about great concentrations of French “and British troops in the Near East, and of mysterious and warlike goings-on in Turkey, it is easy to assume that sooner or later Russia is going to have a fight on its hands over those oil fields. The British Army of the middle east, which would play a large part in any such operation, is run by Lieut. Gen. Archibald Percival Wavell. By American reckoning that is a funny name for a soldier, but Wavell has been around. " For instance, he was attached to the Russian armies in this same Caucasus area during the World War, when the Tsar's armies were tussling with the Kaiser’s ally, Turkey. And that brings us to an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica about the World War campaign in the Caucasus. The article was written by Archibald Percival Wavell. And here is what he had to say about that country: “The poverty of the communications and the severity of the climate render military operations on a large scale difficult and arduous. . .. : “Few commanders would welcome a campaign in such extreme conditions of climate and difficulties of movement and supply. ... : | : “In view of the poor means of communication in the theater of operations it is difficult to see how decisive results could have been expected.” |- ~~ Since that was written, warfare has taken to wings. But even so, air power acting on its own has not proved its ability to take and hold an important objective. If Wavell and Gen. Weygand and Turkey's little warrior-presi-dent, Inonu, set out to grab Baku and Batum, they are by Wavell’s own testimony going to have no hayride.

TAKE IT WITH SALT

{A CCORDIN G to a profoundly statesmanlike utterance by Senator Pepper of Florida, anybody who prevented a Roosevelt third term would be “Public Enemy No. 1.” Does that go for F. D. R. himself, Claude?

COMRADE MERRIWELL

A GREAT many middle-aged Americans will be sorry to == know that Gilbert Patten is in trouble. His pen name, Burt L. Standish, will be more familiar to them. He wrote 900 Frank and Dick Merriwell novels, of which more than 123,500,000 copies were read by American boys in the preWorld War era. : : Mr. Patten, now 74, is said to be broke and threatened with eviction from his New York home. A legion of Merriwell readers ought to dash to the rescue, as Frank, himself, surely would if his erect, manly young form could escape from the dusty paper-backs. ~~ Well, the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, finds a great “moral” ir Mr. Patten’s predicament. Here is a man who toiled for years on “a saga of bourgeois ‘let the devil take the hindmost’ ethics,” designed “to twist the minds of the nation’s youth into a complete acceptance of the piratical capitalist system.” And now, says the Daily Worker, “that very same capitalism which he attempted to glorify” threatens him with the scrap heap. ~~ The moral, we take it, is that Mr. Patten should have made Frank Merriwell the gallant young Red hero of a proletarian saga designed to guide the nind of the nation’s youth into a complete acceptance of the admirable Soviet system. Had he done that, America might now be sharing the blessings of Russia's type of dictatorship, and Mr. Patten would not be worrying about eviction at 74. Indeed, Mr. Patten probably wouldn’t be worrying about anything. Absorbed in his writing, he would have failed “to follow one of those sudden turnings in the party line. The comrades would then have denounced him as a Trots-

kyite, a Lovestoneite, an imperialistic war-monger or some- |

thing even worse, and a purge by one of the charming Russian methods would have sent him beyond the reach of this world’s troubles. |

SOMETHING TO INVESTIGATE "THERE are 22 licensed fortune tellers in Washington, D. C., and a committee of Congress is about to investigate them in response to complaints from citizens. - - - No wonder the citizens complain. Imagine a city with 22 professional phrenologists, palmists, crystal-ball gazers, soothsayers and other seers into the future, but no answer to the cnadiming question; Is he 8 ng to run again?

Fair Enouoh

By Westbrook Pegler :

| Recent Incidents Have Confused |

Public on Merits of Picket Line and Abuses Have Hurt Cause of Labor.

EW YORK, Feb. 28—On a recent evening in Washington, as Mrs. Roosevelt was about to

| enter a movie theater for the premiere of the Abe

Lincoln show, there was a moment of consternation when it was discovered that the house was being picketed as a protest against a local Jim Crow ordinance or custom. It is my understanding that the picket line was lifted long enough to permit Mrs. Roosevelt to enter. : With the merits of this particular case I will no tangle, knowing too little about them, but I make bold enough to say that picketing has been overdone

to the point of abuse and that, by many unfair and contemptuous impositions on the public, the picket

. . . . |-line has lost Sympathy and authority. the double Os have been playing a big part in Presi- Hine has lost Sympashy ¥ There a picket line which had been maintained for|.

A notorious case was settled recently in Chicago.

six years at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, on the

North Side, was suddenly withdrawn without any ex-|-

planation to the public. The hotel management had nothing to explain. Umbrella Mike Boyle, the business agent of the electricians’ union, had issued a strike call back in 1934 as a result of some dispute whose merits never were clearly revealed and had maintained the line day and night, in bitter winter and blistering summer. : 8 8 8 a, : HE public does have an interest in picket lines. A picket line is an appeal to the public to boycott a place of business on the ground that an employer has dealt unfairly with the workers. That was the old presumption, but it has been discredited in the last few years, and the disinterested individual has been given reason to feel his sympathy has been imposed upon. The Chicago picket line is said to have cost some union—the exact identity of the union being uncertain—more than $200,000 in wages for pickets. But the scrap ended as mysteriously as it began, with no statement to the public of the merits of the dispute ‘or the basis of | the settlement. Moreover, although the public was asked to boycott the Edgewater Beach Hotel on the word of one union boss, in the name of organized labor, members of some unions regularly passed through the lines as though they didn’t exist.

” ” ® i NIONS now put it up to the individual citizen to determine for himself the merits of every controversy represented by a picket line. But people are too busy for that, and in many cases the union agents are too secretive or too skilled in misrepresentation to permit of a fair understanding.

It is no more unfair to labor to patronze an unfair employer than it is to boycott a fair employer whose place has been surrounded with a line of men and women in the prosecution of some jurisdictional row or racket. If a fair employer is picketed his employees suffer, but, worse than that, the customers discover that there ‘are good picket lines and bad ones, and that in some cases anyone who wants to be strictly fair is/ morally obliged to walk through the line and buy af least a package of cigarets. If unions and | societies can throw picket lines around at will, and if the public doesn’t exercise its right to discriminate, the picket line will develop into a blackjack, and this is not to say that it hasn’t been used as such many a time ere now.

Inside Indianapolis Brooms, Mops and Garbage Cans First — Safety Can Come Later.

T= probably is a faint suspicion in the minds of the Indianapoli§ Accident Prevention Council today that perhaps! it might be a good idea to send to the Safety Board a copy of the letter sent the Council by Hizzoner the Mayor. The Mayor's letter commended the Council for “doing a good and muchneeded work.” - Yesterday, the Safety Board was to act on the Council’s proposals which have already received wide publicity and indorsement. The Board meets at 10 a. m. The president of the Council was there at that time. : But the Board decided that it had to attend. to the problem of broom, mops and garbage cans first. It made a clean sweep of that matter. It took three hours. At 1:45 p. m. they said they'd talk to the Council president—if he was still there. He was, weary but there. 4 : 2 » ” IT HAPPENED LAST Sunday morning. A well known County official got up after a night out with aching head and shaking fingers. He was just running his hand through his hair when there came a

knock at the back coor, He opened the door to find

a shabby looking man standing there. “Have you got anything you could give me to eat?” asked the man. “Sure,” said the C. O. “Come in and sit down.” He got out some bacon and eggs and started to prepare then. He was shaking so badly he was spilling egg and he could hardly get the paper off the bacon. “I'm pretty nervous this morning,” he said to the man. “That's too bad,” was the reply. The man kept on sitting. Presently came the food and the C. O. collapsed in a chair. “Kind of hard,” said the man between bites, ‘to get a job in my kind of work.” “What's that?” inquired the C. O. : “I'm a cook,” said the man. The C. O. waved his hand wearily. “Finish up,” he said, “and get out!” o » # | THE LEGION, the D. A. R. and related organizations are circulating petitions to have the Communist Party denied a place on the Indiana ballot this fall. . . . The bookie business hereabouts is operating under difficulties. . . . Information is hard to get with the G-Men keeping an eye on things. . . . The week-end of March 16th-17th will be quite a sporting one hereabouts. . . . Butler relays, Sportsman’s Show, and hockey game.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson oe

HE Democratic National Committee has recommended that the Chicago convention consider placing a woman from each state as well as a man on the convention Platform .Committee. By some this is called a long step toward equal political rights. So was suffrage, if you remember, yet it failed to move us into any feminine Utopia.

However, it will be very nice to have 48 ladies on|

the Platform Committee if they are chosen for their contentious natures instead of their affability. Otherwise the whole thing might as well be dropped, since it will degenerate into another of those auxiliary

gestures used so often to compliment the ladies while

the gentlemen run the business as usual. Besides, political platforms being what they are, we could do with fewer planks end more candidates standing as

‘firmly on them after election as before. On second thought, we feel that women would | |

serve their parties and their country better by keeping closer tab on the guys who are tall on promises during the campaigns and short. on service afterward. : ¢ : : There exists now g profound distrust of politicians. We are apt to expect too much of the poor things,

of course, yet it is undeniable that they have gypped

us right and left in the past.

This distrust of elective officeholders is a greater |

menace to democracy than all the “isms” we are so frantically hunting ‘down. Lack of faith in the politicians is the leaven from which revolutions arise. We are not saying whether we think women are more fruthful than men, but we do believe they are more conscious of res; paratively new to politics, it- seems’ logical to suppose they ‘could give excellent service in that field for a while. It will take a long time. for them to learn as many bad political tricks as men mastered decades

- : AO,

| It'll Be Like

nsibilities. © Also, being com-|

TIANAPO : oO

E

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

TERMS UNION ATTITUDE ON BAND NARROW-MINDED By Thirteen-Year-Old Rooter This is something every Indianap‘polis baseball fan will be sorry to hear, I am sure. The Knot Hole Band will no longer play at the ball park because of the narrow-minded attitude of the Musicians’ Union. _ The newspapers have frequently commented on the small attendance and backing of the team. The

band members are the most ardent fans and add the much-lacked hometown spirit. Without the band it certainly will be dead. The Union contends the band is taking away jobs that could be had by Union men. It is unreasonable to believe that children 10 to 18 years are able to deprive grown musicians of their livelihood. The ball park never hires music and it was purely for the idea of giving the children something to do and keeping them off the streets that the band was ever organized. The members of this band play at the ball park for experience, and furnish their own uniforms and music. After nine years of playing together under the baton of Herman H. Rinne who has donated his time and knowledge, it is a shame the children should be deprived of this valuable experience and pleasure through the narrow-mindedness of so-called grown men. It is reasonable to believe that a certain percentage of these children will become qualified musicians in the future; but it will take a high-powered salesman to sell them on the Musicians’ Union.

”» 2-8 HOLDS INDUSTRIAL BILL

OF RIGHTS NEEDED By R. Sprunger Capitalism is not only inefficient and wasteful, it is also teaching people dishonesty and making criminals of thousands. The Bill of Rights was written into the Constituion by demand of the people. The common people are not receiving full value for their labor because of capitalistic parasites. Sa why not set up an “Industrial Bill of Rights?” For example: ~ 1. Justice hereafter must include the right to work. Everybody ought to work and the State should guard everybody in the right to do what he ought to do.

2. Justice hereafter must include

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

the right to use the means of production. :

3. If everybody ought to work then nobody should be permitted to avoid work at the expense of other people’s hard work. 4, Justice must include the willing workers’ right to operate-the nation’s plants at the highest level necessary to produce plenty for all. 5. Justice must include the workers’. right to plenty; their reward shall be plenty to buy the plenty they produce. 6. Justice must include the workers’ right to deny income to persons of proper age and condition who refuse to work and help produce. No reward to persons for simply owning portions of national production plants. . 1. Plenty for those unable to ‘work.

: 8 2 =» SEES TREND TOWARD RURAL-INDUSTRY SETUP By Voice in the Crowd Mr: Edwards of Spencer expresses fine thinking in his Feb. 14 article. There is no question but that the very salt of the earth are those people who remain near the soil, live useful lives :and develop men-

physically. I envy those men who

tally and spiritually in the community that they call home. Concentration of industry has

temporarily neglected those honest, home loving: folks. The movement is definitely to alter’ this condition. The movement is yet slow, but it is positive and it will not stop until industry moves in with these folks and offers continuity .of work between the factory and the soil, Henry Ford has made considerable advancement with his idea of having: small plants where parts can be made and stored by the rural folks between the seasons that require their time on the soil. Many other large industries are spreading out in smaller units in ‘smaller towns. Industry has always been forced to concentrate in °transportation centers, “First it was confined to river towns, then to railroad centers, but now every highway is a transportation artery. . The automobile and the truck are comparatively new tools; some day we will use them to more advantage. If we follow the American way the generation of tomorrow will have its factories everywhere and the workers will be close to nature and lead more contented lives. Living in congested areas is not for people, say what you please; it depresses them mentally, morally and

will see the day when American

| diggers.

| columns were boring,

. WED FEB, 25, 1

Type of Underground Warfare.

INCINNATI, Feb. 28—The World War produced many new weapons. and methods—flame, smoke,

gas, tanks, zeps, mass air fighting, depth and air '| bombs, submarine detectors and so forth. Toward the end of it the “nut factory” (a committee set up to | sift all new. inventions and suggestions) began to '| study burrowing machines and mechanieal trench Fighting was then on, under and over the | sea and on and over the land. But, except for old-

fashioned mining and trench digging by hand, the

| war hadn’t yet gone underground.

None of the undergreund inventions seemed to promise much. The. suggested machinery was too

light te do much more than gitlet and scratch. That

need no longer be the case. I think we shall see some

HE reason why the World War burrowing and 4 trenching machines couldnt be better was that

| there wasn't then any such compact and potent sélfmoving power plant as the modern Diesel engine to:

pull, push and heave. Even after it was well developed

cashing in on it in a big way.

by a track laying Diesel-powered tractor which ¢

real subterranean tactics if this war goes unhappily on.

in this country, no engineers seemed to realize the: weight and strength of the massive machinery that. it could move and eperate. Like the airplane, and.

nearly all inventions in agricultural machinery, that: principal was recognized by an amateur who is\new:

I saw yellow spidery-looking steel- monster driven

|Gen. Johnson * "- Ey ond

Mammoth Trench Diggers Powered: By Diesel Engines May Launch New

and does crunch its way Into a forest and uproot trees’ .

up to 20 inches in diameter somewhat as you would

pull a turnip, Beside it stood another land leviathan

dragging steel hooks as massive as the heaviest anelior flukes. It can plow an eight-foot furrow through rocky land and shale and leave it so thoroughly broken

up that its neighbor, a super trench-digger, can fol = low it and leave behind a trench dug half as fast as

a man can walk.

There is, in addition, a whole battery of these none

sters—one to shape up the sides of an excavation, one *

to “bulldoze” away the tops of hillocks or move tons

of dirt in almost any fashion and to almost any shape

desired. s = =

MONG this particular brood of dehemoths thers LX wasn’t any tunneling machine, but 8 separate development in high speed, high power, earth boring ‘machinery in the oil drilling industry is equally | astonishing and, I.suppose, equally applicable to the |} possible new technique of underground warfare. May-

| be I am going Diesel-dippy. Maybe the opening up of ! pe al field isn’t as fascinating to the | me. Maybe these threeT won't do it any more. I haps

this new mechanical average reader as it is to pened to be especially interested by experiences in ail three flelds—railroads, warfare. ”

tree jerking, mound building, chanical miracles, they could build new rearward de-

forward ones. utilized by the our own—they of the defensive. That is lives and weaker nations A all such international bullies as Hitler and Stalin.

“all armies—inclu

eneral staffs o P increase the strength

will enormously 5.2 Wa

Dies Fadeout By Bruce Catton :

ASHINGTON, Feb, 28.—Martin L. Dies is about

duration of the Presidential wars.

'% 'soing to propose a sweeping change in | First, he’s going to prop which :

the conduct of the Congressional committee bears his name. after the election. Dies wants

often make sweeping

workmen will live in homes scat-| tered over .the . countryside away, from the slums, the noise, the smoke’ and the false social order of cities. There is so much to do with the new things we have; if we only remain true to the American spirit.

New Books at the Library

N a lovely, sprawling California home, its walled gardens not too well kept, where the room-high windows picture the blue Pacific to the westward, and to the East the

peaks of a chain of mountains, there lives and works one who is both scientist and philosopher; while the prose in which he writes, sings to those who love and exult in life and its mysteries witli the voice of poetry. Donald Culross Peattie, adding to his growing list of distinguished work—-“Green . Laurels,” “An Almanac¢ For: Moderns,” “A Prairie

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The new moon was shining bright

Grove,” and other volumes—presents in {Flowering Earth” (Putnam) a study of plant life which combines

inimitably the essence of betany,|

more than a bit of biography, a living philosophy, and that indescribable something which a man of genius, writing in his chosen field, gives without stint ot those readers who will sit at his feet. It is with life itself that Peattie is concerned, with the inherent “oneness” of the Green world and of the

Red one which is our own hot-|

blooded life, with the interdependence of the animal and plants, with their similar and amazing origins. He delights to trace that life which is written in the all but immortal stones and in‘ the living protoplasm of plant‘forms which even now are following ancient law. > : The mind of .the scientist probes and explains. He . touches on chlorophyll—the little fig tree growing just outside his window, with its two branches, its 43 twigs, and its 216 leaves, all lovingly counted, a veritable sun-trap, a living exempli-

stuff” which has spread across the He passes on to protoplasm, the algae, the seaweeds, the great fern forests: then tells of the rise of modern plants, the sleep, growth,

ing, as he does 80, bare scientific fact with the warm human sympathy of one who has glorified his own and our “time to walk upon this flower-

~ WINTER NIGHT By ROBERT O. LEVELL

_In the sky of all the night, _

f also there |

| been able to get. a clear

el by

wrong impression.

Instead, he is going to urge the committee to don="

duct future hearings behind closed doors, with press

electrical power and ‘technical

to save both human from the massive power of .

os to. take himself out of the limelight for the ;

This. Tater aspect might greatly affect this war, For r= the. Finns were équipped with these trench digging mee

fensive lines as fast as the Russians could take the > If these nk aré promptly. : 8!

Committee to Dodge Limelight, . Call Off Hearings During Campaign.

“Then, in June, he plans to suspend hearings until ° : : to do away with public

hearings, on the ground that irresponsible witnesses .. ; eeping and unjustified statements

which, when widely circulated, do harm and create 8

and public excluded. It would issue periodic state- .

ments summarizing clusions. vi i These statements would take: the “Our public hearings have done their work,” says Mr. Dies. “Through

broad picture what we want job complete publicity isn’t essential.”

Easing Strain on Members = “He also believes that holding private hearings

‘and on edge. Getting out from under the constant

lax a bit.

‘tional sounding board for wild statements, lowed innocent persons and organizations “smeared” through the immediate publication of testi-

resented which silence that criticism. ' Hearings will resume ; cipal matters on the agenda are the announce vestigation into subversize organizations in Hollywood (and, says Mr. Dies, in California as a whole, among groups outside of the movie colony), and the probe of ponsumer organizations. : :

in about one month; prine

By Jane Stafford

A ANY housewives trying to féed their families well

the testimony and expressing con~

| e form of reports 7 | by the committee, rather than. individual statements. .

em, the American public has - picture of the extent and character of subversive activities in this country. That is just about finished. From now on to do is fill in the details, and in that ..

will | make the whole program easier for the committee - | members. The work has been a good deal of a strain, : so far; it partially broke Mr. Dies’ own health, snd | ‘has had all of the other committee members jittery

light of publicity, he feels, will enable all hands to re= |

Operating as Mr. Dies suggests might relieve the | committee of one of its most frequent criticisnis—that : it permitted scatter-brained witnesses to get 2 na and ale | jzations to be

n this committee,” publication of reports

mony which-eught to have been held secret. 2 FA Sinee, Mr. Dies says, “we've got all factions repthe members could indorse might well

in. |

Waich Your Health

, on a limited food allowance find it helps to

“shopping list that you take with you to market. It is a list of the amounts of different kinds of foods required during one week by each member of the family. From it you can plan the daily menus and

ears

and a mother escribed as moderately active. ee would

The weekly

‘follow a food .list such as Department of Agriculture : liome economists have prepared. This list is not the

make up your shopping list. .The family-for which this last was made has a boy 8 years old, a girl 3 ° old, a Sather, whos job requires moderate activ~ |

1

4 -.- ES, RAGA SS i A RTE A a : Fert: