Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 April 1940 — Page 8

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The Indianapolis Times

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SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1940

THOUGHTS ON A THIRD TERM E don't know whether he's going to run. We don’t know that he knows. Even Mrs. Roosevelt has quipped that this is one of the things that “shouldn’t be discussed among polite people, even between husbands and wives.” But anyway, whether or not the President's mind is

made up, some interesting thoughts must occur to him after | | blood in the moon.

he douses the bed lamp at night. For instance— He knows that he is hated, with a blind and savage

hate, by many people. He knows that the campaign against | | Michael in their hotel room just before ring time and,

him, if he made the race, would be a dirty one, addressed in large part to the prejudices and passions rather than to the gray-matter of the voters. Would such a campaign, in these times, be a good thing for the country? . .

He knows that the court fight and the purge, the

have torn the Democratic Party. He must know that a good many of the third-term hosannahs from the politicians

are just insurance policies taken out by these gentlemen |

in case. He must know that the influence of such convinced third-termers as Ickes, Corcoran and Hopkins is mighty thin soup, outside of Washington. He knows that the Hatch Act, if enforced, will restrict the campaign activities of his New Deal political machine. He knows, from the cross-section polls, that he is no sure-cinch winner, ment not only defeated, but wearing the scars of an abusive campaign, branded by his adversaries as “the man who would be king.” He knows that even if he won he would likely lose such leadership over Congress as he now retains—which is little enough. The patronage skillet has been licked pretty clean, and politicians are more amenable to promised favors than to past ones. - » . . . . Even if foreign affairs were paramount for the next four years, could Mr. Roosevelt count on Congress rallying around his policies?

to his mind. And perhaps, alternatively, Mr. Roosevelt's memory turns farther back, to the vast prestige enjoyed by T. R. in the four years after he stepped down voluntarily from the Presidency.

WORDS AND DEEDS

YEAR ago tomorrow Adolf Hitler harangued the Reichstag for two hours by way of reply to President Roosevelt's urgent plea for a 10-year non-aggression pledge. He pretended to be unable to understand why such a plea should have been addressed to him. “I have taken no step which violated the rights of others,” he said, “but have only restored that justice which was violated 20 years ago. ... “None of the Scandinavian statesmen can contend that a request has ever been put to them by the German Government or by German public opinion which was incompatible with the sovereignty and integrity of their state. . .. “As far as Germany is concerned, I know nothing of this kind of threat to other nations, although I every day read in the democratic newspaper lies about such a threat. . . . “I wish to point out that I have not conducted any war, that for years past I have expressed my abhorrence of war, and that I am not aware for what purpose I should wage war at all.” That was four months before the invasion of Poland, and 1113 months before the invasion of Denmark and Norway.

PAST DUE

EPORTS from Washington are that the House Judiciary Committee intends to get down to work next week and complete its consideration of the new Hatch bill. So far, the committee has adopted no amendments that would weaken the bill and has adopted one, extending certain of its provisions to primary campaigns and elections, which would strengthen it. We hope the reports are true. This measure, applying to Federally paid state and local jobholders the same ban against political activities which the original Hatch act placed on Federal employees, passed the Senate on March 18, The House committee's failure to act promptly has given rise to cynical predictions that the House will be permitted no opportunity to vote on it. We do not believe the majority of the Committee desires either to defeat or to pigeonhole the bill, and certainly a minority should not be allowed to sabotage it.

‘CALAMITY’ NEW YORK'S Mayor LaGuardia is a great friend of the New Deal, but he is also a great friend of aviation. He was a wartime flier and he has been a peacetime supporter of the industry. Laying the corner-stone of a new Air Lines Terminal Building in his city the other day, Mayor LaGuardia said: “It would be a calamity to abolish the Civil Aeronautics Authority at this time. “It has been the best agency we have known for coordinating the work in aviation. It has done so much for aviation, for progress, convenience and safety. I know of no Federal board in Washington that has been more successful or has rendered so much service.” The Mayor was referring, of course, to President Roosevelt's reorganization-plan proposal to abolish the C. A. A. as an independent agency and to make it a bureau in the Department of Commerce, which once made a sad failure of the attempt to regulate the air ministry. “Calamity,” we think, is not too strong a word for what that would mean to aviation. Congress should refuse the proposal

And if he lost, he would go into retire- |

Perhaps the stunning defeat and dis- | illusion of Woodrow Wilson on a foreign-policy issue, in the |

Inside Indianapolis

final term of that once fabulously popular President, comes |

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler Career of Joe Jacobs, the Fight

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

‘Hey! Quiet!’

Manager, Mocking Parody on the | Lives of Some Leading Statesmen.

EW YORK, April 27.—In the career of Joe, or Yussel, Jacobs, the manager of prize fighters who has

just died, there was capsuled a mocking parody of the |

policies, aspirations and pretensions of nations. His first champion of the world was Michael McTigue, who won the light-heavyweight title from Battling Siki, an authentic, jungle Negro, and a gay and gallant sportsman, in Dublin, Ireland, on a St. Patrick's night. The unwisdom of a colored man with a tile at stake in“accepting a match with an Irishman in Dublin on St. Patrick's night was obvious. It might have been thought, however, that having once had the benefit of any possible sentimental influence in a contest affecting the championship, Yussel would never be guilty of accepting a similar risk. Great was the amazement, therefore, when, not long afterward, there came the shocking news that Michael McTigue, an Irish Catholic, owned and operated by Yussel Jacobs, a New York sidewalk boy of the most conspicuous Jewishness, had lost the precious title by a close decision to Willie Stribling, a native son, in Columbus, Ga, where the Ku Klux Klan was seeing s

” ”

ELATING his experience afterward, Jacobs said | a prominent local citizen had called on him and |

pointing out the window to two trees, had remarked that the Ku Klux Klan had little patience with unAmerican or unsportsmanlike tricks. .

| The Catholic. and the Jew brought their own ref-

eree to Columbus, and this unfortunate, a Jersey

sportsman, Harry Ertle, was gravely embarrassed at | the end of the 10 rounds, for Stribling was a handsome, showy high school athlete and a local hero and |

: dt : : | MeTigue a timid, cunning, counter-fighter who looked spending and labor policies, the third-term mystery itself, | y

worst when he was subtlest, Ertle first called the

fight a draw, then reversed himself and, with a feeble

gesture, indicated Stribling had won. " The next day Mr. ‘Jacobs reversed a historical error, as Mussolini and Hitler would put it. In safe territory, Ertle swore on paper that his original decision, that the fight was a draw, was correct. The feud between Jacobs and the Striblings, Willie and his paw, carried over, accumulating historic bitterness like some grudge between nations, until Jacobs fought them hain in Cleveland, this time through the agency of Max Schmeling. His historic revenge was complete. Schmeling knocked out Willie Stribling.

” ” » CHMELING had made commitments to other man-

agers, and Yussel finally resorted to the same

device that the Germans used to wipe out their obligations.

He repudiated treaties to fight Jack Sharkey after |

winning the heavyweight title for Schmeling on a foul, but when Jimmy Braddock similarly repudiated a solemn treaty to fight Schmeling, Yussel appealed to world opinion to witness the awful injustice of this treachery. Like a realistic European politician, Yussel had no time for sentiment or idealism. He followed a straight vet devious line, always toward his objectives. Today's injustice was tomorrow's historical vindication, today's eternal enemy, tomorrow's ally. He and Hitler, Goebbels. Stalin. Mussolini, Baldwin and Franco had much

in common,

William H. Book, to Whom Budgets Are as Simple as the A, B, C.

ROFILE of the week: William H. Book, executive vice president of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. Bill Book is a chap who can reel off figures on a complicated budget without notes. To most people, governmental budgets are just a maze of mysterious figures. But Bill Book can read a budget as easily as most of us can a novel Mr. Book is now somewhere about 40 vears old.

He is a trifle below average height, round-faced. has |

serious brown eyes, a neat brown mustache and his hair is starting to thin out in front. He is one of the most affable men in Indianapolis He is invariably quiet mannered, he talks without gestures and it is almost impossible to tell when he is irritated, if he ever is. He was born in Virginia, reared Ind. educated for the ministry at Franklin College (1919), he went right into newspaper work here. was with The News until 1925 when he became business director of the public schools. He was still in his twenties. In "26 Mr. Book went to the C. of C. as assistant

director of civic affairs, became director, and resigned |

in "33 to go with the Governor's Commission on Unemployment Relief. In August of '34 he returned to the C. of C. in his present capacity. ” ” ” BILL BOOK HAS AN AMAZING capacity work. tensely. When he plays, he plays the same way Hay fever usually drives him to take his vacations in Michigan, where he likes to fish. He doesn't drink at all, and he rarely smokes, but still he is expert at flipping a cigaret from the back of his hand into his mouth. It's the result of his having served part of his youth as an assistant to an amateur magician. He knows quite a bit of legerdemain and likes to amuse his two sons, with whom he spends a great deal of time.

” » ”

HE DISLIKES BEING IN the limelight and he sometimes carries it to a fault. He avoids speakers’ tables, even at C. of C. functions and prefers to sit quietly far back in the crowd. He loves to work around the yard of his six acres of woods and meadow. His home is southeast of town. The house sits on the side of a hill. He likes to ride around atop the power mower. He likes mild games of poker oc-asionally and he is supposed to be fairly fortunate at penny ante. Although he disapproves of slot machines pretty thoroughly, he is nevertheless fascinated by them. His greatest interest outside of his home and family, is in governmental affairs and it is probably through his influence that the local C. of C. pays more attention to this subject than almost any other Chamber in the U. S. He likes to play golf and he is happy when he cracks 100. He might play better, but he's never taken a lesson and it's typical of him that his only excuse is that he's been too busy.

for

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

T is written that time and tide wait for no man. But the adage says nothing about waiting for women. I'll bet they'd have to if they knew some of the dames I do. Such charming women, too—smart, well-groomed and pleasant spoken but consistently running late! You can count on it. Hostesses invite their other guests half an hour early in order to accommodate the few who come trailing their insincere apologies after them, so that the dinner won't be spoiled. Punctual people sit waiting with smiles frozen on their faces, as they think of the little tasks they could have got through if they could only have worked up the courage to be as rude as the social cabooses. One finds these dawdlers in every group. It would startle some of them beyond words to know that all their efforts to be popular are wasted, because they lack the first essential for social success— consideration for others. No laggard is ever quite the lady, especially in.our busy age, for obviously she considers her own convenience before she thinks of that of her friends. If you charged her with theft, she would probably go into hysterics; yet it's hard to refrain, since she unblushingly steals that which is more valuable than any other possession—time, The Kkleptomaniac merely relieves you of your extra cash or trinkets while the slowpoke snitches a minute or two, over and over again, until the accumulation of lost hours grows into months. She might filch your purse and be able to give it back, but who can return time lifted from another person's life?

| in Columbus, |

He |

When he's on the job he drives himself in-!

| brows on the economic and sympathetic side.

The Hoosier Forum

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

THINKS PEDESTRIANS’ | RIGHTS ARE IGNORED ‘By R. C &§ | Inasmuch as there is a lot to say and do about safety and at the present time there seems to be a lot to say about the pedestrian, I {would like for one thing to be | brought to the attention of our experts on such matters. I hear so much about crossing the street in

the middle of the block. Of course {I am not upholding this, but the nearest I ever came getting hit was tat Delaware and Washington Sts.

If vou start across with the green light that is with the traffic, here come one or a dozen cars turning | into you. Then you wait and the light turns red. Then you are vio | lating the law by walking against | the red light. Just a few days ago several were hit at East and Washington Sts. | | through this very circumstance. | | This is why so many folks walk | across the street in the middle of | the block. They at least do not | ‘have to watch some car turning! into them. There should be more | rigid law enforcement in regard! | to these turns.

| just beginning to realize it. All the { Republicans have to do is to demonstrate to the public the sordid dishonesty of the Roosevelt-Hull foreign policy which has made us a belligerent, It's going to be pretty difficult for the people of Detroit to read in the papers about their Detroit boys los- | ing their American citizenship, and even being prosecuted by the American Government, for volunteering for service in Spain—then to pass the places where American boys are openly being enlisted to fight for England, And the American public will not forever remain ignorant of the fact that the Administration has

given Teddy Roosevelt's son permis-

(Times readers are invited to express their 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.)

views

V sion to join the British army without losing his American citizenship. Nor will the public remain ignorant of the fact that this Adminis tration has spent the taxpayers’ | money to make facilities along our | Canadian border in order that| manufacturers of planes can violate the very neutrality laws this Admin- | istration itself made. Nor will the public remain incurious as to how the purchase of war supplies is he-

ing financed without violating the Johnson Act. Nor will the public forget that before the war, and while the press was in the midst of reporting a great spy-hunt, our State Department and our President were secretly giving our war secrets to France and England. (Remember the French officer killed in one of our secret model planes?)

DEPLORES ‘FUSS’ IN CAPT. LOSEY’'S DEATH By Betty Alice Hodson | Why all the fuss about Capt. Losey in last night's paper? Look

at all the American boys who were]

killed in the Spanish civil war. Was anything said about them? No, not one word. In fact, Dies is having them arrested for having fought in another country’s war. Is Capt. Losey's death another | step along the road to war, more! propaganda to get us into the war? | We went over there once before to fight someone else's war and we] are still suffering from it. Why not | stay at home and tend to our own| roblems. Please, God, let America stay out of the war. Let us have healthy young men who are able to walk] and see, not somebody who has been cut to ribbons over there, fighting for “democracy.” » ” ” DOUBTS TERM “LIBERAL” APPLIES TO TIMES By J. 8. 8. I see that you share Herbert Hoover's profound interest in the meaning of the world “liberal.” The term's meaning is indeed regrettably confused, but even within its

vague limits it hardly applies to The Indianapolis Times.

New Books at the Library

ITH “Hamlet” played by gold= en-voiced Maurice Evans fresh in our memories, “Shakespeare in America” (Macmillan), by the eminent student of Elizabethan drama, Esther Cloudman Dunn, comes as further enjoyment.

Libraries were not common in

17th Century America, but in those which did exist, the author tells us, Shakespeare had a fair chance of being present. Although, during the first 75 years of the 18th Century, the playing of Shakespeare was a fashionable gesture, moral prohibition followed his plays from his own day, through the next two centuries —there was still too much atmosphere of the “stage” connected with him. It is not surprising that this attitude was reflected in America. In Boston, in 1792, “the Sheriff ap-

Side Glances—By

Galbraith

5 COPR. 1 Y

"Maybe you do represent the Government, but if you can find out how much money my husband makes you'll know more than I've beep able to learn in 10 years."

_ >

T. OFF.

peared uninvited upon the stage and closed the first season,” which had produced Hamlet and Richard III. The history of Shakespeare on the American stage really began in 1750. Richard III, apparently more of a favorite in those days than now, in the Cibber version which David Garrick had made famous in London eight years earlier, opened the season, Did Cotton Mather own a First Folio and is it now in the possession of Dr. Rosenback? With provocative questions and entertaining excursions into the early history of our theater—at a New York performance in 1752 the “large green curtain was raised (not parted) at the blast of a whistle”— Miss Dunn discusses all phases: Colonial performances, Shakespeare in the Revolutionary War, on the frontier, in schools and colleges

‘(where the peak of importance was

reached at the end of the 19th Century, and the present day, with Shakespeare still marching on. Since the war, literalness in cos{ume and setting has been banished. There has been a ‘modern dress” Hamlet by John Gielgud, and Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar “was played against the bricks and radiator pipes of the actual backstage walls.” But Shakespeare does not belong to them nor to us any more than to earlier generations of actors and spectators. He is still “not for an Age but for all time.”

ONCE IN APRIL By VERNE S. MOORE Once in April we were driving Down that trail that never ends. In our hearts we both were striving To be nothing more than friends. But we rode on past the village Down the old Peach Blossom Road And our thoughts in happy mirage Kept romancing as we rode,

Now my face is getting wrinkled And your hair is swept with gray Still our flowers are daily sprinkled With your tears—for far away Blooms of peach trees still are calling From that old romantic trail, And in April, petals falling, Rouse old memories without fail,

‘DAILY THOUGHT

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.—Psalm 1:1.

IT IS ONLY GREAT souls that

know how much glory there is in good.—Sophocles,

SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1940

Gen. Johnson Says—

Little by Little We Seem to Be Going Through the Same Steps That Dragged Us Into the Last War.

ASHINGTON, April 27.—This is the way to get mixed up in other people’s wars. First, you sell them your goods. They become “your best cus tomer.” They make jobs for your unemployed and dividends for your stocks. When their purchases have become an important part of your economy, they run out of cash. : Your business is threatened. They ask for credits. Some old boat rockers begin to croak about this. Some say: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This will surely compel you to send armies to protect your dollars.” r Your politician's reply: “We shall never send an American mother’s son to bleed on foreign shores.” Your best customers: “We don't want your military assistance. You are too far away. Your eftorts to

equip and transport armies would interfere with your value to us as a base of supplies.”

a =

HE assurance of repayment of such loans is so slender that no private funds are available. No

one person wants to risk, but if Congress authorizes the Treasury to loan, all the people will be forced to risk collectively what nobody would be willing to risk individually.

From the beginning of this sequence there has been growing a sloganeering stupidity. “They are fighting our war. They are paying in blood. We shall pay only in dollars. It is the least we can do.” When we opened a credit of $3,000,000,000 to the Allies in the World War, the votes of the committees of the House and Senate were unanimous. Thus we buy an interest in a war we are going to fight with goods and dollars but not with blood . . . “just a few divisions as a token and symbol to show the flag.” i Then the going gets tough. We are in to the eveOur The whole tune

friends’ backs are “at the wall.” changes. “Send us men.”

”n

HE demands upon us become almost insulting to abandon our organizations and commands and conscript men under foreign flags. So we finance most of the cost of the war from this point out for ourselves and our Allies. We pack

men by millions like sardines into transports and send them untrained into battle. We are cursed for tardiness, stinginess and timidity. Then comes victory— maybe—and we learn we have been fooled on the war's objectives. The victors diun't share our ideals and under secret treaties they take all and leave us nothing—and then repudiate all debts and villify us for even asking repayment. This is our actual World War experience, neither

s n

| distorted nor exaggerated. We are going through it | again step by chuckleheaded step.

Business By John T. Flynn

History in Commerce Lepartment Best Reason for Leaving CAA Alone.

EW YORK, April 27.—It is nearly two years since Congress ripped the control of our aviation industry out of the Department of Commerce and put it under the independent Civil Aeronautics Authority, with an also independent Air Safety Board. Many people have forgotten why Congress did that. The President now wants to put aviation back under the Commerce Department. He has proposed his plan to Congress under the Reorganization Law, Under that law Congress has- 60 days in which to nullify any part of the President's proposals. If it does not the plan will become law. In the midst of so many alarums, most people will wonder why this proposal has caused such a storm of protest, even from such good New Deal supporters as Mayor LaGuardia. The matter is so serious that this is a good time to recall the story of air control when the Department of Commerce had it. Here is just one sample. Jay A. Mount was an official in the Air Commerce Bureau of the Department of Commerce. He had long experience in avia= tion and was appointed superintendent of mainten= ance of all airways by Secretary Roper. His department administered safety measures over 22,000 miles of airways. They were protected by beacon lights, radio beams, intermediate landing fields, weather reports, etc. The department had authorized pilots to fly by means of instruments alone, guided by radio beams. This meant flying blind save for the instruments. It meant also that radio beams must be accurate. Mr, Mount made an elaborate inspection of thease radio beams and late in 1934 submitted a report revealing shocking conditions from neglect, inefficiency, incom= petence. The radio beams, in fact, he found, despite ample appropriations, were operating at only 50% efficiency.

Report Is Resented

Mr. Mount’s report, instead of provoking action, produced deep resentment in the bureaus. His reward was to be subjected to spying, minute investigation even of his personal life by Government agents. Flimsy charges were made against him to get rid of him. ’ The Personnel Committee of the Department heard a trial of these charges and unanimously rejected them as groundless. At the hearing Mr, Mount pleaded with his superiors to heed his warnings about those radio beams. He predicted terrible disaster if he was not listened to. Mr. Mount was removed from his position, demoted and sent to an obscure post in Georgia. Five days after the hearing a plane went down in the West. Five people were killed, eight seriously injured. One of the those killed was United States Senator Bronson Cutting. And a Senate investigating committee ascribed the cause of the crash to the very condition Mr. Mount had reported. . The assistant secretary of commerce at the time was Ewing Y. Mitchell, who supported Mr. Mount and was himself later punished for his interest in this and other irregularities in the Air Service in that strange Department of Commerce.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

ANY modern parents striving to rear their chil dren according to the rules of mental hygiene have apparently become confused by warnings against over-protecting the child and thus unfitting him for an independent and self-reliant existence. Some have misunderstood this to mean that they should not show any normal affection toward the child for fear he will remain a baby forever tied to parental apron strings. Reassuring is the recent statement of Dr. Morris D. Riemer, Brooklyn, N. Y,, that “love is as essential to proper physical development as food is to physical growth.” Parents, he believes, should be encouraged to follow their natural instinct to pour out affection on their offspring. Nor is there any danger, says Dr. Riemer in a report to the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, that children will be spoiled by too much love. Spoiling, he states, is the exact opposite of too much loving. It is “a camouflaged practice of not loving.” Spoiled children, he finds, come from homes in which there is not enough love. For the very reason that they do not receive enough affection, they “endlessly crave, demand, fight and carry on to get what they have been denied.” The parent yields—spoils the child—or again denies his persistent request for love through threats or punishment. Both. the spoiling and the denying aggravate the child's condition. Even when the parent gives in and spoils the child, he or she does so in an indifferent or exasperated manner “to get it over with,” Dr. Riemer charges. The parents’ reluctant or indifferent giving in cone stitutes a further denial of the child's deep need for reassurance and security,