Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 September 1940 — Page 20

"PAGE 20

The Indianapolis Times

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ROY w. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President : : Business Manager

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RI LEY 5551 Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1940

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THE FEE SYSTEM

N THESE days of skimpy City budgets, of low teacher

salaries, and similar Governmental difficulties, it seems

rather ironical that the Legislature should permit a system

to go rolling on in which the County Clerk, for example, | ! of motor highways.

draws upwards of $20,000 a year, more than three times larger than his salary alone. The Legislature meets in January. has come for the elimination of the whole fee system. ern government calls for some modern law-making.

CONGRESS—AND 100 DAYS HE homing instinct is always strong in Congress. It begins to evidence itself in the first few weeks of any session and in normal times comes to a boil in the late spring or early summer. The war this year has restrained but not, suppressed it. So now in September the urge is about to bfeak- bounds. Adjournment the latter part of the month is being talked. That would mean just 100 days in which this supposedly equal and co-ordinate branch of the Government would not be functioning. In .calm seasons t wouldn't be bad—although they are hired by the year. in a time like this, dereliction is the mild name for it. :

We think the time Mod-

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|» ”» One hundred days! In that span Napoleon escaped from Elba, reconqpefed France, lost the Battle of Waterloo, and surrendered. Or, to modernize—Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg fell, Dunkerque was evacuated, Paris was bombed, the Maginot

Line shattered, France caved in, Italy declared war, Nor- |

lay gave up, Britain seized the French fleet, Russia took ithuania and Bessarabia, and the blitzkrieg on London was launched. And those are just the high spots. On this side of the ocean—Congress, which failed tq

take the Presidential hint to go home and quit speechmak- |

ing, has approved the expenditure of 141% billion dollars and conscripted the manpower of the nation, just to 'mention two of the many momentous actions which couldn't have been taken care of had the lawmakers been hugging - the henrtnstons, :

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History moves in tragic spurts. What will happen in the next 100 days is { dnvhiodyls guess, but one thing is certain. No similar length of time ‘was ever more important or more dangerous. In any case, the Congressmen “wanna go home.” Nostalgia has got them, though in them rests the stern responsibility for providing for “the common defense and general welfare,” for raising and supporting armies, for providing and maintaining the Navy, for suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions, for declaring—or refusing to declare—war. Nostalgia will get a lot of the boys who are going to be drafted, too. But they are—actually —hired by the year, and that means 365, not 265, days. The idea of our vast defense program is to keep us out of, not to get us into, war—to stay “short of.” Congress is the great restraining influence. - It is the deliberative body, whereas the executive branch is the body of action. The “fathers” planned it that way. Check and balance. 2 8 = oo 8 2 # The deliberations are often irritating and seemingly

futile, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing--but that’s not so in the larger concept of our democratic process

Something definite and vital is signified in that plan of the * The job of Cen- |

fathers—that we look before we leap. _ gress is the looking job. Otherwise we might as well have a oné-man system and be done with it. But, believe it or not, under the perilous circumstances which now prevail, Congress is tanking about Going for a hundred days. This in spite of the fact that a sensible compromise is so easy. Granting the existence of the homeward pull, and the apparent necessity for doing something about it, the recess instead of adjournment could be employed. A’ few days with the grassroots and the constituents might be all right, since the recesses wouldn't foreclose against getting back at any moment. But adjournment means for keeps, until January next, except on special call—at the option of the executive,

NEEDED: A ROAD TO ALASKA IX their survey of West Coast defenses, members of the U. S.-Canadian- Joint Defense Board are flying as far north as Sitka, Alaska. Sitka, an island village far southeast of the great bulk of the Alaskan mainland, is the site of one of the new naval air bases being built for the defense of the territory. Another is béing installed on Kodiak Island. The Army, likewise, is rushing air bases at Anchorage and Fairbanks on the mainland. x, Ris well to bear in mind that in time of war these bases might be quickly isolated by an aggressor, especially if the U. S. Fleet were engaged elsewhere, as would be likely. There is no railroad from the United States to Alaska. There is no highway. The only transportation, aside from that by air, is by a difficult and often dangerous sea route, which offers ideal conditions for hostile submarines and minelayers. It is said that if sea communications were cut off, Alaska would begin to starve within three months. AR this Jaads up to a question: Isn't the time at hand for doing something about that long-talked-about highway t6 Alaska? It would be a military asset not only because it would immediately simplify the problem of wartime supply for our Alaskan outposts, but because it would encourage emi‘gration—pf “Okies,” for instance—to unexploited Alaska, and thus provide a larger population on which to draw for emergency defense. It seems to us that now is the time for Ottawa and Washington to make a deal—with this country shouldering the heavier share of the cost—and get going on this

al : | We me : off these days. i

it would have been a thoroughly defensible act. if the devaluation had stopped there it would be

Crisis for Italy By William Philip Simms mmo ‘The Going Fis Been Easy so Far, but

Duce's Legions Now Face a Major |.

Conflict in Their Egyptian Campaign

ASHINGTON, Sept. 20.—If for any reason Hitler :

fails to obtain an early decision in his war against Britain, Italy will be left out on the end of a Lmb. For the time beiig—while Britain is waging

an -all-out battle with Germany—Italy is finding'".the

‘going easy.

France was down and. out be-

fore the Italians crusséd the frontier. Similarly, it was no job at all for the Italians to occupy British and. French Somaliland. Neither has the advance ‘toward Suez thus far offered any substantial obstacles.

But when the Italians .reach

Matruh, ferent.

the story should be difMatruh is the7end of the

railway from the Nile westward |

into the desert, past Cairo and Alexandria. It is also the junction With these lines of communicaijons at their backs, the British should -be able to give a good account of themselves against a force behind which lies nothing but desert. In other words, Italy may shortly find herself engaged in a major war against a first-class, well- armed: power. It is precisely the thing she has been trying to avoid since the outset of the conflict. zn ” 2 HEN Germany invaded Poland, Italy proclaimed her “non-belligerency.” She was not exactly neutral but she made.it plain that she was distinctly not.a belligerent. And she stubbornly clung to that status—even after Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium were overrun, Only after the French debacle did she come in. The reason for her gingerly entrance into the struggle is a secret from no one. She was not prepared for a long war, Count Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister and the Duce's son-in-law, himself has revealed that at Milan, in May, 1939, and again last August, at Salzburg, he informed Berlin that Italy needed three more years in which to get ready to fight. : Now Italy has really taken the plunge. She has definitely challenged the British Empire. She .has launched a drive against the Suez Canal, vital link in the Empire’s life-line. It is hardly to be supposed that Britain will give up the Canal as she gave. up

her corner of Somaliland. 4 \ n on 2.

HAT Mussolini ordered his columns to advance into Egypt without some sort of understanding with Hitler 1s out of the question. Most likely Hitler told Mussolini that he ‘intended to invade England and force a decision before bad weather set in. Judging by the past. and by Italy's known unreadiness for war, the Duce would hardly have knowingly plunged his ‘country into a wd¥ the end of which he did not believe was almost at hand. If Hitler has really abandoned his ‘plan to invade

England this fall, it means that something has gone Such a turn of events, ! There | is, therefore, one other possible explanation for Musso- |

wrong, something important; of course, would seriously damage his prestige.

lini’s thrust at Suez, namely a formal promise from Hitler of aid in that corner of the world, where the

Fuehrer might hope to do something to offset his |’

failure in England. But as that would probably bring

‘the Balkans and. Turkey into the eonflict, a region

from which Germany is now seeking to draw supplies, it does not seem plausible. The odds, therefore, would still seem to favor an attempt at invasion of England while Italy presses on in the direction of Suez, and Spain girds for a try at Gibraltar.

Business By John T. Flvnn

General Belief Dollar Was Devalued To Offset British . Move Is False

EW YORK, Sept. 20.—Dr. Alvin Johnson ‘of Yale and the New School for Social Research, finds himself sold on Harry Scherman’s thesis that there is a real peril in our gold hoard and that we should return to a free gold standard. - But he disagrees with Mr. Scherman’s statement that the original act of devaluation was wanton. ph : Alvin Johnson is a first-rate economist and a wise philosopher with whom one disagrees with respect. Nevertheless it is difficult to escape the belief that our orig--inal gold policy was a wanton policy, which was not thought out and which was launched without consulting any first-class authority on the subject. Dr. Johnson's dissent from this view is based, I fear, on a very widespread forgetting of the real reason for thé devaluation. People will tell you now that it was done because England had devalued, and that its object was: to overcome the trade barrier created against our foreign sales because our money was still held at a high rate. If our dollar had been devalued for that reason And

still easier to defend. But this recollection of the event is an erroneous one. The devaluation of the dollar was part of a wholly different plan. It was a plan to devalue the dollar in international trade without making the devaluation effective at home. ‘And this was done for two reasons: 1 First, the President hoped to increase the sale of farm products in the foreign markets; and second, he declared this was the first step in the direction of a managed currency.

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This meant, first, that the gold céntent of the dollar would be “increased or decreased as seemed necessary to make the purchasing power of the dollar stable at home and abroad (according to the Fisher theory). And, second, it meant that the President would not only establish a stabilization fund, but that the principle of stabilization would be made effective

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(a) by buying gold at the price fixed by the Presi-

dent (35 dollars an ounce), and (b) changing the gold content. in accordance with the Department: of La~ bor's.index of prices. Congress never authorized this managed currency idea. The President launched the whole plan without consulting any other money authorities save Dr. Warren, who was not a money authority, but an agricultural economist with a bug on the subject of gold— that gold controlled all prices. It was one of the President’s little surprises, unloosed swiftly on the country with that glee which characterized the early New Deal measures—and, having “been launched, all its high- -sounding objec~ tives such as stabilizing the dollar and a managed currency were forgotten.

‘Words of Gold

pRoe the Congressional Record costs the taxpayers about $50 a page. Many pages these days

are filled with political material having nothing to do:

with business before Congress. On Saturday, Sept. 14, the following members of Congress put into The

. Record the material described below, at a cost ap-

proximately as stated: Rep. Rankin (D. Miss.), speech by himself to the platform committee at the Democratic National Convention, $125. Rep. Reece (R. Tenn), speech by himself to the Printing Pressmen’'s Union convention, $152.50. Rep. Reece, again, speech to the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation convention, $128. { Rep. Graham (R. Pa.), newspaper article on “Wallace, the Destroyer,” $23. Rep. Culkin (R. N. Y.), newspaper article on his own record in Congress, $47.50. Rep. Bolles (R. Wis), | criticizing the Roosevelt Administration, $60. Rep. Michener -(R. Mich.), editorial on President Roosevelt's Great Smoky National Park speech, $15. Rep. Case (R. S. D.), anti-Roosevelt article by william Randolph Hearst, $47.50. ; Total cost to taxpayers, $598.50—more than the Federal income taxes paid this year by seven. married | men with pet incomes of $5000 each,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

| Coming Back for More?

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NEw DEAL I a en SE

Srna

letter from ‘a constituent

! oe ; >on The Hoosier Forum i aly disagree with what you say, but will: defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

DEPLORES KILLING OF WHITE RIVER FISH By Mr. and Mrs. Chilton

This is to all Hoosiers who buy fishing licenses to fish in Indiana. We might just as well take our $1.50 and 50 cents and throw: it in the river instead of our lines! Why can't’ the State Fish & Game Preservation prevent such things as has recently killed so many fish in our White River? Many of us are unable to go elsewhere for this sport and an accident such as this is bound eventually to ruin our fishing at home.

wn 2 LAUDS ROOSEVELT AS GREAT DIPLOMAT By Jesse M. Wilcox

It appears that we have at last matched European diplomats. I think that President Roosevelt gave America a real lesson in diplomacy when we traded England with 50 destroyers, that we don’t need, for strategically locdted air and naval bases which we needed badly. It seems to me that Roosevelt has a keen grasp of the international situation and has up till now played the game of “International Chess” with distinction. Europe trains its diplomats from childhood up—with it, diplomacy: is a career. -I.am not saying that President Roosevelt is indispensable, but we certainly should think twice wefore urging to replace him, at this critical period in world history. His Republican opponent is totally void of international experience.

” z ” WILLKIE STANDS FOR TRUTH, VOICE IN CROWD SAYS By Voice In The Crowd "One reason for voting for Willkie is that Willkie stands courageously for and will tell and support the

truth. People have listened to lullabies for so long that they do not relish the truth. . If the Republic is to survive as the emblem of a free and courageous people, now is our last chance to re-

turn to fundamental facts and as a

unified people solve those problems that confront us. It will take more courage than the people of . this country have ever had to reclaim the

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“(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.)

nation from.the political TRE and save our children and their} children from a’ life of slavery and debt. The last time the people were told the truth, before Willkie began tellit, ‘was when Mr, Roosevelt preached it in the campaign of 1932, before) he “pigeon-holed” the great and constructive platform of the] Democratic Party in that campaign. Mr. Roosevelt said in 1932, “Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If these taxes are excessive they are reflected in idle factories and tax sold farms and in the hordes ‘of hungry people tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill but they pay it. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased costs of what they buy or in broad unemployment throughout the land. Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits. Stop the deficits.” Thus spoke Mr. Roosevelt when Roosevelt had the courage to speak the truth and before the idealism of the “Brain(less) Trusts” drove truth] and morals from government. The war economy i$ not prosperity but it hides from you the fact that we have heen going backward since the Administration started to cover up the truth and four years from now will be too late to save the ideals that spell America.

”® sn ” FEELS BITTER TOWARD ROOSEVELT BACKERS By Sideline Sittin’ Lil I feel very hitter toward the peo: ple who plan to vote for Mr. Rodsevelt; T am convinced they are play-

ing fast and loose with my personal liberty; are putting my savings toward a safe old age, in jeopardy;

are willing to submit to centralized

Side Glances—By Galbraith

» movies. hme ad : sl

sociates.

government, and to risk financial bankruptey for their country! We are becoming a supine people, misled by a man who pays lip service to democracy, but who has a great contempt for the common people. All tlie things he has done for them were for his own aggrandizement, so that he may call himself “The Great Humanitarian”! . Yet this benign individual will not hesitate to lead his country into war to insure his re-election. If the American people have become so

es gullible as to let Mr, Roosevelt get

away with a third term, they deserve to wear rings in their noses! » ” 2 RAPS AT WILLKIE FOR USING ‘CUSS’ WORDS

By Esther Greathouse I started to take The Times when

and I still subscribe now in order

to keep up with L’il Abner and Abbie and Slats, It was easy to skip nearly all the. ‘rest as it is chiefly composed: of Willkie’s speeches and they don’t amount to much. :

Well, I was leafing back to Lill

Abner and suddenly two hells and

a damn leaped up from one of the | Naturally, I wondered who |

pages. was doing all the “cussing.” Believe it ‘or not; it was The Hope of Our Country—the common man, Well, the word is used two ways—conimon, meaning vulgar, without culture: or, secondly, plain, honest, unassuming. Well, Willkie’s uncommon common-—the first way.

- ” BELIEVES oa FIRST TO URGE NEW DEAL By Thomas D. McGee The New Deal is anathema to Mr. Willkie and hig campaign asThey give it a kick on every occasion. Perhaps they would be a little more considerate of this malignant thing, if they remembered that Herbert Hoover and not Franklin D. Roosevelt is really the progenitor of the New Deal. In accepting renomination on Aug. 11, 1932, President Hoover made 1t plain that he had departed from the individualistic doctriae that depression must be liquidated by individual adjustment. “The function of the Federal Government in these times,” he said, {is to use its reserve powers and its strength for the protection of citizens and local governments by support to our forces beyond their control.” “He proposed to uphold wages until living costs were adjusted— to spread existing employment through shorter hours, and to advance construction work, public and private against future need. . When the shouting of the captains have died away and the atmosphere has cleared, perhaps

| Herbert Hoover’s only claim to high

distinction will be that he was the

DUTY. -

By ELEEZA HADIAN

| One delirious flight! [ One glimpse of heaven! Then came the call. Softly she closed the doors Returned to humble chores— To scrape carrots; to cook | A meal; to look : For dust; to sweep A porch. to watch" Ove: the restless sleep Of an ailing, aging Parent, needing ‘Care. But now, to while Away a long, dark hour, Her eves gaze far Into a star With a wistful, knowing smile.

DAILY THOUGHT

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless. not my will, but. thine, be done. —Luke 22:42,

NO PRINCIPLE is is more noble, as

| there is none more holy, than:

of true. obedience, ~H, Giles,

it was a good old Democrat paper|.

a person|i

‘the Selective Service Act,

institutions against 3

father of the New Deal. Who knows?

FRIDAY, SEPT. 20, 1940

Gen. Johnson Says—

Our ‘Army Lacks Tieup. With Bus Lines, Though in Case of Emergency, lt Would Commandeer Their Services

HICAGO, Sept. 20.—In speaking to and talking with the National Association of Motor Bus Ope erators, I learned something to add to the many things I do not know. This country is now a gridiron. of motor roads. A codfsiderable part of its pase sengers and freight transportation moves over these roads in automo= tive vehicles. Whatever may be the fairness to the railroad network of the low tax and roadbed costs to these competitors -of theirs, this system is a very necessary part of our na= tional machinery for transportas tion in both peace and war. Hitler has shown the necessity for the highest perfection in swift, motorized movements of army units. Our Government has bea latedly recognized it. Our new and only partly motorized army is writing a terrible record of delays and breakdowns due to half-trained’ drivers and repair and service departments. This is to be expected in any beginning, but it should be cured. The record of experienced civilian bus and truck systems in economy, efficiency and maintenance shows remarkable performance—averages of 75,000 to 100,000 miles of highway operation without mechanical delay. Recently. a motorized artillery battalion on & Superhighway averaged 16 miles per hour on a march of 135 miles—due to mechanical troubles. This is Juss one of dozens of recent examples.

” ” 2 UR plans for a new swift-moving motorized army capable: of striking like lightning anywhere on either coast of our country, should be integrated closely with our splendid- existing civilian system of motor . transport. It would be foolish’ to attempt to parallel it completely for the army with another coms

plete system of government-owned and operated motor vehicles. Gen. Marshall made clear recently that his plans do not contemplate a military motor fleet capable of carrying all his troops at one time. He suggested a “shuttle system” whereby the Army motor transpors is to take part of an army forward and then ‘go back for the rest. If it only took half on a trip that would cut Army . speed by two-thirds. Why should there not be added to that plan, wherever possible, complete utilization in both peace and war of our splendid existing eivilian motor transport system—not merely for carriage, but for maintenance of service? To do that requires experimental experience. While in an emergency all such transport would surely be suddenty comman= deered and used in helter-skelter fashion, it is as im« portant to get a smoothly working operation by peacestime practice as it is to have experimental maneuvers: with the National Guard, | 2 8 8 » S anything like that being done? On the contrary, because the quartermaster general has a “joint military passenger agreement’. with the railroads: which is practically exclusive of the use of automotive transport, it is only in very rare cases that the civiliany automotive systems can be used for the: transportatiofy; of troops. 11a One reason advanced by the quartermaster genera for refusal to change that bone-headed senility, ig that the “joint military passenger agreements have: been in effect between the railroads and the War and. Navy Departments for over a quarter of a century.” So had the Krench military methods which the German swift magving motorized attack smashed in & few weeks, been [used for over a “quarter of a cen: tury.” This reason reveals the typical dry rot ot thi crustacean hureaucracy which is so dangerous in thig swiftly [moving war-like world. We must have ous railroad network for, military efficiency and you can’¥’ keep ‘it up without giving it business. But we alse need our automotive network and we can’t reconcils: that with a railroad monopoly. Something ought ta~ be done about this tomorrow: ; a

FS

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walte :

NE reason , present-day mental dontusion =: the wholesale repudiation of Christian ethica: by our intellectuals. Archibald MacLeish, Lewi: Mumford and others have done a right- about- fach:; and are asking! us to accept and approve principle§s

which for years we have been: taught to suspect. Now comes another, Freda: Kirchwey, editor of The Nation, a magazine which in the past has. been a bulwark of liberalism, and: shows us how easy it is for emo: tions to become a substitute f thought. Kirchwey has been shouting at us: to open the doors of our country: to all the war refugees of Europe, . Now this may: represent a noble: instinct, but it is. far from sen=: sible. Being a war refugee doesn’f: endow a person with special virtues. He deserves Bo pity and any help we can give him, but to previds::

r Ferguson

_a haven for all the unfortunates of a continent woulgh:

strain our own resources to the breaking point. br Miss Kirchwey's latest outburst is even mora: puzzling to. those who are trying to find a way: through the fog of conflicting opinion.. It concerns which she believes will, be too lax and of which she writes: “Ministers of: religion: and theological students are unqualified: exempted from service. Why? Is the practice of theology of greater national importance than. the manufacture of arms or the raising of wheat?” '* To which we must return an unqualified “Yesje: Unless, of course, we wish to repudiate entirely thost fundamental doctrines which make us aware of h man, suffering and eager to alleviate it. The Bay of turning the caretakers of our faith into profess" sional soldiers is so at odds with our own beliefs: that we feel besmirched with Hitlerism at the Sug: gestion. These changeable liberals! were trying to drag us to Moscow for our ideals. Now. they are hurrying us into Berlin.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

Cavern fighters have taken a tip from the pole ticians and have been watching Maine for Tes: turns on their life-saving campaign. : The conservatism of this state, in which change.

{ is said to be the exception and established order the:

rule, makes it a particularly good state to look for: signs of success in the campaign to save lives b¥-: teaching people to seek early treatment for cancer. : The earlier cancer is diagnosed and proper trea

‘ment started, the better the patient’s chances for:

survival. This is the lesson by which the Americas’

‘Society for the Control of Cancer and its Women's Field Army are trying-to save cancer-threatened

lives throughout the nation. The returns from the campaign in Maine have: just been announced. They tell an “impressive ang: encouraging story,” vsays Dr. C. C. Little, managin director of the Society for the Control of Cancer.

pressed in figures showing the number of new pas: tients coming to the Tumor Clinic at the Maine:

Since the end of the first campaign of the Women's Field Army, this number has doubled and tripled. ‘These figures do not represent. the number of pe sons dying of cancer. They represent the numb who are getting good treatment for cancer and ther fore have a chance to survive. : The Sgures, Dr. Little Di “indicate what

For many months Mise

» ® Piva years ago they: