Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 October 1940 — Page 12

PAGE 12

The Indianapolis Times

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ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President * Editor Business Manager

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1940

HELL-BENT FOR WAR?

Editor's Note: To get the picture of how far we are down "the road read the Ludwell Denny series appearing currently in

this newspaper.

A UNITED PRESS dispatch from London declares: “Turkish quarters said today that even if the United States should enter the war before January, 1941, it would be too late to save the Mediterranean area from Axis conquest.” Just one of many dispatches, exciting no particular surprise. “But suppose it had been printed one year ago, in Octo“ber of 1939. : “Oh, yeah!” would have been the national exclamation. “Well, who said anything about the United States entering the war?” : : How things have changed in 12 months! For distant Turkey is almost the last country to discuss ‘America’s entrance into the war.. Italian and German papers Rave been full of it, and have assured their peoples that we would be ineffective. Japanese papers-have said that war with the United States is inevitable. English politicians and press have discussed American involvement to the point where the. British government recently found it necessary to assure Commons that no steps would be taken to affect a union of Great Britain and the United States without giving Parliament a chance to discuss it. The whole world is talking about America fighting.

8 82 8 i SN'T it time we asked ourselves that old question: “Who’s looney now?” The world or ourselves? Who is responsible for this talk—the world or our-: selves? | " Does the world know something that we don’t know ? Are the politicians and the inspired press of other nations talking through their hats? Or are we just living in a fool's paradise? ¢ In short, where there’s so much smoke, isn’t there some fire—and who started it?

2 2 ” > WELVE months ago we said, with as much faith and unanimity as our people has ever displayed, that no power on earth could drag us into Europe’s quarrel. We had learned our lesson. : . We meant it—and the world apparently believed us. A lot of things have happened in the outside world since then. And we have.been so busy watching them that we haven't seen something as big and spectacular happening right within our own borders. This thing has been our own drift toward war—a drift that now threatens to become a landslide. The biggest thing in the world today, so far as Americans are concerned, is that we are on the verge of war. : The thing-that-couldn’t-happen first became a possi- ~ bility. Today it is accepted: by the entire world as a probability. : It will become a certainty unless we, ourselves, jam

on the brakes. aN 2 #8 2

HE WORLD doesn’t want us in this war. The vast majority of the American people don’t want in it. It wouldn't help England for us to enter, for England doesn’t want our men and she does need supplies which we could not give her if we were belligerents. Yet, everybody talks about us getting in. Confidential business letters from Washington uniformly report that active American participation is increasingly probable. Months ago there was speculation about what would happen “if” we got in. Now some officials speak of what will happen “when” we get in. ‘What would these officials have us fight with? God only knows. 4 We are utterly unprepared. We haven't enough rifles for a modest army. We haven't enough pants or shirts to clothe the boys who have registered for the draft. Our National Guard had to train recently with imitation cannon made of planks and with trucks carrying “Tank” signs. Es pa We haven't enough anti-aircraft guns to defend our smallest seaport. ? Soi We haven't enough airplanes to protect our cities or our shores. If we had them, we haven't enough large: landing fields so they could take off or land or cross the continent in time to ward off attack. : 3 ” ” - i AR today would be murder . . . suicide . . . insanity. It would cost us our democracy and destroy the last citadel of that freedom which may some day save the world when this madness is ended. It is to preserve our democracy—not to destroy it— that we are arming. It is to prevent war—not to plunge into it—that we are drafting our manpower. Or—is it? : What does the world know that we don’t know? What is going on in Washington to cause other nations to see us as a coming belligerent ? :

§

AND WE DON’T EXPECT TO EMOCRATS have complained to the Senate Campaign ~ Investigating Committee because a bank in Englewood, Il, published a pro-Willkie advertisement in a newspaper. They charge that the bank violated the Corrupt Practices Act, forbidding campaign contributions by national banks and corporations, and is liable to a $5000 fine. So far, however, we have heard no Democrat demand investigation or prosecution of the many corporations which paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising space in the Dgmoeratic Book of 1940.4

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Acceptance by Many of a Lower Standard for Those in High-Office One of Worst Effects of New Deal

EW YORK, Oct. 22.—More alarming than any-

, thing else happening under the New Deal is |

the corruption of the civic morals of an unknown proportion of the people. The exploitation of the Presidential office for > family enrichment, the collusion of the high-command with the most notcrious machines in the country and the profanation of the sacred mission of national succor are, of themselves, frightening. Even in the very White House itself individuals have been appointed to synthetic jobs at high salaries only because they have been relatives or personal or political friends, and with only the most frivolous pretense that : their services were worth the money. Yet some individuals concede all this to be true and still ask, in effect, “Do you know anything bad about them?” In other words, some proportion of the people now accept - crookedness as the .standard in high positions of national trust and, being so degraded, themselves by the influence of important personalities, feel that criticism of the Administration on this score is a personal criticism of themselves. 2 8 8 OW many Americans are so infected it is im- " possible to say, but my own correspondence, which provides a sampling of opinion, certainly proves that their number is not negligible. I receive letters which hold that acts which would be wrong if committed by other persons and heinous if they were committed by a member of the family of Wendell Willkie are right if committed by a member of the New Deal family circle, and that any disapproval of such conduct by such a person is an expression of disloyalty to the United States and of disrespect for the Presidential office. There is a famous quotation from a statement which President Roosevelt uttered when he was Governor of New York which runs as follows: “How about the larger number of public officials

| who are honest in the sense that they cannot be put

in jail but who ‘are dishonest in the sense that they commit acts which are ethically or morally wrong? “What of a public official who allows a member of his family to obtain fees or benefits through his political influence?” z 2 8 = HAT was the national standard of civic morality in October, 1929, when Mr. Roosevelt said it, but the citation of it has become an insult to his office in the years since then, because his own words plague him and his idolators. He and Ickes and Hopkins .are found in close political collaboration with the Hague and Kelly-Nash gangs, each led by a man whose income from sources which neither man has been willing to disclose vastly exceed their official salaries, and whose rule had poisoned the citizenship of their communities with tolerance of graft and indifference to corruption. And merely to piuck out of the President’s statement of the principles which he held im 1929 that single sentence scorning the type of public official who permits members of his family to obtain fees or benefits through his political influence is to smear him unjustly in the eyes of those citizens who have strayed with him and the New Deal from the moral position which once was, theoretically, at least, the standard for the nation. This is not to say, of course, that everyone who votes for Mr. Roosevelt can be accused of indorsing this moral decline. Some will vote for him for other reasons and in spite of the example, buf, unquestionably, many Americans have allowed themselves to be persuaded that cunning in politics and the exploitation of office represents the -American standard and may be applied to every other phase of American life. .

Business By John T. Flynn’

~ Hitlerism May Come to U. S. If We Continue to Neglect Home Problems

EW YORK, Oct. 22.—Jesse Jones, Secretary of 4 N Commerce, has announced that American income had risen in 1939 over 1938. The 1939 average was $536 per capita. In 1938 it was $515. Maybe this is something for Mr. Jones to feel proud of, but I doubt it. For in many states the income is so small as to be quite pitiful. In Mississippi, for instance, the average income for 1939 was $205 a year. . This does not mean, of course, that this is the family income or that this represents per capita earnings. It means that the total income of the state of Mississippi, divided among all its inhabitants, amounted to $205 each. That is just about $4 a week, and when we remember that this is the average, we will see that vast numbers of people in that and other states are existing on next to nothing. One feels a little timid about mentioning such a thing at a time like this, when we are called upon to solve the far more grave and important problems of Indo-China, Java and Malay. Yet the over-mastering problem of our time is actually this problem of income here in America. The present Administration has asked the people to stop worrying about our American problems and to think only of keeping Hitler away from America. The 16 million men who registered last Wednesday were called because this Administration has sold the American people the preposterous conviction that Hitler plans to come over here. One day these men are going to find out how badly they have been deceived, and they are going to be very angry men. We have no reason to fear the coming of Hitler because, as every military man knows but dares not say, that is impossible for Hitler. But what we do

. have to fear is the coming of Hitlerism, and Hitlerism will come, not from Hitler or Germany or Japan, but

from right here within our own borders, out of the in‘ability of our society to get the income of millions of people above the level of $4 and $5 and $10 a week.

8 2 BB.

HEN it comes we will not be able to meet it with an army or a battleship. Hitlerism will take root among the great masses of our people who have become discouraged, who have lost hope; young men who see no longer before them the promise that thrilled every young American in the past—the promise of a modest career and a competency; middle-

aged men who have seen the golden years of their |

lives slip by leaving them no further along the road than they were at 21; businessmen who substitute despair for optimism; working men who have trades and skills but who must either go idle or slave as common laborers or live on Government doles, It is among these, one of these days, that despair will take hold and from out of them will come some American Hitler who will talk their language. He will ‘have no soldiers. He will recruit his storm troopers from among the despairing. They will be Americans. And the means of creating all this vast and hostile array of discontented Americans will be developed while our Government asks us to worry about Dong Dang and whether Holland or Japan rules the Orientals in Java. Time is running against us and we are raising the wrong kind of army. Of course the present Administration dares not discuss these questions, because it

knows it has no answer to them.’ -

So They Say—

AS TO ULTIMATE philosophical considerations, I can truthfully say that I was more concerned with them in my youth.—Dr. Lewellys F. Baker, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins. * ; : : Re * * : ?

WHEN THE FARMER lost his fair share of the

national income, our national crisis bégan.—SGenator Robert M. La-Follette, Wisconsin, = ~~~ °

cee» THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES | Wrong Technique, Chief

TUESDAY, OCT. 22, 1940

Si = ® i

ME? YOU CAN SEE FOR YOURSELE (oT :

The Hoosier Forum

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

A KIND WORD FOR MRS. FERGUSON By Mrs. Pearl Janis, Martinsville, Ind.

In reply to Ruth Shelton’s recent letter criticizing Mrs. Walter Ferguson’s article on Eleanor. Roos.2velt’s many activities. I quite agree with Mrs. Ferguson and I rather challenge Ruth’s statement that it was catty of Mrs. Ferguson. I take The Times daily just to read Mrs. Walter Ferguson and have never read one word from her that could be interpreted as catty. I think she is a sweet, wholesome person whom I am proud to own as belonging to my sex, one whom I have a great respect for. I only wish it were possible to replace My Day with more space for Mrs. Walter Ferguson. May she live as long as she is needed. 2 8 » LAUDS FIRST LADY AS A HOMEMAKER By Mrs. Ethel Miller I wonder what kind of a monstrosity is “A Democrat but not a New Dealer.” I am intensely both. One alone, I suppose, "is something that flops around like a chicken with 1ts head off, judging by the letter, so signed, criticizing Ruth Shelton for admiring Mrs. Roosevelt. If the writer could have met the fine, upstanding young Franklin D. she should say—but I doubt if she would have the fairness to say it— that Mrs. Roosevelt had been a most wonderful. homemaker. She is one of the very great ladies that the nation has produced and her catty “critics are simply revealing their own inferiority complex. They are jealous kecause she has so much more character and intelligence than themselves. = 2 CONTENDS WE ARM FOR PEACE—NOT WAR By Clyde P. Miller

In one breath Windy Willkie denounces Roosevelt for not starting the defense program earlier, in the next breath criticizes the program, says he is getting us into war and denounces him for criticizing Hitler.

paredness in peacetime the charge of wanting to get us into war might be - plausible, but if he had ad-

If Roosevelt had called for pre-|

(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.)

vocated spending money for more defense in peacetime what a howl would have gone up from the Re-

publicans, who only a few years]

ago were sinking vast numbers of fine modern warships for the purpose of reducing armaments.

The whole purpose of this defense preparation is to prevent war with which we .were not visibly threatened until after France collapsed. The real danger of our getting into it is to turn the country over to an inexperienced blunderbus like Willkie rather than leave it in the skillful and capable hands of Roosevelt. This Administration definitely is not preparing for war. It is preparing for peace on the obvious

theory that the more vigorous and|

completely we prepare the surer we will be to avoid war. Instead of handling Hitler with silk gloves we are going to show him a mailed fist—so that he will not make us use it. 8 a» A DISSENTING OPINION ON THE DEBT QUESTION By Clayton Collier, Shortridge High School

Who says the debt doesn’t mean a thing? Recently I read an article in this column by Cleon Leonard, who said the national debt “doesn’t mean a thing.” I hope, for the people’s sake, that the President is more concerned with it than this overlooking Democrat. Hewever, you must have noticed that Mr. Roosevelt has quit talking about the financial affairs of the country. He is like a childish school boy who, after working on a problem for a few minutes, gets disgusted and says: “Oh well, just let it go.” By all means don’t forget his promise in 1932 to lower expenditures 25 per cent. Today, notwith-

tanding this promise, the national

Side

od " COPR. 1940 BY NEA §

ako

Glances—By Galbraith

RVICE, INC.-T.M. REG. U. 8. PAT. OPP.

"Oh! oh! Baby's fixing thigas again—| hope you didn't leave your ; : watch lying about!" - Ph

elim Yo

40-322.

‘| While I wait?

eyerywhere, and its circumf ln } AL erence

debt is twice that of the World War debt, and now he is talking us into a war which will again cost the taxpayers their hard-earned money. Mr. Leonard, please do not try to compare your department store credit to the national debt of today. The Government debt is a debt which is owed to you and your fellow taxpayers, represented by Government bonds; if not directly through your own Government bonds, then indirectly through the bank’s Government bonds in which you have your savings. 2 E- ”

TAKING A SLAM AT WILLKIE'S PROMISES By Frances Richmond, Columbus, Ind. I haven't forgotten that Mr. Willkie said in his Elwood speech that he had never worked a day on a farm in his life, and hoped he would never have to. If Mr. Willkie gets elected in November, there's going to be a lot of things we better jot down lest we forget all the flowery promises he has made. according to Mr. Willkie we will no longer need to worry about work, wages or war. Won't that be something? I find the Republicans are tolerant and long suffering, they forget so easy. In just seven years they forgot about the banks going closed every day. They forget that people that were never on relief before, that were called the middle class of people, ones that had been able to save a little for a rainy day, but were not prepared for the storm of depression that overtook us and swept us almost out of civilization. They forget the empty business houses, the flour and jowl meat the government put out every week. All this happened in this town and it was‘ classed as the best small town for business during those awful days of no work, when people were committing suicide, killing their children rather than let them starve. Yes, some people forget so easy, but it would be well to keep a record of the promises that we hear coming over the air these days. 2.9 =» SOME MORE QUESTIONS IN QUIZ CAMPAIGN

By Roy Gwinnup, Rushville, Ind.

As Mr. David E. Larkin (Tuesday, Oct. 15 issue) asked a number of

questions concerning a Presidentiall.

candidate, I assume -he will grant me the liberty to ask the same number, . (1) What Presidential candidate used the following phrase “To Hell with Chicago!”? © (2) What Presidential candidate addressed a group of factory workers in Philadelphia in the following manner, “You poor misled saps”? (3) What Presidential candidate’s picture appears in the “Life” magazine shown thumbing his nose at a young man holding aloft a Roosevelt banner? : (4) Do you think anyone using (Continued on Page 13) et ——

FANTASY

By MARY WARD Is it the sound of the wind in the vine by the door, Or sunshine in patterns hard to define on the floor, Or both, that make me listen and . hesitate as before? Before what? Is it fancy or only A Passing reminder of smiles and a,

And a thought of being a little lonely

DAILY THOUGHT

But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built! —II Chronicles 6:18.

GOD 1S a circle whose center is

OW.

Gen. Johnson: Says—

Big Mystery of Campaign Is Why New Deal Pushes Toward Wer in Face of General Desire for Peace.

EW YORK, Oct. 22.—An incredible aspect of this campaign is the third-term candidate’s audae cious push toward war in the teeth of an overe whelming popular opinion against our involvement overseas. © Never in our history has there been such open propaganda for offensive action that would make unavoidable cur prompt involvement in war on the other side of the world —war, indeed over a range at least as wide as the vast stretch from the Straits of Malacca to the Straits of Dover. It might be wider. If we enter this war on the side of England, whatever we call ourselves, we shall be her ally, We must fight. wherever defeaf threatens, or victory beckons. It now seems quite probable that the direction of the war has turned from weste ward to south-eastward. New theaters threaten in ‘the Mediterranean, the Balkans, perhaps Persia, the Persian Gulf and even unto India. That is the British domain on which “the sun never sets.” Our propagandists now openly say that to preserve democracy on earth we must preserve the British Empire. Perhaps the millions of cone quered and exploited black people in Africa and brown people in Asia and Malaysia are their idea of democracy; but to try to push this great, powerful and peaceful nation into wars to protect such foreign possesions is hysteria that has broken all bonds of reason. = % ” HESE men advance measures which could take us into such remote and sterile fields as ‘“‘defense of America.” They say that the Atlantic and Pacifie oceans are no longer barriers of defense but avenues of attack. Since Hitler can’t cross 20-odd miles of the British Channel to get at Britain with a land army, it is a safe bet that he doesn’t turn up his nose at the Atlantic Ocean, even if these potential architects of their country’s disaster do so every day in their war dancing madness. If we push our belated defense preparations on land and. seas as rapidly as possible, the chance of our involvement in bloody war, no matter what may come, is too remote to consider. But notwithstanding this plain truth and the ale most universal desire of our people, these amateur statesmen and strategists are pushing ‘ahead with one excellent chance of pushing us over the brink into the destruction of war. The Administration of our national government does not oppose their efforts. If it does not openly indorse them, it supports them by its consistent course of action. = = ” HE catastrophe of ofir involvement in war would not be merely the bloody loss and danger to life and limb: It would immediately adjourn our free democracy for a war dictatorship. It would permanently adjourn our free economic system of private ownership ‘and liberty of enterprise by so burdening it with additional debt and taxes that the Government would control all private property and absorb all private income in the United States. The real issue of this campaign is the awful ques= tion of peace or war and the preservation of our democracy, not from the attack of foreign enemies, but from the follies of domestic theorists. The extent to which the Administration through action on these theories by sending away our produce tion of armament to “keep the war far from our shores” is not revealed to Americans. Every inter= ested foreign influence knows our “military secrets” except our own people. But it is an open secret in Washington that our muzzled army experts, while they loyally comply with orders and eat their own smoke, are thoroughly dissatisfied. We have not enough of the new type of armament which we are sending abroad to train our own troops—much less equip them.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson oo

ONSIDERING the way they look and the way I look, it is brash for me to tangle with the Mademoiselles Rubenstein. But these are brash times, and somebody ought to challenge the notion that national morale depends upon the state of the feminine complexion. That's avhat Mlle. Manka Rubenstein, sister of the eminent coldcreamer, Helena, has come from Europe to say to us. Having lived abroad for 10 years shé begins a lecture tour by confessing some slight shock at woman's neglect of the fundamentals in keeping themselves youthful, ate tractive and alert. Shocked after Europe, eh? If ‘beauty specialists weren't such sincere people, I'd say she was ! kidding. The theory is a pleasing one, as you know. When an exotic, perfectly groomed woman, with a camelia skin and thickety eyelashes passed by, the Pippa effect is’ produced. We take a fresh grip on our slipping morales, and want to shout, “All's well with the world!” A pretty fancy, only it never works that way with me. Instead, I think of the hard cash I've put out trying to obtain the same effects. I think of the time I've spent obeying a procession of experts, all of whom inspired me to brief Herculean efforts in an endeavor to make myself look more beautiful than Nature intended. . I remember the hours when hope gave way ta despair and my particular Danny Demon whispered, “You'll never make it, no matter how hard you try, Why not swat the Beautician?” As a result my disposition suffers, which clogs my pores, which makes my nose shiny, which slows up my good resolves, patriotic or otherwise, which finally brings me to my present contentious frame of mind, In fact, when I hear it stated that American women must face “these difficult and horrible times” by concentrating on their “figures, postures and come prexions,” I am so filled with rage that I lose not only morale but temper, tolerance and Christian charity. I'm really no fit person to have around. At suchmoments the notion strikes me that women have failed in their efforts to improve the world largely because ‘so many are already bogged down in a mire of cold cream.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

Wien some million young men selected in Amer= ica’s first peacetime draft go off to Army traine ing camps, strenuous efforts will be needed to protect them from tuberculosis. The, danger of getting this: disease will be particularly great among the young men drafted from rural areas. “Among the draftees will be a great number of young men who have never been exposed to tuberculosis,” warns Dr. William Charles White, chairman of the medical research committee of the National Tuberculosis Association. - “When a non-tuberculosis group of people is cone fronted by the disease, the cases that occur frequently run a more acute course,” he explained. “The disease attacks the lymph glands in proxie mity to the lungs and rapidly develops a toxemia with high fever, weakness and the involvement of the body as a whole, rather than certain organs. This type of tuberculosis is more rapid in its course and higher in its deaths than the familiar tuberculosis of the ung.” : " To avoid ‘the rapid rise of tuberculosis among recruits Dr. White emphasized that there must be a careful and complete elimination of tuberculous m during the draft and throughout cantonment This must be done not only to avoid breakdown am those with beginning infection, but also to avoid spread of the highly communicable disease. Tuberculosis is rapidly decreasing in this couiytry, particularly in certain Midwestern and Northwest\ern states. and; in. rural areas where bovine tub ofl

fe,