Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 March 1941 — Page 13

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 194|

The Indianapolis Times

SECOND SECTION

Hoosier Vagabond

LONDON (by Wireless)—Newcomers from America are arriving in London daily. Most of them are connected with the Government, but there is a steady flow of new reporters too One newspapermen who came in several weeks

ago is an old friend of mine—

Eddy Gilmore of the Associated

Press. We worked side by side for years. The other night we had dinner together, and after dinner we decided to walk home. 1f you'll allow me to boast a little, I seem to be something of an owl and have no trouble getting around in the blackout, so I walked ahead,” up the Thames Embankment, and Eddy followed. Somehow you learn to sense obstructions in your path even more than you feel for them. We took unseen stepdowns at curbs without actually knowing they were there: we hesitated, changed pace, and walked around brick sidewalk shelters without actually seeing them; we climbed wooden sidewalk ramps over water pipes, took curves in the street, missed fire-bomb sandboxes. The night was black, the sirens had sounded, and occasionally the sky would flash quickly with yellow, like prairie heat lightning on a summer night.

What of Tomorrow?

As we walked along, in this new way of life, everything seemed suddenly to be fantastically untrue. And I said to Eddy: ‘Who would have thought six years ago, when we were sitting in the city room of The Washington News, that we'd be walking together through the darkness along the Thames tonight with gunfire flashing over our heads?” And Eddy said: It doesn't seem possible. I wonder where we'll be six years from tonight?” I didn't know. For that matter, I always wonder where I'll be tomorrow night n n o ’

Things are quiet now, at least in comparison with what they were when I first came to England. And yet there is a lot of sudden dying being done in London every night. It is hit-skip dying. It is death dealt by a mystic lottery.

By Ernie Pyle

A lone bomber three miles above in the dark lets one loose. That bomb will fall somewhere in the city, a space 30 miles across, and pick out some doomed handful from among London's eight million people. Until it hits nobody knows, Ten may die tonight out of the eight million. What marked them to be drawn in the lottery instead of us? What fate drew a bomb to their special hundred square feet? My room is the same size as theirs; why didn't it come here? There is no answer. That's why you get so you don't pay any attention.

Children in the War

I heard a couple of stories while traveling about the country. One was in a tiny village of rural southern England. This village has about a dozen youngsters evacuated from faraway Liverpool. The village is the last place on earth you'd think a bomb would find. It is miles from anywhere. But on the first night the Liverpool boys were there some wandering German let one loose in the dark. As the explosion died away one of the child evacuees was heard saying to another: “I wonder where they'll send us next to be safe.” ” = o

And then one afternoon in Bristol I called on the Rev. Mr. Murray, vicar of St. Michael's Church. The Murrays have a very robust young son named John, now 19 months old, who paddles around the room and says a few words. He is learning war talk. For his father says that a few months ago when he heard a plane John would go to the door, point up and mumble “Airplane!” But now when he hears one he always points up and says, “Airplane—boom!” o ” » ’

Another story was told me by a woman here in London. She had an aunt and uncle living in one of the Midlands cities which gets blitzed regularly. The aunt and uncle are 85 and 90, respectively. The | other day they wrote a letter to their niece in London, and they said: “There are just two of us here alone, and we don't mind telling you that when the bombs are around we are pretty badly frightened. But we have told nobody but you, for we think it very important that Hitler should not be permitted to find out about this.”

Inside Indianapolis (And “Our Town")

THE FILING OF the suit in Circuit Court here to set aside the Republican “ripper” program insofar as it affects the Attorney-General today aroused a good deal of speculation in political circles as to the outcome of the affair. Even the Republicans seem to think there are two strikes on them. While a judge is a judge and it's nearly always catastrophic to guess what one will do, almost all of the judges before whom the suits will go are Democratic in party affiliation and, spiritually at least, are out of sympathy with the Republican reorganization program. At least one big-wig Republican was willing (last night) to bet even money that the G. O. P. would never get to even try to name an Attorney-General. And maybe it's significant, and maybe it isn't, but for the record at any rate, Jim Tucker, the Secretary of State. says that he and Charley Dawson, the Lieutenant-Governor, haven't even discussed the Attorney-General spot. Two and two still make four.

Unkindest Cut of All

IF YOU SHOULD happen to notice officials at Municipal Airport staring morosely at thes grass out there you should know that they are grieving over a serious case of intra-mural raiding. The Airport's chief grass cutter who was getting $100 a month apparently achieved such a fine reputation for the delicacy of his work that the city's Park Department lured him away to an $1800 a year job at the Coffin golf course

Washington

WASHINGTON, March 19.—In his “total victory” speech the other night, President Roosevelt said the nation was calling for the sacrifice of some privileges but not tor the sacrifice of fundamental rights. One trouble is that after one enjoys a privilege for a while, he comes to think of it as a fundamental right. In these times the rule of thumb is likely to be that in economic and industrial matters, anything standing in the way of efficient war production should rate as a non-es-sential privilege, a peacetime luxury that can be dispensed with, public patience is likely to be short with anyone who attempts to stand in the path,

This is bound to produce some casualties. I talked with one of them — the aluminum-u tensil group. Aluminum is being rationed, and while the aluminum-utensil business is not going to be knocked out completely, as was erroneously suggested last week by one defense official, certainly we are not going to put aluminum into pots and pans if it is needed for airplanes—as most of it is. This unquestionably will knock out the jobs of some aluminum-utensil salesmen and there will be personal tragedi»s in many families as a result of those lost jobs.

Aluminum Men Philosophical

The automobile industry will have to get along without aluminum pistons and must substitute castiron pistons. They are not as good, but they will get by No one can imagine all the changes that such emergency measures will produce. Already advertising of aluminum ware has been shut down. Instead of trying to find new customers, the policy now is to conserve available stocks so that regular customers may be served as long as possible—and possibly by such methods the trade may be held together until new aluminum production comes in next year, when, if all goes well, there should be plenty for reasonable needs all around I found these aluminum men, though hard hit by

My Day

WASHINGTON, Tuesday—Dr. Harriet Elliott came to my press conference yesterday morning and gave

us all a great deal of interesting information. The thing that stood out in my mind was the fact that she felt so strongly that what we should all try to do is to increase production of consumer goods as well as of defense goods. so that we could meet the demands of increased buying power, which probably lies ahead of us. Profits in this emergency should, not come from nigher prices paid for goods, but should come through increased sales.

Dr. Elliott pointed out that when sacrifices are demanded of us they should be made willingly, but they would not prevent expansion in the production of consumer goods where there was no interference with inevitable and valuable defense work. Last night we all attended the opening of the National Gallery of Art, given by the late Andrew Mellon, to which Samuel H. Kress has also given a wonderful collection of paintings. I think it is good for us all to realize at this time that art and beauty are necessary for the preservation of the finest things in life. Education comes to all of us through contact

Friday, you know, is the first official day of spring and Nish Dienhart may have to go out and cut the grass himself.

The Marks of Time CHANGING TIMES DEPT: One of the newspaper's linotype operators, who has been in the business of tattooing since ’19, and who says he is the only one running a tattoo shop in Indianapolis

right now, has never used a tattoo needle on a sailor from the local Naval Armory. Contrary to everything we ever believed, he says the first thing | recruits are told is that tattooing is frowned upon. . Unchanging Times Department: Bringing the Purdue University concert band here Friday evening for a performance at the Murat Temple is old stuff to L. G. (Abie) Gordner, the insurance man who is chairman of the committee of the Purdue Association of Indianapolis. Abie earned his way through Purdue some 20 years ago booking such groups as the U. S. Marine Band.

How to Buy a Bear

WHEN BILL PFAU, advance man for the Sportsmen's Show, was in town a couple of months ago, Mrs. Harry Cole, who lives on E. Washington St., asked him if he could get her a bear. He said he might] be able to by contacting ‘Spike Horn” Meyer, the bear man with the show. Mrs. Cole wanted a little bear to go with a “store” show she and her husband pitch in the smaller Indiana towns. She wrote to “Spike Horn” and he said he had “one good big bear and several mean bears,” but that if she'd wait he'd probably have a good little bear later. The Sportsmen’s Show came into town today and Mrs. Cole expects to get a bear cub very soon.

By Raymond Clapper

this emergency rationing of their sole commodity, quite philosophical about it. They did not denounce that man in the White House for interfering with their fundamental rights. They are figuring to make the best they can of a situation which they know is necessary in the national interest. It will cost them money, as it will cost many others. And any who gain a windfall by these shifting conditions—their profits will be taxed back into the Treasury. Personal Incomes will be taxed back and in the end nobody Is going to escape, as President Roosevelt rightly warned the whole country the other night.

Until recently we heard businessmen screaming bitterly about New Deal measures. They were leading to regimentation or communism or something. But today one reads in the annual report of Alfred P. Sloan Jr.. chairman of General Motors and an undying foe of the New Deal, that the Government must do some things. He would have shuddered to think of them a year or two ago.

The Lesson for Labor

Businessmen are accepting the intervention of the Government on a scale that a year ago would have been regarded as intolerable. That is what the necessity of this situation is bringing about. Sacrifices of privileges also are being asked of labor, but whenevar that is suggested, labor puts up a terrific cry that its rights are being infringed. *Labor now is acting much as the economic royalists acted during the previous Roosevelt years. Labor is insisting upon its right to tie up vital defense work by silly jurisdictional strikes like the one at Wright field. Thurman Arnold, Assistant Attorney General, has some appalling evidence of how extortionate labor-union fees have restricted union memberships so that Army construction work is heavily embarrassed. Labor, which has enjoyed such real progress at the hand's of this Administration, now repays that help by threatening defense production at a number of points and by threatening the twin coal and steel strikes that would tie up the two basic industries of the country on April 1. It took the economic royalists eight vears to learn their lesson. One would think that labor leaders, at this late date, would not try the dubious experiment of imitating that unfortunate example.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

with things of beauty, wherever they may be. As we develop appreciation and understanding of new forms of beauty, we become rounded and educated human beings. These things are being suppressed in other countries today. In every democracy, we must insist on the development of every avenue for increasing the enjovment of beauty. The Flower Show is on in New York City this week and I have been told that a new white cattleya orchid has been named for Lady Halifax. She moves with such grace and dignity, and white orchids are so lovely and graceful, that I think the growers made a very happy choice in this name. I hope I shall see the flower show if I am in New York City for a day the end of this week. I have just read two different things, both of which I want to mention. One of them is a short story in “Liberty” called: “A Man Only Half Dies,” by Clark McMeekin with George Madden Martin. If vou have not read it, I think you will find it worth the few minutes it takes because of the lesson it teaches, that sacrifice and love are not the perogatives of any one race. . Next, the Commissioner of Education, Dr. John W. Studebaker, has issued a service bulletin on defense training in vocational schools, which deals with the legal rights and obligations of workers. He has suggested that this bulletin be used in classes. forums and small discussion groups by the students. I can think of no information which will prove more valuable to them.

Winston Churchill

Pace in War

By Paul Manning

NEA Service Staff Correspondent March 19. — There they were, Churchill, Harry Hopkins and Lord Halifax. men in a mine-sweeper—with Harry Hopkins getting sicker every minute and Halifax not feeling so well him-

ONDON,

self.

all right.

Halifax. And, to the despair of Harry Hopkins, every {ime Churchill would pass the cabin he'd shout without shifting the Havana

cigar from his mouth: “Hopkins, come up on deck and see how these paravanes work. Then, laughing uproariously as Hopkins would weakly decline, he'd go back and take another squint at the boat behind. It was like that all the way to the George V, anchored some miles up the coast from the rainswept dock where the good-will party had boarded the mine=sweeper for the big battleship which was to carry Lord and Lady Halifax to America, The climax to this Odyssey came, however, when they boarded the 35,000-ton ship. A narrow ladder, dangling well above the water level, made it necessary to jump from the cabin top of the ice-covered mine-sweeper onto the ladder at the moment when the boat was on the upbeat of a swell. Churchill made it all right. Despite his short legs and 66 years the jump was made to order for him. But Halifax and the others nearly hit the water and when it came to Harry Hopkins, the little mine sweeper banged against the side and smashed the lower rungs. But with Churchill leaning over the side and shouting encouragement, Hopkins jumped and made it. Scrambling up the ladder and probably wondering why he ever left peaceful Washington, he was greeted not with a compliment for the excellent jump, but with the highly impersonal and extraneous observation: “Hopkins, I think these admirals are all wrong about this armor plate, It could have been a quarter inch thicker with no trouble with no trouble at all.” With that he was off down the deck to look for an admiral. n ”n » HAT'S the way with Winston Churchill. Sixteen hours a day he's out in front. His exhaustive schedule begins in the misty early morning, when a car sweeps up to No. 10 Downing St. Out of this car steps the Prime Minister. Wearing a black Homburg hat, a heavy black overcoat, a conservative dark suit with striped trousers and carrying a gold-headed cane, he walks quickly up the two short steps and disappears through the entrance way. Inside, he goes at once to a ground-floor bedroom where he undresses, gets into a pair of striped pajamas and hops once again into bed. It's the extreme vulnerability of No. 10 Downing St. to bomb blast that prevents Churchill from sleeping every night in this traditional home of all Prime Ministers. When he does sleep occasionally at another address which is secret, he hurries back as early as possible to this Downing St. bedroom in which he feels he can really relax, on n » IRST on his list is reading— official papers, general mail, reports from the Near East, the Balkans, the high seas. At 8:30 he rings for his breakfast. Like all his meals, there's nothing fancy about it. Bacon and eggs, sometimes with a little kidney. And always coffee. He doesn’t drink tea—at any meal. A secretary moves in about then, He has six, plus a confidential parliamentary private secretary: the Right Hon. Brendan Bracken. With one of the six taking dictation on a noiseless portable typewriter, he begins replying. Sometimes, however, it's a key speech for Parliament or the first draft of a radio talk. Until Churchill became Prime Minister, most of his books were written in this fashion. At 10 a. m., which leaves him 30 minutes before his cabinet meets, he dismisses his secretary. Springing out of bed, he shaves, using a safety razor. He is too old-fashioned for an electric razor, he says. He takes baths because showers have not yet been introduced at Downing Street. Then he’s off to the large, log-heated conference room in the adjoining wing. He moves swiftly to his chair at the long cabinet table. Each minister reports in turn, then answers Churchill's many questions. After which follows a round table discussion of domestic and foreign policy, and then the conference breaks up. This is around noon, and the next hour until lunch time is spent with key men of the Admiralty and War Office, who have stepped across to No. 10. Lunch at 1 o'clock is a simple meal. First a whisky and soda with ice, then cold roast beef as the main dish finished off with black coffee, brandy and a cigar. Cigars are his one real luxury. They're all very expensive and outsize. When asked how many he smoked a day, he replied: “Fourteen, and I like everyone of them.” An hour nap follows lunch and then he’s off to address Parliament, receive more people, maybe visit Buckingham Palace or in-

spect a military unit. "A .

Idol of Every Britisher Drives Himself at Furious

Effort

Winston Three

But up no deck Winston Churchill, as usual, was doing First he’d walk up to the prow and check the drift, then he'd walk back to the stern and peer, into the mist at the other boat carrying Mrs. Churchill and Lady

The young Churchill dreamed of a soldier's life. He went to Sandhurst, England's West Point.

T 5 he's back in Downing

Street dictating to another secretary. Striding up and down his office, the words at times flow smoothly, at other times not so smoothly. When his sentences lose their precision, he'll stride over to the liquor tray, pour a small glass of vermouth, light a cigar and begin once again. One hour of this high pressure dictation and he moves from the room, going downstairs for a short thirty-minute sleep. Then, to Churchill, comes the high: point of the day: evening dinner presided over by Mrs. Churchili, with up to a dozen people as guests. Generals, admirals, politicians, they can all be found anv night at the Churchill dinner taktle. It's when dinner is over tbat the real conference of the day begins. Churchill and his key dinner guests sit around in an atmosphere of heavy cigar smoke and mold Britain's policy into a malleable form. n o o INSTON CHURCHILL is as familiar and easy-going as an old side-button shoe. He is a Tory, an imperialist, a member of the old school tie group, a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough . .. yet he is an earthy man of the people such as perhaps no other Prime Minister has been. He is “Mr. England.” He is, by some curious human alchemy, just what every British working man and shopkeeper would like to be . . . and has lived the full life every little man in this country would like to live. The ordinary man in the street has probably imagined himself, as Churchill now is, in the driver's seat of this colossal three-ring show. He has probably dreamed of giving orders to generals and admirals and of being constantly surrounded by famous figures. To this ordinary man and millions like him, old-time politician Churchill is a beloved character actor who finally, and deservedly, has been given the star role in a great drama. The ordinary man delights in knowing the revealing °‘little things” about Churchill. . . . That he likes good drinks and fine cigars. That during a dinner hour he likes beautiful and witty women (he says they put bubble in the party)—and that at such times his pet peeve is the bore. That at all times his big hate is to have somebody whistling, whether on or off key. ” n » UT best of all, the man in the street and his wife, being what they are—a thoroughly do-

He's ‘Mr. England’ in Person

The rugged personality of Winston Churchill has been caught in this clay caricature of the Prime Minister by Carol Johnson, NEA

Service staff artist.

Winston Churchill seems to contrive successfully to be everywhere

at once.

Here he’s shown on a recent boat tour of London’s bomb-

damaged docks with his wife, who's almost as tireless as he.

mesticated, home-loving couple— enjoy and appreciate Churchill's utter dependency upon Mrs.

Churchill in personal matters. It proves to them that while Winston is the most sparkling bon vivant ever to sit in the Prime Minister's chair, he is still an essentially simple and uncomplicated person. In personal matters, for example, like clothing, Churchill has a remarkably small amount of clothing for a Prime Minister. Yet the fact he always looks well dressed is due to Mrrs. Churchill. Not only does she preside over the Churchill dinner table, but she takes charge of her husband's appearance, Victory is hers, she says, when aiter a long campaign Winston consents to go with her to the family tailor in Saville Row for a new suit. All England takes new confidence in the spectacle of Churchill hustling as he goes about his monumental tasks. Everyone Ghurchill meets, in fact, becomes impregnated with the same hustle. This is probably the reason why he carries a

HOLD EVERYTHING

“You gave me an awful night, Bat—ain’t you got any regard for your manager’s feelings?”

cane with a gold knob and band embossed with the arms of the Spencer-Churchills—not to support his 66-year-old body, but to prod any who don’t hustle. Whether he is in Downing Street or on an inspection tour, Churchill is persistent and aggressive. They say the way he got the unwilling Lord Beaverbrook into his cabinet was to call him up every two hours for 36 hours until the London Daily Express tycoon gave in. " ” n

T Downing St. there is no such thing as a highly routined day for Winston Churchill. He would just as soon cancel a Cabinet meeting as bat an eye. And the morning after any great blitz, he and his much publicized chimney pot hat are seen moving through the area and keeping a lot of people waiting in Downing St. In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill is usually at his best. He is the ablest orator in Parliament, even if he does commit his speeches to heart and practice them before a mirror. He is sharpest in unrehearsed debate —a master of the barbed phrase and the pungent retort. Yet it is as a serious speaker, particularly when the counrty is on edge, that Winston Churchill excels. The effect is always dramatic. He steps to the rostrum, slowly glances at his notes with the grin of a Disraeli or Gladstone, and then goes into action. He starts slowly, and because of this slowness his lisp and inability to easily pronounce the letter S becomes apparent. ut as he warms to the job, occasionally hesitating as if searching for the right word, his speech moves with greater speed. At the high point he is delighting everyone with his not subtle, but very biting humor and his grand refusal to pronounce foreign words and names in anything but ordinary English. Like “Naazi” for “Nazi” with the accent on the z and an attempt to make it sound like “nasty.” It is illustrative of the nature of the man that while his greatest speeches are genuine clarion calls to his brave compatriots, he has also an eye on posterity and the great niche he will occupy in history. It was in June, 1940, shortly after he had fulfilled his lifelong ambition of becoming England's Prime Minister, that he said: “Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British com-

‘monwealth and empire last 2

Mr. Churchill playing polo when Chancellor of the Exchequer, | 1000 years, men will still ‘This was their first hour.” o o o HE lives of few statesmen for whom “the journey has been enjoyable” have been as closely . identified with war as has Churchill's, War is literally in his blood. The inheritance began over 200 years ago with his ances= tor John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough—one of the great= est generals of all time. Winston Churchill was born (on Nov. 30, 1874) in magnificent Ben« heim Palace, given the first Duke by the nation, and his first years were surrounded by paintings of the Duke and of his famous battles. No wonder young Winston began to dream of a soldier's life, that his early games were war games, maneuvered by his 1500 toy soldiers, his toy fortress and his 18 toy field guns. Unlike most of his class (and to the distraction of his Amer-ican-born mother), he hated swank St. James and Harrow schools. His father, Lord Randloph Churchill, younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, de spaired of making a statesman of his son, so he sent him to Sandhurst, England's West Point. That was to young Winston's liking. Graduating as a lieutenant in 1895, he soon found himself a war. There was a rebellion in Cuba. He was sent there to act as a reporter for a London paper but quickly forgot pen for sword— just as he did in the Boer War, where he was taken prisoner and made good a miraculous and harrowing escape. He also saw serve ice in India and with Kitchener at Khartoum, o ” un ORSAKING war for a time, Churchill entered politics, suc~ cessfully standing for election to Parliament in 1900. By the time he became premier he had held practically every post in the cabinet, both as a Liberal and a Tory, including the job of First Zord of the Admiralty—from 1911 until after the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of the First World War. When, for years after 1930, the services of Winston Churchill were not requested by prime mine isters, he used his enforced polite ical leisure writing books, articles, putting up small brick wali and buildings, painting landscapes under the name of “Charles Marin.” Today there is little time for such profitable leisure, but Win=ston Churchill doesn’t mind. He's delighted with the fact that he has lost some weight since assame= ing the premiership. His job, despite it's exhaustive schedule and grave responsibilities, is so inter= esting to him that he feels no sense of personal sacrifice. Naturally the Prime Minister's family life has suffered some=what. No longer are there the famous country dinner table gatherings of family and guests, where it was the Churchill standing rule that if you had anything to say it must be tossed into the center of the table for everyone to pounce on.

say?

u 2 s

LL this has largely gone by ' the boards now, though, Sarah is married to actor Vie Oliver who is doing war enter=tainment. Diana, also married, is doing war work. And Randolph is in the army, while 18-year-old Mary recently made her first speech to help raise money for British relief. i Though Churchill no longer plays polo, which he likes ime mensely, or plays piquet or backe gammon, which he does indif« ferently, he still takes a keen pride in his large collection of swans and ducks. He now has many rare breeds in his little lake at Westerham. In the country, Churchill's real work is done in his study. It's a long, narrow room. Down one side is a mammoth table holding books, notes, newspapers. On the floor are two valuable rugs. The rugs cause Mrs. Churchill considerable embarrassment, because right down the center from one end of the room to the other runs the clear, beaten track of Winston's feet. “But it's no use getting new rugs,” says Mrs. Churchill. “If we do, he'll quickly wear them out too.” The only thing that seems never to wear out is Winston Churchill himself.