Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 March 1941 — Page 7

MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1941

The Indianapolis Times

SECOND SECTION

Hoosier Vagabond

( Ernie Pyle returned from London a few days ago by Clipper. Here is one of several articles based on material he gathered while there.)

NO DOUBT THE ONE voice coming from Europe which is best known in America is the one which says every night, in a certain dramatic way, “This is London.” It is the voice of Ed Murrow, who broadcasts daily

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for CBS from the bomb-pocked capital of England. His audience is estimated as high as 15,000,000. When Americans return from London and travel about the country, a question frequently asked is, “Do you know Ed Murrow?” Knowing all this, I decided to get acquainted with Ed Murrow, In fact, I got to know him quite well. And he is such a nice fellow it’s hard not to break into encomiums about him. ¢ He is 35. He's tall and slender. His hair is coal black. He smokes 60 cigarets a day. plus frequent pulls at a pipe. His middle name is Roscoe. He doesn't care much for food. And believe it or not, he’s not passionately fond of broadcasting. He has been married seven years (a Jew England girl named Janet) and they have no children. I've never seen Murrow in anything but dark blue. He wears narrow, hard-starched white collars. He is left-handed in everything but writing. He reads a dozen London daily papers, several weeklies, a number American magazines, and every outstanding new 00K.

Brought Up in Northwest

On his apartment wall there is a black and white Navajo rug woven in the Mexican pattern of Saltillo. Being an old Navajo expert, the thing struck me as being incredible, and I grilled him about it every time I saw it. Murrow was born in North Carolina, but you'd never know it from his speech. His folks moved to Washington state when he was young. He loves the Pacific Northwest His parents still live at Bellingham, Wash. and never miss his broadcasts. He writes them every three weeks. Ed's brother designed that famous Tacoma bridge that fell down last year. Ed thinks it’s a great joke, but his brother probably doesn't. Ed graduated from the University of Washington in 1929. He belonged to the Kappa Sig fraternity, and washed dishes in a sorority house. Between school years he worked a year and a half as a timber cruiser on the Olympia Peninsula. After school he went to New York and worked with the National Student Federation, and then with the International Institute of Education. Both these jobs took him to Europe every summer, arranging exchange professorships and so forth.

By Ernie Pyle

Murrow has been in every country in Europe, but he’s a poor linguist and just manages to get by in French. He went with Columbia in 1935, and has been over here for the last four years. He has not been home since the war started. Murrow has reaped good gain from his earlier travels in Europe. Many of his best friends of those days in England are now in high position in Whitehall. He has a terrifically wide acquaintanceship among the English-who-matter. He aspires to no career in any “set,” he has no ambitions to be an ascendingly great “voice” on the air. He suspects that glory winds you up at 50 making your living by lecturing to women’s clubs, and he has a horror of that. To many people it must sound like a cozy, snap job to hang around London and just talk about seven minutes a day back to America. But what you may not realize is all the preparation that must go into that seven minutes. I doubt that any American in London works harder than Ed Murrow. He's never in bed before 2, but he’s up around 9 in the morning. He lays out a program for the day, chooses some subject, and makes dozens of phone calls and probably several personal calls, getting his information. He and his teammate, Larry Leseur, divide up the work. Larry usually takes the afternon broadcast, and Ed the midnight one. CBS has moved its offices three times since the blitz started. They were bombed out of the first two. Their present office is actually a big apartment, just two blocks from the broadcasting studio in the BBC building.

Dinners Keep Him Busy The office is more like a home. It has fireplaces and deep sofas and library tables. Also it has two secretaries—both British girls—who are jills-of-all-trades. They phone, write, survey, collect, suggest and think. Their names are Kay Campbell and Maureen Hall. They make the office their permanent home. Murrow’s own apartment is about two blocks farther on from the studios. And he has rented a country place, about an hour out of town, largely so the staff can go out occasionally for rest and quiet. Mrs. Murrow stays there most of the time, Ed gets out himself only about twice a month. He has to attend quite a few dinners in town. He says the easiest dinner party he ever participated in was one where he sat between H. G. Wells and David Low, the cartoonist. They carried on a running conversational fight all evening, and all Ed had to do was keep turning his head, as at a tennis match. Around 10 every night Murrow returns to his office, and starts the final retyping of his manuscript. About midnight he walks over to the BBC building. He is finished by 1.

Next—Broadcast to America.

Inside Indianapolis (And “Our Town”)

THE LATEST WORD from the traffic front is that the big “drive” is just about over. That is, it’s over as far as the City is concerned. There are some indications that the courts intend to hammer down on offenders, but the blistering report of that committee a few weeks ago has gone to the happy hunting grounds of a dozen similar reports. Persons who know the situation well insist that the Safety Board is completely uninterested in (if not hostile to) the suggestions made by Lieut. Kreml and his aids. If the courts do start inflicting relatively heavy penalties you will see a quick improvement in traffic conditions. But some day, somebody is going to do something about traffic handling, too

His Lines Were Crossed

AN ANGRY TAXPAYER called Sheriff Feeney: “Why don’t you do something about the gambling that’s going on,” he challenged. “I'm trying to do all I can,” the Sheriff soothed. “Well, I'd like to see the bingo stopped at the—,” said the taxpayer. “I'd advise you to call the sheriff, then,” Sheriff Feeney answered,

Washington

WASHINGTON, March 31.—I go back again to the statement that a New Deal official made to me recently to the effect that if labor became responsible, in the eyes of the public, for blocking defense pro=-

duction, labor's cause would be set back for 20 years. Labor is working itself into that unhappy position. Already it is beginning to take the rap. The Oklahoma Senate has passed a bill making it a penitentiary offense to organize workers on defense projects and to collect fees from persons working on defense projects. The Texas House has passed a bill making it a penitentiary offense to interfere with a person doing his lawful job. The Georgia Legislature passed a bill outlawing collection of fees from non-union workers on defense jobs and Governor Talmadge vetoed it after obtaining an agreement from labor leaders to maintain an open shop on defense work. Those are samples of what happens when public feeling becomes inflamed against labor. In Congress not, only are the professional labor-baiters going at it with new zeal but such demonstrated friends of labor as Rep. Ramspeck of Georgia are turning in strong criticism against the conduct of union leaders in the present situation,

The Gallup Polls

Labor has laid itself open to public condemnation by such indefensible walkouts as that at Wright Field. When it loses public sympathy by flagrant abuse of its power, then it is unable to win a sympathetic hearing when it has a just grievance. The Gallup polls show 74 per cent of the people in favor of labor unions. Collective bargaining is now accepted universally except among a handful of hardshell holdouts like Ford. Yet the same Gallup polls show 85 per cent of the people favoring a law compelling employers and labor to submit differences to a Federal

My Day

MOBILE, Ala. Sunday—Friday morning we all sat solemnly around a table and discussed business of which I knew little, for this was my first meeting with the Rosenwald Fund trustees. After a delicious lunch at Dorothy Hall, the Tuskegee guest house, my real education for the day began. Incidentally, I would like to say a word about this guest house at Tuskegee Institute. It was arranged years ago by the college to receive its white guests and is a most comfortable and homelike place. The students in the home economics and commercial dietetics course ccok and serve the food, and better food and service I have never seen.

Flowers are charmingly arranged and, as I came up the stairs, I looked straight at a very good photograph of my uncle, Theodore Roosevelt. His picture looked down at me also from the wall at the trustees meeting, so that I felt that the family has had some connecticn here over a fairly long period of years. Now let me tell you about our afternoon. The first thing I noticed is that the land about us is badly eroded. Neither white nor colored farmers can make a living on this land as it is. None of them can afford to put in the capital which will be needed to bring it back, and at the same time keep their families from starvation. ¢

A EN Tn

“You're the sheriff, aren't you?” came an outraged roar. “I'm sheriff of Marion County—the place you're talking about is just across the county line.”

This and That

A PLAQUE WAS presented Joe Cook at the Coliseum Saturday night by the newspaper and radio men here who met Joe during his engagement. They

all chipped in to buy the plaque. . . . Ownie Bush is expected back from Florida any day now. . . . The gossip (that's all it is, pure gossip) is that the City Council will put its o. k. on daylight savings time as soon as it legally can. . . . State Police officials are concerned over the task of filling 50 jobs authorized by the Legislature. The failure of the Assembly to provide pay raises may be the stumbling block. With many defense jobs paying $200 a month and better, the $100 starting pay of a patrolman may not be particularly attractive to high-grade men,

Who?

THE BIG LAUGHS in the I. U. Jordan River Revue were on the university big-wigs themselves. President Herman Wells was, ribbed for making so many good-will speeches. The tag-line— “How many miles do you have to get on a college president before you trade him in?” Another crack— “What ever became of Paul McNutt?”

By Raymond Clapper

mediation board before a strike could be called in defense industries. Those figures say that the public is not against labor unions but is against strikes that stop defense work. Complaint comes also against the practice of unions charging for the right to work on defense projects. That is viewed by the public as a holdup. The question is how shall labor get a fair return— by throwing a monkey wrench into war work, or by placing its case before a Mediation Board which is not only composed of fair-minded men but is the creation of an Administration which has fought notably for advancement of labor? Labor seems to prefer the first course of striking or threatening to strike,

Public Support Essential

That wage increases will be justified in some industries is very likely. The Wall Street Journal devotes two columns to a survey of the profits that some defense industries are in the vorocess of reaping, and it finds that in many instances the new profits will far outrun excess-profits taxes. It will be futile to try to prevent labor from sharing in increased earnings if these questions are allowed to go through orderly consideration, But if labor attempts to force every wage increase by pulling or threatening a strike, it will find its strikes broken up, and whatever gains it makes will be a great cost in lost working time and public illwill. On the other hand, if it goes before a mediation board, having agreed to continue work, presenting a case for a share of increased earnings, its chances of public support and of a fair decision are infinitely greater. Labor is laying itself open to new attack now from every enemy it has ever had and also from many who have been on its side in the past. This comes about largely on the simple issue of pulling strikes on defense work. Acceptance of mediation in defenseindustry disputes by both parties is what Congress and the country are demanding, and if the Administration does not bring that about, Congress almost certainly will attempt to compel it.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

Even the good farmer barely makes a meager existence. That, I think, explains the fact that, without assistance from outside, the schools are at such a level that one wonders whether it is possible for the children to learn anything at all. We were, of course, visiting Negro schools, and it is fair to suppose that white schools would be better. Even 100 per cent

better than those we saw, however, would hardly satisfy you if you believed education was necessary for participation in our democratic form of government. Three of the schools we visited have some help from Tuskegee Institute. One very important way of co-operating with the rural schools 1s to send out internes for three months to live in a given neighborhood and to help with the teaching in the schools while they are taking their last year of training as teachers at Tuskegee. Only one school which we visited yesterday includes two years of high school. Most of them have only six grades. The effort to provide a hot lunch interested me. In one school, the teachers live in the school and, therefore, are able to cook and serve lunch on the premises. In other schools, the food is cooked in the homes and brought to the schools and warmed up on the stoves which heat the schools these chilly days. Alabama has taken some forward steps—she provides free school hooks and her teachers receive slightly higher salaries than teachers receive in some of the neighboring states, ¥

bardment? How can they

nation’s mass courage. England Can Take It.

truth, It is this: “The people have no alternative. They've got to take it, because there's no place to go. It's a long swim to Iceland.” The British Government must have wondered about that too, because a survey has been made of the morale of the working class. The result, still unpublished, shows them more determined than ever to see it through to victory. The deeper reasons behind the British attitude involve both the individual and mass reactions to danger from the skies. What happens inside an average individual is something like this: At first you feel helpless but you don’t know quite what to expect. You have read about air raids, but the printed words seem impersonal and far away. You feel a little foolish about going to an air raid shelter.

” ” ”

"Coffins of Death"

You hear the guns and the planes overhead but if you're lucky nothing drops near you and later you think really it wasn’t bad.

Then you hear what happened to your friends. Their house was hit and you see what happened to a row of tenants in the East End and you are scared. Nobody can see the effect of a land mine and not be scared. A land mine is a six-foot coffin of death. It floats gently to earth under a huge green silk parachute, and about 20 seconds after it comes to rest it explodes with enough force to wipe out half a block of houses. The censor won't let you mention a land mine in the British newspapers hut everybody knows about them and says with grim humor: “When you see a land mine, run like hell for 19 seconds and then fall flat on your face. But you really can’t run far enough so you might as well stay where you are.” So you are uneasy because you

PROBERS URGE I. S. CHARTERS

Monopoly Committee Files Final Report After 3-Year Study.

WASHINGTON, March 31 (U. P.).—The Federal Monopoly Committee today issued the final report of its three-year study, recommend=ing Federal charter of interstate corporations and a program for averting further concentration of economic power in the post-war world. The evils of economic concentration can only be prevented by “national standards for national corporations,” the report said. “It is quite conceivable that the democracies might attain a military victory over the aggressors,” it said, “only to find themselves under the domination of economic authority far more concentrated and influential than that which existed prior to the war.”

12 Of 16 Approve

The committee’s recommendations were based upon 20,000 pages of testimony taken since April, 1938, when the committee, headed by Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney (D. Wyo.), was established by President Roosevelt. The Federal charter recommendation was approved by a majority of the 16-members. Four dissented, Reps. Hatton Sumners (D. Tex), and B. Carroll Reece (D. Tenn.), Joseph J. O'Connell of the Treasury Department, and securities & Exchange Commissioner Sumner T. Pike. Sumners did not explain the reasons for his dissent, but the others issued a formal statement asserting that the recommendation “does not state definitely what it is that is being recommended.”

Warning Is Issued

The committee report warned that “so long as those who want to voyage at will upon the seas of interstate and foreign commerce without responsibility to the public may obtain unlimited charters from the states, there is no efficient means of safeguarding the general welfare.” “In the modern world,” the report said, “these two organizations (business and government), in principle designed only to serve men have instead undertaken to order the lives of all for their own selfish interests. It is this basic fact which is the primary cause of the terrible disorder that now threatens to wreck the world.” It listed 14 recommendations designed to decentralize the nation’s economy, halt the tendency toward concentration and stimulate new enterprises.

2 AXIS SHIPS BURNED PUNTA ARENAS, Costa Rica, March 31 (U. P.).—The crews of the 6072-ton Italian steamer Fella and the 4177-ton German steamer Eisenach set fire to their vessels in the

harbor today,

face death from the skies

day after day and not give way to panic? Everywhere I went in England I asked for an explanation of the I asked whether Britons were unlike other peoples and whether there was some special reason for the slogan:

There is one easy explanation, but it is only a fraction of the

know it’s all a matter of chance and you can’t do anything about it. But you can live with fear just so long. You may not get rid of the fear but eventually you begin to set up a defense mechanism against it. The Government tries to help by giving jobs'to as many persons as possible so they will be too busy to think about fear. If you're in a crowd your nerve is better. That is one reason why thousands spend their nights in crowded subway shelters. = = ”

Joking Helps Out

When you can joke about it, that helps, too. Your worst moment may be when you hear a plane overhead at night and you argue about whether it's a friend or a foe. Finally somebody says he knows a sure way to tell a British plane from a German plane. The British plane, he says, g0es: W00-w00-wo00-wo00. But the German plane goes: Wo00-W00-woo-woo—bang! You keep away from windows during a raid, but you tell yourself that after all there is only one chance in 75,000 that a bomb will hit you tonight. You know that a 1000-pound bomb went through six floors of the building next door, but your apartment is on the second floor and you have heard that the second floor is the safest. You walk past a big street intersection in London and see where a 2000-pound bomb tore through four feet of pavement, exploded in a crowded subway station and caved in a circle of paving 150 feet in diameter. But you tell yourself that such horrors don’t affect you because a bomb either has your number on it or it hasn't and there's no sense hiding underground. You go into the street during a raid, because you know that after all there isn’t any protection against a direct hit. : When you reach that stage, your defense mechanism is work-

Both Sides of |

You Can Live in Fear Just So Long—Then You Take An Air Raid in Your Stride

Here are two more in the series of parallel dispatches by two American reporters recently returned from tours of Europe and England.

By JOE ALEX MORRIS (Copyright, 1941, by United Press.)

What happens to people's systems under aerial bom-

Lady Astor, American-born member of Parliament, and wife of the Lord Mayor of Plymouth, gracefully curtsys a greeting to the King and Queen, arriving for an inspection tour of the bomb-stricken port. During the raid, the Peeress helped extinguish incendiary bombs that fell on her house.

ing. You can begin to tell yourself that you're no longer scared. You probably are still scared but that doesn’t matter. n ”n 5

Under the Table

You flop down against the wall of a building when you hear a big one coming and you lie there wondering whether the next two (they usually are dropped in three’s) will be closer or farther away. Your friends may suddenly disappear under the flimsy tops of cocktail tables in the lounge of a swank hotel because a wild whis=tling noise interrupted a good story. But that, you say, is merely sensible precaution. There may be more anguish over ruined silk stockings than the effect of the whistle bomb. After a while you aren't surprised when girls in evening dress leap out of a taxicab, grab a

sandbag from the street corner and extinguish a fire bomb, and you can laugh at the French Army officer who arrived in London during an air road and con-

cluded: “The English are loco. When a bomb falls in the street they don’t run away from it; they run toward it.” The normal conditioning process plus the fact that air raids on civilians developed gradually helped to decide the attitude of the masses and prevent panic which Government officials had feared. The mass of workers in London, for instance, is not too imaginative. They take pride in follow=ing the example set for the nation’s leaders in an emergency. After each raid they feel a sort of personal triumph over the Germans because they survived, If they suffer personal loss, there is anger to back up their defiance,

Nazi Labor Leader Pledges Workers Abundant Life to Keep Them on Job

By LYLE C. WILSON (Copyright, 1841, by United Press.)

Neither strikes nor lockout have a place in the program of Robert Ley, the Nazi labor front leader who collects $240,000,000 a year from German workers and ranks as their prophet

of the more abundant life.

The war upset Ley’s plans considerably. But he keeps before German workers the promise of better times to come although his strength-through-joy ships no longer can safely cruise European seas with workers enjoying bar-gain-rate vacations. The production of his cheap automobile factory has been taken over by the military. For. their Labor Front dues which Ley collects to finance their more abundant life, German workers in war time must be content with simpler pleasures than cheap motoring or de luxe sightseeing at a dollar or so a day. But Ley has built theaters and vaudeville houses for them. They can obtain tickets at 10 per cent of the regular price.

Has Many Jobs.

Ley is a big man with a voice that echoes in throaty emphasis when he addresses German workmen, as he often does. In his hands are some of the most deli-

HOLD EVERYTHING

cate controls of the Nazi organization. Among his jobs are:

1. Leadership of the Nazi Reich organization, which makes him top man under Adolf Hitler in the party bureaucracy. He joined the Nazi movement in 1924 as a walking delegate and shortly came to favorable notice.

Ley moved up rapidly in the Nazi hierarchy to become deputy organization leader under Hitler in 1932, and head of the Nazi bureaucracy in his own right one year later. He did so well that Hitler gave him another job: 2. Direction of the German Labor Front, the all-inclusive successor to pre-Nazi labor unions. Ley took over the unions in May, 1933, jailed their more stubborn leaders and informed the 5,000,000 or so members that, henceforward, they belonged to the German Labor front, Practically all except agricultural workers now are in that organization. And Ley is the boss. The $20,000,000 estimated monthly income from dues of Labor Front members enables him to offer for immediate delivery or promise for future realization the more abundant life which German workers believe awaits them after the war. With those funds Ley finances one of his other jobs:

Strength—Joy—

3. Direction of the strength-through-joy movement which

pr

~ “Step on it—there’s an extra fish in it . there in time for dinner!

for you if I get

offers German workers cheap recreation. Before the war that would range from cut-rate vaudeville tickets and one day bus rides—complete with lunch—to a fortnight on the seashore, in the mountains or afloat. How much material and how many men Germany now can devote to building holiday cruise ships or how many railway trains would be diverted in time of war to the transport of vacationers to and from shore resorts is largely a mattter of speculation.

But Ley does not let German workers forget that he is on the job. Last November he said 60 strength-through-joy vessels were under construction. In December he outlined a program for 100 cruise vessels such as those which were in service before the war. In the same November speech, Ley talked to 10 great workers’ secashore resorts and in December he enlarged that program tc 100. I saw one of his theaters. It was of plain, comfortable con=struction and presented 14 acts of a vaudeville from 4 p. m. until nearly 7. The most patient of Ley’s constributors are those who signed up in another venture he heads: 4, The manufacture of Volkswagon or people's car. Delivery of these paid-up, cheap automobiles was scheduled to begin last year, but the military took over Ley’s Faliersleben plant. Ley financed the Volkswagon factory. It manufactures a stand-ard-gauge automobile, 156 inches from bumper to bumper but powered low as all small European cars are. It was priced at $396 and Germans were invited to sign purchase contracts on which they paid $2 weekly with the understanding that they would receive their cars when the price was paid and production schedules permit ted.

the

o ” #

Pay 40 Million

It has been estimated that these German savers paid in more than $40,000,000 so far, a sum which probably would pay for the Fallersleben plant. Thousands of them are paid-up owners of a Volkswagon that today is lightly armored and scouting around in military service instead of carrying the family on Sunday drives into the country. Substantial subsidies will be necessary to realize the Nazi housing plan which is to provide apartments at about $3 per room per month. “The successful termination of the present war will confront the German Reich,” Ley said, “with tasks which it will only be able to fulfill by increasing its population. It is necessary, therefore, that the gaps caused by the war in the population be closed by an increase in the birth rate. Housing must create adequate conditions for a healthy life of families with many children.”

NEXT--Air raid precautions,

Briton Is Dogged

The middle class Briton is dogged and imperturbable—some= times to an extreme that is irri tating to an outsider. If he chooses to regard anything as contrary to his way of life, he simply ignores it, even a bomb. The idea of “busi= ness as usual” prevails until the walls come tumbling down and there is sure to be a sign stuck on the debris next day giving a new address. Tradition is back of the upper classes. It is the same tradition that built an empire; that prompts King George to scorn an armored car during a raid; that sent boys from Harrow into the air last September to face odds of 20 to 1, They had been trained to responsibility and leadership and if they failed to set an example the nation would fail. They had the old school tradition that “a man must not let his side down.”

NEXT-—Juvenile crime.

WOOL AND BEEF PERIL U, S. PLAN

Good Neighbor Policy In Danger From House Embargo Riders. By THOMAS L. STOKES

Times Special Writer WASHINGTON, March 31.—Over a little canned beef for the Navy, and some wool for Army uniforms and blankets, the Western beefe and-wool bloc in the House is en= dangering the careful structure of goodwill which the Administration is seeking to build in Latin America as a part of hemispheric defense against naziism. Argentina is hit most impor= tantly, as far as the Good Neighbor Policy is concerned, by the House bloc’s attempts to impose embare goes on foreign food and clothing purchases through riders on two nation-defense appropriation bills, These arz being resisted by the Senate. The Senate faces the issue again this week in the Fifth Supple= mental National Defense Bill, in which the House inserted a broad proviso against purchase of foreign food and ciothing.' The Senate is expected to vote it down. as it did last week a ban limited to food in the Naval Appropriation Bill. The final decision will come in the House, and Speaker Sam Ray= burn is rallying his forces to defeat the embargo bloc led by Rep. James G. Scrugham (D. Nev.), sponsor of riders in both bills. The issue will come in the report of conference committees of each branch.

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1—Are there mosquitoes in Alaska?

2—What is the name of the barber in the opera “Barber of Seville”? 3—Which of these three cities is the capital of Switzerland: Ge= neva, Zurich or Berne? 4—What is intrastate commerce? 5—Will a light, placed in front of a mirror, produce twice its vole ume of light? 6—What is the ultimate Court of Appeals in Great Britain? T7—How many children has Henry Ford?

Is

Answers 1—Yes. 2—Figaro. 3—Berne. 4—Commerce within the confines of a single state. 5—No. 6—The House of Lords. T-—-One. a 8 9

ASK THE TIMES

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