Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 April 1941 — Page 11

TUESDAY, APRIL I, 194]

The Indianapolis Times

Hoosier Vagabond

(Ernie Pyle returned from London a few days ago by clipper. Following is one of several articles based on material he gathered while there.) ONE NIGHT IN LONDON I sat in with Ed Murrow on his late broadcast to America. You realize that when you listen to Murrow at 5:45 p. m. in Indianapolis, it's actually a quarter to 1 the next morning in London, and we've stayed up i Wo naa half the night for you. We hope fret : you appreciate it. aid oH The American broadcasting sw room is one shared by CBS and 4 NBC. It is in the basement of the BBC building, three floors down, and there are still basement levels below that. Many of the BBC people live down there: the place is full of cots, and smells of cooking cabbage, and very homey. The building has been bombed twice, and people have been killed in it, but it still stands. The American broadcasting room is small, not more than 8 by 15. The walls are draped, to deaden the sound. A small table covered with green felt sits in the center. A microphone stands on the table. Murrow sits in an armchair. He does not have to get close to the mike. His face is about two and a half feet away from it. Before every broadcast there is a two-minute conversation period between the London and New York offices of CBS. They discuss plans for future broadcasts, and test the reception. Murrow wears earphones during this conversation. I sat across the table, and listened through other earphones. Ed kept watching the clock, a big one on the wall with a red second-hand. Finally the time arrived and Ed started reading from his script. Broadcast to America Right behind him, along the wall, is a small table stacked with papers. The British censor sits there. He has read the script beforehand, and passed it. He listens through earphones. Should Murrow start to ad-lib something the censor didn't like, he could cut him off instantly. But that has never happened. There were only four of us in the room—Murrow, the censor. myself and Arthur Mann, of Mutual, who just dropped in for sociability’s sake. As he talks, Murrow gestures with his right hand. He folds up his fist, then opens it as though tossing something away from him. He makes points by nodding his head sharply forward.

By Ernie Pyle

In the last couple of minutes he turns every few seconds and looks at the clock, You can almost feel him gauging and timing his manuscript in his head, while he talks. The night he had overwritten his script, found he couldn't complete one whole section on which he'd worked all day, so just ad-libbed enough to wind up smoothly, and threw the rest away. When he finished, perspiration was standing on his forehead and upper lip. Nobody said anything at all. The tenseness of the broadcast fell away. Murrow sat there and casually wrote in the margin of his script for a minute or so, then folded it up and handed it to the censor. Then we put on our coats and went home. There are three censors to take the 24-hour broadcasting shift. Before the war one was a band-leader and one was a composer. And Roy Trouncer, who was our censor, used to be an antique dealer. The broadcasters know the rules as well as the censors do, so their presence is largely a formality. They work on intimate terms.

“This Is London”

Murrow’s belief in the necessity of a British victory is almost devout. When he hears good news about the German side, he gets low and gloomy. Murrow

has seen some pretty thrilling things over here, and has been touch-and-go with grave danger. But he doesn’t want to leave till it's over. A great many fan letters are addressed to Murrow in New York. These are not forwarded to him. But every incoming mail from America brings several dozen letters direct from radio listeners. Murrow’s opening line, ‘This is London,” is something that just happened. It didn't have especial significance until the blitz started and brought days when Americans wondered if there really still was a London. It was then that Ed Murrow’s reassuring voice built those three words into a great nightly sense of relief for them. Occasionally Murrow varies his broadcasting fare by turning over his time to some American newspaperman. Some of you may wonder why he didn't seize the golden opportunity of putting such a masterful expositor as myself on the trans-Atlantic airways. Well, truth is he did. He asked me if I wouldn't make a broadcast for him some night. The mere suggestion brought on such an extreme case of fright that I fell coldly upon the couch, and Miss Campbell had to grab the stirrup pump and squirt water on me, as though I were an incendiary. Bombs, yes: microphone, no. That's where I stand.

Inside Indianapolis (And “Our Town”)

SOME OF THE PRECIOUS records of Marion County are in bad shape and the County Recorder's office 1s going to ask the State Tax Board to authorize a novel plan. Most dilapidated of the records are the plat books which are used daily in bringing abstracts up-to-date, surveying property for new buildings and many other projects. Many counties have lost similar records through fires, floods and general decay-—causing, as you may very well guess, a pretty general state of confusion. So Joseph Tynan, our chief deputy recorder, is going to ask the tax commissioners to let him film the plat books. reproduce the ones in the worst shape and store the film in a safety deposit box. Picture that!

Good Old Pony Express!

THE CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT will have to take a little ribbing for this one— There was a forest fire Sunday night near Martinsville with 15 CCC workers and as many volunteers fighting it for several hours. The Conservation Department was asked bright and early yesterday if something didn't happen down there, “I don't know,” said the department employee who answered the phone, “we haven't opened our mail yet.”

Hoops, M'dear

IF YOU SAW a pretty young lady in a Gay 90's hoop skirt board a train Sunday night, you probably

Washington

WASHINGTON, April 1.—From questions which are asked me by friends outside of Washington, and from letters and literature which come to my office, I gather that many people are thinking about what the United States ought to do after the war is over. Such thinking skips over a large hurdle, because many things may be changed before the war is over. The task of achieving “total victory,” to which President Roosevelt committed the country in his address to the White House correspondents, is a full-sized job, and the Administration is not anxious to divert much attention from it to thinking about the post-war world. Yet it does not seem too early for the American public to be thinking of this matter, In fact, now while we are more conscious of the dangers, now when the country is anxious to see a British victory, may he the very time for us to make up our minds. Once every menace has been beaten down, the temptation is to relax and go our own way. That was exactly what happened 20 years ago. England and the United States were sitting on top of the world. There was no potential enemy in sight— particularly after the abandonment of the AngloJapanese alliance left Japan isolated. So the United States began scuttling its Navy, began sloughing off every Interest abroad—except that we shoveled out money in foreign loans to rebuild Europe. We left the party and told them to send the bill to us.

A Costly Experiment

We were not very smart about it. We hardly got our money's worth—not when we find ourselves compelled 20 years later to set aside some $40,000,000,000 to protect ourselves from the new threats which were allowed to grow up during that period of our indifference. Isolation has been a costly experiment. Twenty years of policing could not have cost more—

My Day

GREENSBORO, N. C, Monday. —One of the interesting things we saw near Tuskegee was a real rural theater. The actors had built the stage and arranged the room for the audience. There were rough benches, an open fire, and some very interest= ing masks for decoration on the walls. It was called “The Bucket Theater,” and on the sign outside was a quotation from Booker T. Washington which read: “Put your bucket down where you are.” This little rural theater certainly is putting down its bucket in that community, Saturday morning the Tuskegee Institute trustees met again all morning, and in the afternoon we visited the hospital, listened to the health problems which Tuskegee is trying to ameliorate. I had the pleasure of going through the new unit for the treatment of infantile paralysis which has been installed here by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. I am taking back a beok full of pictures so that the President, who is much interested in the installment of this unit, will have an opportunity to see what it looks like. Dr. Chenault is almost the only Negro doctor in the country, I think, who has had full training as

were looking at Miss Josephine Antoine, coloratura soprano, in one of her unhappier moments.

While Miss Antoine was singing at English’s Sunday afternoon, her hotel and a dry cleaner were scouring the town for the skirt to her traveling costume. A few minutes before she was to leave the search was still on, “I'll have to travel in this black hoopskirt,” (her concert costume) she moaned. Puzzle: What can a gal do with a hoopskirt in a Pullman?

Quit Pushing!

The State Guard, the militia which has volunteered to “sit in” for the National Guard, wants it understood that not just anybody can be admitted to its ranks.

For example, an enlisted man must weigh at least 121 pounds. He must be 5 feet, 4 inches tall and cannot be over 6 feet 4 inches. In non-combative units, the minimum weight is 105 pounds and the minimum height is five feet. The age limits are 18 to 60.

Make It Easy, Boys The “ON TO 42” election fund campaign collection has started at City Hall. The first jolt was in the form of a raffle — the “chances” going out in sealed envelopes with the “prizes” a mystery quantity, Next year heavier assessments are planned. Reports have it the average collection will run about 3 per cent of the Democratic worker's salary, We haven't heard yet what the Republicans are cooking up. *

By Raymond Clapper

and it could not have brought us any closer to big war than we are at this very minute. The whole subject has been canvassed in one of Fortune Magazine's round tables. Some 25 persons of standing talked it out, and, although widely divergent in their approaches, found substantial agreement on some general lines of policy, based upon the United States assuming a large share of responsibility in post-war reconstruction, The report states: “We do not propose that the United States accept commitments to restore and maintain the uneasy, quarrelsome, and timid balance of power that has dominated the world for the past 20 years. It is essential for America and Britain to use their rearmament programs so as to create at once a superior military and economic nucleus around which other peoples can gradually be rallied—a democratic bloc having enough power to dictate the termination of the present war and also the character of the next peace.”

The Lessons of the Past

Rep. Joseph Baldwin of New York said recently that the United States manages to get into every war and to stay out of every peace, He was in favor of reversing that. The Fortune round table believes that in a democratic bloc the United States should contribute by participating in machinery for settlement of international disputes and in sanctions against aggressors; that it should accept the responsibilities of a creditor nation by reducing trade barriers and tariffs; that it should participate in agreements for reduction of armaments. However, as to the last point, the idea is that the United States and Great Britain should maintain their military superiority until an effective international system is created. This recognizes what must be clear now, that for a long time to come we must be assured of sufficient force, as between ourselves and friendly nations, to check future aggression when it first shows itself. There is never an easier time to deal with one of those situations than when it first appears—as is clear now when one looks back at Manchukuo in 1931 and the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

tile paralysis. He gives one a feeling of great confidence, and the children’s faces lit up when we went into the wards. A number of cases are crippled children, suffering from horrible burns that have left them with deformities which only surgery and great care can cure. These youngsters play around open hearths where the fire burns to heat the cabin and cook the food. There are no guard rails, such as we think so essential for our ornamental fires.

Finally we went out to the aviation field, where a civil aeronautics unit for the teaching of colored pilots is in full swing. They have advanced training here, and some of the students went up and did acrobatic flying for us. These boys are good pilots. I had the fun of going up in one of the tiny trainnig planes with the head instructor, and seeing this interesting countryside from the air. The days at Tuskegee have given me much to think about. To see a group of people working together for improvement of undesirable conditions is very heartening. The problems seem great, but at least they are understood and people are working on them. Dr. Carver, whom I saw for a few minutes, has been at work for many years; and our hosts, the present heads of Tuskegee, Dr. and Mrs. Patterson, are ably carrying on the work. We got up early Sunday morning and drove to Mobile for my lecture there, then flew during the night to Greensboro, N. C.,, and now we are leaving

an orthopedic surgeon and has specialized in infan-to join the President at Ft. Bragg.

a

All British Friendlier In Crisis

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.)

THE WOMEN OF the night are still busy on the war-time streets of London, but they have changed their hours. They begin to appear at dusk now because later an air raid may drive people indoors. Sometimes you see them

in the late afternoon on the corners near Piccadilly—London has no regularly controlled area. Their costumes have changed, too. Most of them still wear inexpensive looking fur coats. But sweaters and slacks have replaced the flashy dresses of peace time. The shortage of silk stockings has made sports skirts and bare legs popular with others. Standard equipment includes a flashlight with a shaded bulb, and for some who roam streets several blocks from their rooms, a tin hat. The war has reduced the number of girls you see on back streets off the theatrical district. It has changed their beat, too, because three of the streets where they once appeared in the largest numbers have been heavily damaged by bombs. Two other social changes impress the visitor in London these days. One is the breaking down of traditional British reserve; the other is the problem of juvenile crime, o on

People Are Friendlier

THE BLACKOUT and the constant threat of death have made Britons a friendlier people on short acquaintenance, less suspicious of strangers and less fearful that they may be chatting with the wrong kind of person while waiting on a blacked-out corner for a bus. This is partly due to the comfort of company during an air raid and party to the need for community co-operation, such as that directed by the ARP. : You notice the change as soon as you st@t looking at night life in London, which is perhaps the

‘directly to

25 MILLION PAID

IN GROSS TAXES

$2,000,000 Increase Brings

New Record; ’39 and 40 Averages Equal.

Indiana citizens earned enough last year to pay an all-time high of $25,304,153 in gross income taxes, Gilbert K. Hewit, director of the Gross Income Tax Division, reported today. This is an Increase of $2,124,439 over the previous high of $23,179,713 collected in 1939, and reflects the general prosperity prevailing throughout the state, he added. Approximately 596,000 persons filed returns, an increase of 66.458 over 1939. The average payments on the 1939 and 1940 annual returns were identical—$17.69.

Benefits Widespread

“This means,” Mr. Hewit explained, “that the benefits of the present prosperity are widespread and that the small payments of the 66,000 new accounts—representing almost entirely those who previously had insufficient income to be required to file a return—have acted as levelers.” The Gross Income director pointed out that returns covering the income of all persons whose tax for the months of January, February and March exceeds $10 are now due and are delinquent after April 15. He said that the department had received numerous inquiries about the effective date of the rate changes in the gross income tax made by the law passed by the 1941 Legislature. “It should be emphasized,” he declared, “that the changes in the gross income tax rate are not effective until Jan. 1, 1942. Tax will be computed at the lower rates for the first time on returns to be filed April 1, 1942, one year from now.”

100,000 Forms Mailed

Approximately 100,000 gross in=come tax forms for making the payments now due have been mailed those taxpayers who have filed quarterly in the past. Some 150,000 additional forms have been mailed to auto license branches throughout the state, where taxpayers may obtain assistance in filling them out.

THORPE CRUEL, WIFE SAYS IN DIVORCE PLEA

LOS ANGELES, April 1 (U. P.) .— Jim Thorpe, famous Indian athlete, has been sued for divorce by Mrs. Freeda Thorpe on grounds of mental and physical cruelty, The Thorpes have been married 14 years. Mrs. Thorpe said that because of her 52-year-old husband's conduct, the “ideal and privileges of matrimony had not been and cannot be attained.” * She asked custody and support of the four children: Carl Phil, 13; William, 12; Richard Allen, 8, and John, 3.

Mr. Thorpe is in the East lecturing.

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gayest as well as the grimmest spot in Europe. Out side your hotel, you may find half a dozen persons waiting for taxicabs while the doorman whistles in vain into the darkness. When one finally arrives (the number is greatly reduced to save gasoline) vou may have learned that the couple next to you are going in your direction and willing to share their taxi. And if there is a raid in progress you may be old friends inviting each other to luncheon before you reach the door of the “Bottle Club” for which you are headed.

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Just Like a Speakeasy

THE BOTTLE CLUB is a prewar institution in London with the atmosphere of a ritzy prohibtion era speakeasy in the United States except that a bomb instead of a Federal raiding squad may break down the door. If it does, the patrons help pick up the pieces just as they used to help break up the evidence in a speakeasy.

There are many men and a

“The comfort of company during an air raid.”

sprinkling of women in uniform around the Bottle Club dance floors, but perhaps the only other evidence of wartime is that it is no longer a disgrace for a woman in an expensive gown to have a sewn-up run in her silk stocking. She's lucky to have silk stockings at all. These places are called bottle clubs because they evade the law against selling liquor after midnight by making vou a member of the club. They then buy a bottle of whiskey ($6 a fifth) or rum ($7.50) or champagne ($10) for you from a wholesaler., The bottle has your name on it and you can drink it after midnight. on u n

Juvenile Reports Are Secret

THE JUVENILE PROBLEM has caused much concern in Govern=ment circles and a number of surveys have been made to deter=mine the effect on school children of crowded aid raid chelters, lack of normal parental attention and the war-time atmosphere of to-morrow-may-not-come. For the

most part the results of ‘these surveys have been withheld from publication but there is no doubt in the minds of social workers in London that there has been a sharp increase in juvenile immorality. There is some disargeement on the exact effect of the war on children in danger zones. The mental health emergency committee, which investigates shelter conditions, reported that the child population was standing up well under aerial attack. “Many children are suffering from mental illness due to the general insecurity of life, but the general effect of bombs on children is less than might be expected,” a spokesman for the committee explained. “They are less affected by bomb shock than by the break-up of their normal routine life.”

More 'Teen-Age' Crime

ONE OF THE DISTURBING effects, however, is increased

o

Nazis Have No Blitz-Ruined ‘Coventry’ But Cellars Are Chief Raid Shelters

By LYLE C. WILSON (Copyright, 1941, by United Press.)

There have been 62 air raids on Berlin and 38 on Cologne, both cities in which I spent enough time to know that war from the air has not yet become for Germans the terrible thing it can be. The facts are that the German civilian population and industrial organization in general have not experienced sufficient air raid damage to count it yet as a major factor in the war. In all Germany there is no Coventry. The best impartial concensus I could obtain was that while British air raids have effected both material and moral damage in Germany, the British air effort has not been sufficiently sustained nor concentrated to give Germany even one horrible example of what bombs can do. During the long winter when two and one-half months passed without the sounding of an air raid alarm in Berlin, there were constant reports of British attack and damage on the invasion ports along the English Channel. And Britain also was raiding in the west, in the Ruhr, at Hanover, in the skies over the great railway concentration at Hamm. But I saw in the Ruhr and business there was proceeding as usual.

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Ready for Real Blitz

IN THE NORTH and west I saw and heard of great preparations against the real air blitz which is expected this spring. In the northern port cities—Hamburg and Bremen—there were huge, new air raid shelters, each capable of receiving upward of 2000 persons in reasonable comfort. These shelters are built into hillsides or burrow far under the

HOLD EVERYTHING

COPR. 1941 BY NEA SERVICE INC. 7. M. REG U.S. PAY. OFF.

ground. One of them in Hamburg was roofed with more than 30 feet of earth and stone. Inside they were bright and clean, so recently constructed that the marks of use were not upon them. There were toilet facilities and rubber flanged, gas-proof doors. Motor driven pumps with hand power auxiliary equipment have been installed to maintain air pressure just above the outside level as a further precaution against gas seepage. Modern styles in these air raid shelters require all pipes and electric wires to be exposed beneath the ceiling so that damage may be immediately located and quickly repaired. Except for Government buildings and offices of the Nazi press, there are not many new buildings in Germany. But the new ones have built-in gas-proof air raid protection and roofs designed especially to permit small incendiary bombs to slide harmlessly into the street.

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You Sleep in Chairs

“ZUM LUPTSCHUTZRAUM,” printed in large letters on yellow signs with red arrows pointing to the air raid haven may be seen two or three to the block in any German city. In some cases they point to new and commodious shelters such as I saw in Hamburg. But more often they designate office or apartment house basements which have been equipped with chairs and standard first-aid and fire protection supplies. First-aid is provided from a metal cabinet supplied by the Government. Some shelters have sleeping accommodations, but most do not. Neither do shelters in some swank

“No, you dopes—that’s not what I meant when I told you to show me a little spirit!”

shelters,

hotels have other than rather comfortable, overstuffed chairs as refuges for their guests. The Adlon Hotel cellar in Berlin is two floors below stairs, a series of several large rooms separated by concrete walls. The apartment dweller in Berlin simply makes his cellar do for air raid protection and many of them are half basements whose windows are protected by hoxes of sand. In the newest shelters I saw, most of the raid refugees would stand. The luckier ones would sit on backless benches.

” ” on Some Have Been Drowned

HARDEST HIT ARE the Jews. I was told by a Jew that they no longer were permitted to share the Aryan shelter in the apartment house in which they lived but were compelled to find such safety as they could above ground unless the building basement was large enough to provide a special shelter for them. Germans have had enough Brit= ish bombs to learn some of the do's and don’t of air raid tactics. “Don’t,” they will tell you, “go into a cellar shelter which has only one exit through the building above it and no exit through adjoining structures. Insist on doors leading to oiher buildings if you can.” That is because some grim things happened last autumn in Germany when direct hits set fire to buildings above sheltered tenants and roasted them down below, or when bombs burst water pipes and blocked single exits, leaving refugees below stairs to drown. Germans knocked holes in their cellar walls this winter so that when one exit was blocked they could escape through an-

other, ” on o

‘Skyscrapers’ Shelter Some

THERE IS SCANT room within factory enclosures for air raid put night crews, especially in the exposed north and west. must have protection against the raiding that Germans expect this spring. They have devised a “Skyscraper” shelter which looks something like a shot tower or the old stone water tank in Beloit, Kas. These shelters are of steel and concrete and they rise about 75 feet above ground with heavy steel doors and mere slits for windows. They are gasproof, of course, as is all of Germany’s new air raid protection. Each of these shelters will accommodate 200 or so workmen under domed roofs designed to deflect small incendiary and explosive bombs. One of the reasons that the traveler in Germany sees less evi=dence of air raid damage than he might expect is that the Nazi authorities are quick to make repairs. Streets are roped off after air raids occur and there is no disposition to advertise what has happened. The targets of small incendiaries in. Bremen, I was told, had been repaired, boarded up, whitewashed or otherwise concealed overnight so that by dawn it would require fairly careful examination to discover where a bomb had hit.

NEXT: Berlin looks at U. S. foreign policy. i

crime among children of ‘teen age and the Government is seeking methods of offsetting this develope | ment, blamed in part on the ire regularity of classes. In London, for instance, the police reported a sharp increase in crime among children 14 and 15 years old and Southampton officials blamed children for 30 per cent of the shop-breaking and house-breaking cases, In some other areas, mage istrates estimated that juvenile crime cases had tripled. “So many cases of juvenile crime just now are more than a social problem,” one London social worker said. “They are a question of juvenile neurosis and require psychological treatment in many cases. Many children, unless treat= ed soon, will be stunted emotion= ally and mentally. “We are in danger of an epidemic of mental rickets.”

NEXT: Watch Bevin and Beaverbrook,

CENSUS SHOWS GAINS FOR CITY

Population Trend Is Toward Suburbs and More Decentralization.

The population of metropolitan Indianapolis was 455,357 on April 1, 1940, an increase of nine per cent from 1930, the U. S. Census Bureau reported today, The Bureau, releasing final fige ures from the Sixteenth Decennial Census, reported that the 9 per cent gain in metropolitan population represented an increase of 37,672 persons in the past 10 years. The metropolitan district cone tained 135210 dwelling units of which 4780 or 3.5 per cent were vae cant and for sale or rent, according to the 1940 Housing Census taken concurrently with the population count. Since April of last year, however, the vacant dwellings have been occu= pied in a great part, it has been reported in recent surveys.

Includes District Population

The metropolitan population repe resents a previously reported Indie anapolis population of 386,972 and metropolitan district population (outside the city) of 68,35. Between 1930 and 1940 the popue lation of the city of Indianapolis increased by only 22811 or 6.3 per cent, whereas the population of the district outside the city showed a

gain of 14,861 or 27.8 per cent. The population jump in the area outside the city thus constituted 39.4 per cent of the total increase of popu= lation in the district. The Bureau pointed out, too, that the population in the district oute side the city represents only 15 per cent of the district total.

Points Out Annexation

The Bureau also pointed out that during the 10-year period between census counts, parts of Center, Perry, Washington and Wayne townships were annexed to the city of Indianapolis, and parts of Indi= anapolis city reverted to Warren and Wayne townships. These changes affect the comparative growth of Indianapolis and the metropolitan district outside the city. There was an increase of 16.4 per cent in the number of households in metropolitan Indianapolis during the 10-year period, compared to.a population gain of & per cent. The number of occupiea dwelling units in the Indianapoiis metro= politan district, namely, 130,077, represents approximately the number of private households and may therefore be compared with the 111,728 private families in metroe politan Indianapolis in 1930. The average population per occu pied dwelling unit in 1940 was 3.5 which may be compared with an average population of 3.7 per private family in 1930. This decrease is consistent with the general trend throughout the country toward smaller families, the Bureau said. The average populas tion per occupied dwelling unit in the city of Indianapolis was 3.4 as compared to 3.8 in the district oute

side the city, »