Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 July 1941 — Page 10

PAGE 10

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RILEY 5551

- : —_— Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1541

WARD HEELERS TO THE FRONT : JMAGINE America invaded, her armies falling back under “~~ the weight of bomb and tank, many of her great cities coventrized, the Government making plans to clear out of

Washington.

Then imagine our har

d-pressed Army, in the midst of

its struggle to organize a new and stronger line of defense, receifing notice from the government that the Democratic Party-was being dispatched to each division and each regi‘ment, for the purpose of sharing the responsibilities of the generals and colonels. -Also that each battalion, each battery and each company would be assigned a ward heeler to

help out in the crisis.

"Of course you can’t imagine that happening here. But it is precisely what is happening in Russia. Well, that remarkable system was abolished after the ‘war with Finland, in which the Red Army made a wretched showing for months before wearing out the Finns. But /now, with the German High Command claiming the capture of strategic Smolensk on the road to Moscow, Stalin reinstates the commissar system. The commissars, it is announced, are to. report to the high command any officers whose conduct is “unbecoming,” and to seek out “cowards, panicmongers and deserters.” The commissars are not to confine their work to propaganda and snooping but are to “assume responsibility for military operations at the front.” Translated into American terms, Gen. Lear must consult with Harold Ickes before counter-attacking; Senator Pepper will advise Gen. Drum whether to abandon or defend New York; Harry Hopkins will stand on the bridge of the battle tleet’s flagship and tell the boss admiral when to hit and when to run. The Red politicians may be wonderful strategists and tacticians. But this move has the earmarks of desperation.

THE ROOT OF DISBELIEF : RE you reading the front-page stories of the Russo41 German war? Maybe you are, but a lot of folks tell us that they merely scan the headlines and don’t bother

= to read further.

“We know ‘both sides are lying,” they say, “so why

waste time?”

Here, in one of the most dramatic military campaigns in history some nine million men are said to be locked in bloody struggle. The outcome will affect the world’s course

for generations.

Yet many people are not reading about

' ——— jt— not because they are indifferent but because they know they can’t learn the truth merely by reading what Moscow

and Berlin say is happening.

There ought to be some moral to draw from this strange circumstance. We think there is—and that it runs to the nature of that basic democratic institution, a free press. There is. no free press in Germany or Russia. There is no freedom to report the truth of what happens or to express

opinions.

There can’t be, in a dictatorship. Always the |

first act of the tyrant is to seize control of the means of com-

munication and stifle freedom of expression.

Instead of

news and candid comment, the people are spoon-fed on propaganda. “Truth” is defined to be whatever the ruling power says it is. So people read and .disbelieve, or don’t

bother to read.

“All I know is what I see in the papers.” In this country, where people like to kid their own institutions, Will ‘Rogers always got a laugh out of that crack. Errors, ex- ~ aggerations and misplaced emphasis do appear in our newspapers. But by and large, Americans believe the news they read of what is going on in our own country, for they know that misstatements are seldom deliberate. . But where “news” agencies and publications do not depend upen public support and confidence in a competitive ‘market, but exist by favors and subsidies of the ruling power ; where censors and propaganda authorities determine what shall be published at home and dispatched abroad, the people won't believe what they read, even when it acci-

dentally happens to be true.

THE TANKS ARE COMING THis country can’t afford to be satisfied with the progress

of its defense program.

There's unlimited need for im-

provement. But here and there is encouraging evidence of : ‘mass production of weapons going into high gear ahead of

- schedule.

For instance:

: Last fall the Baldwin Locomotive Works at Eddystone, ~ Pa., was given the blueprints for a 30-ton M3 medium tank for the Army. The most optimistic ordnance officers figured

that tanks might begin rolling off the

‘January, 1942.

assembly lines by

~~ Well, on April 24 the Baldwin tank arsenal delivered its first pilot-model completed tank. The Army approved it. On July 16, three more tanks were completed and 24 others were on two assembly lines, 1000 men working on each I’ three shifts a day, seven days a week. By the end of Ju.

production is expected to reach six tanks a day; by next fall, to hit the full-speed rate of 12 tanks a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

FAIR PLAY

the

his say. : The other is

3 ENDELL WILLKIE’S reaction to the Administration ,"" smear of Lindbergh is what you would expect from average American. > There are two old American principles to which the people of this country still cling, : i One is that any citizen in peacetime has a right to

that the way for officials to meet opposi-

tion argument is by better argument, and not by name-

“calli ing.

A ‘Secretary Ickes’ mud-slinging at Lindbergh is as cheap as it is childish. It is not effective for Ickes’ purpose. But effective for multiplying division when the nation needs

=

unity,

0 ai

‘buts every anxious Inquiry

|

‘smashed.

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler Some Examples, Taken at Random, To Show How Some People Have

Suffered at the Hands of Unions

EW YORK, July 19.—Out of thousands of individual cases of persecution of the forgotten man by unions, a few typical atrocities are presented today. The many, of whom the victims cited in to-

-day’s piece are typical, are scattered, unorganized,

politically helpless and desperate. ‘Por our first horrible example let us consider a man who worked in a factory under the jurisdiction of the electricians’ union, which Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt singled out ..as the appropriate organization before which to declare her belief that all workers. should. join unions, ~ After five months the man was required to join and so, with a number of other men, went to the union office, where for two hours : they were kept waiting for the august boss of the local to hear their petitions. Our victim's wife was sick, and he was needed at home, as 4 when the great man would condescend to interview him was met with the reply that he would “have to wait.” At last the great man did appear, and our victim remarked, “It’s about time,” whereat he was ordered to step forward, abused and notified that he could not return to work. He apologized, but the great man was firm, and our victim, with a family dependent on him, is out of a job for lese majesty. - :

» » 8 4 should not be forgotten that Harry Van Arsdale, the supreme boss of this union which Mrs. Roosevelt honored so, was convicted of shooting two fellowunioneers some years ago, but was legally vindicated

after the two victims had received $15,000 out of the union treasury, with the explanation that this payment was not a “fix,” but compensation for their woupsls.

Then we have the case of the girl working at a |

sandwich stand in a big New York office building who was told by’ her employer that the company had signed a closed-shop contract and that she and her fellow-employees would have to join or lose their jobs. They had no chance to vote for or against unionism. They were just told to join—or else. The initiation fee is $10.75 and the dues are $3 a month, but- their pay is only $5 a week, plus tips. Our next is the experience of a couple of brothers— native Americans, each with a wife and baby—who got themselves some money and bought three buttonhole machines: Ta “Our work,” says the letter, “is to place buttonholes according to markings on garments sent in, then return the same to the manufacturer. short time we were visited by a gentleman with a thick foreign accent who says our shop cannot be organized unless we hire two union members. Only one of our partners can work at a machine, We set to as an outlaw shop, but our errand boys are trailed and our customers are informed We are non-union and they must not deal with us. Sooner or later the scent drops out—afraid of retaliation for giving us work.” : a 8 8 :

NOTED New Yorker recounts the next case: A A. business associate of his, operating oil tankers, was aboard a ship chatting with the boss of the Communistic maritime union, when ga sailor decided to sign off or; in other words, not to sail. So the union boss asked to see the sailor's card, and when it was produced he tore it up, threw it over the side and, in this informal manner, kicked the sailor out of the union. No charges; no trial; no rights. The boss of the union just rescinded the sailor's right to follow the sea. In Minneapolis an old firm of florists laid off for the summer, when he obviously was not needed, a fireman whose job in the cold months was to keep steam in the hothoyse. Thereupon a deputation from Teamsters Local 544, the Trotsky union which maintained an armed guard of terrorist units, demanded that the fireman be given some other job. Soon afterward a 30-foot plateglass window was Next the hothouses were struck and picketed, and finally the greenhouses were broken into, the water was turned ‘off and the meter was smashed, with the result that all the plants died from lack of water, With the exception of the case of the fractious sailor, which was related in person, these incidents were reported in an dverage run of mail which has brought literally thousands of more or less similar complaints from all sections of the United States in a steady flow of woe for the last three years. The tone of the letters is now changing. The people are almost ready to fight it out. ;

Business By John T. Flynn

Prefabricated Homes Might Be a Leading Industry After the War

EW YORK, July 19.—It is, perhaps, a long way - from aviation to prefabricated houses. . And yet these two may have a determining influence on the course of business in the world that emerges from this war. In the last war it was the motor car that did the trick for the prosperity that flared - up beginning with 1922. The automobile industry got

a great boost out of the war. But |

it was not just the motorcar that did the job by itself. It was what the motorcar did to the country as a whole, and to its way of life, and the amazing burst of construction that it set off —thousands of new suburban areas, new roads, millions of garages, service stations, filling stations; movie theaters and stores in the new areas, étc. Now no:man can tell what the airplane may develop into as a means of transportation. The war will give it a tremendous boost in the direction of experiment and bold adventure. When the war is over the forms of transportation arising out of it may transform the nation even more than the motor car did. And the inevitable result of this will be that kind of rebuilding of the nation that occurred from 1921 to 1929, . It is at this point that the subject of prefabrication will surely come to the front. The prefabricated house has been in the making since the last war. The housing shortage after the war and the high cost of production led to the proposal for prefabrication. Labor abuses in the building industry, very much like those now rampant, also played a part in stimulating the efforts of the prefabricators. But those efforts got nowhere, for a variety of reasons,

N all the intervening years I have watched the struggle to make prefabrication of houses § reality... About 1932 a whole crop of prefabricated designs and enterprises got under way, but few of these ever amounted to anything in a large way. One reason was that prefabrication can be made inexpensive only on a mass-production basis, and

‘mass production could not be done until the demand

was greater. It was a vicious circle. The prefabricated house could succeed only as a money-saver; it could not be made as a money-saver until there was a large demand, and there could be no large demand until there was a cut in costs. Hence the idea has languished. : Now the war is creating—or is by way of creating— a prefabricated house industry. The need for new cheap houses on the very shortest notice near. Army camps and in the industrial towns where vast expansion of defense production is taking place, has ree sulted in the placing of orders for houses on a scale that should make possible mass-production savings.

Editor's Note: The views expressed by columnists in Shis - mewspaper are their own. They are mot necessarily those of The Indianapolis Times. ;

So They Say—

IRELAND today is a vast graveyard. What was good and was republican in it has been crushed.— Liam O'Flaherty, Irish writer. . ie = no. .

IT WILL BE a battle of manpower in the

end.—

In a

POLIS

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1941 |

d, Too, By Gum!

"The Hoosier

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

Forum

» .

AMUSED BY PRAISE FOR Low WESTBROOK PEGLER By Charles H. Mathes, New Castle, Ind. When I pick up The Times and see that full page testimonial for Westbrook Pegler’'s vagaries called “Fair Enough” I am greatly amused. Old Westbrook has built up a reputation by being against everything and caps it off by stealing the Pulitzer Prize. Pegler's award “for a distinguished example of a reporter's work,” which included incidentally 1000 of Uncle Sam's greenbacks besides all of the fanfare and undeserved praise, was for a bit of journalistic vandalism. He neglected to give a credit line to the .obscure reporter on the Hollywood Daily Variety who bravely uncovered the story about Bioff, the A. F. of L. racketeer, and printed it months before. 2 ; “Babbling Brook” Pegler tells us that “You can tell what I am for by what I am against.” The only things Westbrook has ever given his approval’ are Lindbergh's treasonable utterance that we get a new leader, and the lynching of two young men in California. Pegler has subtly covered up his Fascist leanings by making periodi-

“|cal attacks on Hitler and Mussolini,

and then he preaches their doctrine of hate to divide our people. This intellectual pygmy who found vent for his anti-Semitic convictions by ridiculing that great Jewish scientist, Albert Einstein, while his claim

can't write ahy more, Westbrook. I must stop for another laugh.

2 ” ” U. S. “FLIPFLOPS” AS BAD AS COMMUNISTS ‘By L. B. Nixon. 756 M. D. Woodruff.

It’s getting so that us ordinary citizens have as much trouble keeping up with our national policy as the poor Commuhists do with their orders from Mascow. They do more flipflops than a trapeze artist, and we're not far behind. We change so fast -nowadays that the whole country is getting dizzy. We have to wait for the: newspapers every day to find out who that day's bundles are going to. Remember “faithful . little Fin-

land”? Well, that was a typo-

to fame is a stolen story. Ha! I|

"|axes to grind.

(Times readers are invited to express their: views in these columns, religious controversies exciuded. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed.)

graphical error. We meant io say “faithless,” and we did our fine new ally, Mr, Stalin, a very great injustice because of our mistake. However, we're going to do our best to make amends, by sending Joe enough stuff .we can’t spare to offset the stuff we couldn’t spare that we sent Finland a year ago. Of course to a Hoosier it seems that the same result would have been reached with a lot less wear and tear by just keeping it all at home in the first place... But that isn't fthe way they do things in Washington. We've been “boondoggling” so long in this country that we are going to make it our national policy, and we'll boondoggle our way all around the world. On the record up to date, our international “bb6ondoggling” is getting better results in futility than the domestic branch brand, which is really some. accomplishment! ~

® 8 = A WORD OF REBUKE FOR THE INTERVENTIONISTS . By Harry Clay, Brightwood. The Committee for National Defense now claims that polls which show that a vast majority of the people are against war are mis-

leading. In fact, they are a fanatical minority led by politicians with

Mrs. Felix Vonnegut of the Indiana Committee says her organization hopes to overcome the ig‘novance of those who oppose war, and pub resolution in the place of fear. Of course, that resolution would be to send our boys to the battlefields of Eurcpe. * In a recent poll, New York voted 70 per cent against and nine per cent: for war, Illinois voted 80 per cent against and 18 per cent for war, while Indiana voted 95 per cent against war and only five per

cent for war. So this little bunch of

"Yes, dear, I'm glad. you're bridge champion of the resort, and

- you'll: be glad to know you

~ about breaking

Side Glances = By Galbraith

your grandmother's old soup |

48 | |° For him who beauty sees.

won't have to worry further

The birds were singing all the way

five per centers think that we 95 per centers are ignorant because we oppose war. Mrs. Vonnegut, is it ignorance for the millions of mothers and fathers to vote against sending their sons to a foreign war? Is it ignorance for a boy to vote against making himself a human target in a war in which he has had no voice? Is is ignorance to vote against stripping our country of defense material and giving it to a foreign country which hates us and called us Uncle Shylock because we asked her to pay the debt she has owed us since the last war? Is it ignorance to take the advice of the great Washington to keep out of foreign entanglements? If the Committee for National Defense and also Mr. Gallup wish to take a real poll, then I suggest they take one of the boys who will have to do the fighting and dying, and the parents who have toiled and denied themselves many things to bring their boys to manhood. After all, they are the ones who count and will have to make the sacrifices.

» » 4 TAKING A SLAM AT HAROLD L. ICKES By John L. Niblack, 424 Circle Tower. Well, I see where Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes spouted off again the other day, this time about just as good an American as he, one Charles Lindbergh, once affectionately called “Lindy” by the American public. Now I do not know the Hon. Ickes or Lindbergh—never saw either one of them, but it seems to me that if we are still living in the land of the free that a man has a right to express his opinion without being called a traitor by some high and mighty Government official, We are not at war with anyone. The situation has not changed since one year ago when France fell and President Roosevelt urged Congress to go home, as there “was nothing for them to do except talk,” and there was. “nothing to be dis-com-booberated about,” in his opinion. In fact, England is stronger right now than then, and Hitler is in a war up to his neck with the dirty Reds (and I hope they annihilate each other). The trouble is, the New Deal has a new plaything: Fareign affairs. High in our Government at Washington are the Hon Harold, former reformer and social uplifter from Chicago; Madam Perkins, former social worker, and Harold Hopkins, former social worker. A fine crew to tell the Army and Navy and the American public how to prepare a defense or fight a foreign war, or whatever it is we, the American public, are “dis - combooberated” about. This is no criticism of social workers as such, who are mighty fine around Juvenile Court or a department of public welfare. President Roosevelt and his folk have had one consistent answer: to any problem for nine years, consisting of two sovereign remedies: talk and money. Is somebody “agin” us, or is something wrong? * Call up the name callers and thoroughly denounce the brethren or enemy, or whoever is causing trouble, and then appropriate about steen billion dollars. Unfortunately for sweetness and light, Hitler won’t pay any attention to talk, and dollar bills never yet killed an enemy soldier.

BEAUTY LOVER

By JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY He looked into a flower’s face And found it full of smiles. He traveled down a country road For. miles and miles and miles.

And verdure decked the trees; So beauty hovers like a dream

DAILY THOUGHT

Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth com e.—Matthews: 24:42.

FOR GOD rewards good deeds

Gen. Johnson Styss: i

It's a Good Bet That Gen. Patton <ome Day Will Command an Army And Here Are a Few Reasons Why

ASHINGTON, July 19.—This is another column about the earnest current general staff attempt to get virility, pep and drive into the Army's top-side d ‘

command. It is written with some reluctance because, by taking a particular example that I happen to know about, I don’t mean to make any invidious comparisons with many officers that I do know about, whose equally excellent talents are slightly different, or others that I don't know about at all. But I want to say a word, and it’s not going to be all boosting, about a single man who, in whatever faults he has, is my idea of an example of a combat commander. ; This has to be largely from . memory and it may be inaccurate in some details but, in general, 1s substantially correct, Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, commanding the armored corps, when I first knew him, was a special aid to Gen. Pershing in the Mexican punitive expedition on the day I joined Gen, Pershing's staff at Namaquipa, deep in Mexico. The general assigned me as Patton's tentmate, He wasn’t there. Presently he came in and, after self-introductions, took off his O. D. shirt. ‘It was full of dry adobe-mud. He had been backed up against the wall of a Mexican hacienda by one of Villa's chief lieutenants. As I remember, his name was Candelario Cervantes. Pate ton, by one of the cleverest stunts in the whole campaign—an unexpected automobile raid with a handful of men—had cornered this band of brigands in a big cuartel of adobe walls. Patton got them all in approved movie fashion and, mostly, with his own “sixguns’—he never used an automatic, » » » E used to call him the “Siegel-Cooper cowboy” because he wore two such guns and used to practice with them at every spare moment. The reason for the adobe in the shirt was that, after the helter-skelter rush at him by the Mexicans, firing Winchesters, mounted and from the hip, he had killed most of them but his guns were empty. Cervantes, seeing this, tried to pepper him while he was against the wall fumbling to reload. Patton succeeded in that effort. The Mexican started his horse toward the horizon. Some old scout lore had told Georgie never to shoot at a fleeing man—his horse would carry him away—but at the stifle joint of his mount. This Lieut, Patton did. The horse dropped per formula. Cervantes came in with the rest lashed to a hood of a Dodge automobile, his blank eyes staring at the sky. This career is so fictional in form, I hesitate to write it. Gen. Patton came to West Point-—an exaptional physical figure of a man—from George Marshall’s School V. M. I. He was saturated in military history, He could write jingles with the facility of Bobbie Burns and his spelling was worse than George Washington's—which is going some. For the latter and other reasons, it took him five years (instead of four) to get through the military academy but he insisted, from the moment he entered, to the shocked and indignant amazement of upper classmen, especially considering his scholastic faults, that he was going to be adjutant. That is the second most coveted military honor at West Point but upper-class indignation meant nothing to him. He wound up in just that job. ® 4»

S an officer, he got the quaint medieval idea that a cavalry soldier, should be a constantly trained athlete, an expert swordsman, horseman, swimmer, pistoleer and rifle shot, He became all those things in superlative degree—so excellent that, when the: Government wouldn't finance sending the American officer to compete in these skills in the modern pentathlon in the Olympic games at Stockholm, he financed himself and would have won the event, except for the peculiar Swedish rules on cross-country riding. We won all the other contests against the best in the world. He invented and had adopted a new cavalry saber. He was an aid to Gen. Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt. He became aid to Gen. Pershing in Mexico by a modest insistence on his own excellencies— which couldn't be denied. He commanded the tanks at St. Mihiel and got thoroughly perforated across the lower belly by machine gun fire because the infantry escort failed to follow him and one trumpeter in what turned out to be a disastrous two-man charge. Critics say he is reckless and impetuous. That's what was said at West Point. He says he is going to command an army. My bet is on Georgie Patton,

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

WH do we expect a better brand of patriotism from voters than we do from their elected representatives? Maybe it's because we are conditioned to the habit. The notion that “political expediency” excuses all ‘ ‘errors of statesmanship is well grounded in the public mind. In fairness to ourselves we should give it some thought. One feels vaguely concerned, even a little frightened, when a columnist as smart as Raymond Clapper comes forth with the {following paragraph in a discussion of the Iceland occupation: “Intelligent and well-informed Senators and Congressmen know that this country must take certain steps for its own defense. They know that in this world the United States cannot afford to sit idly by, asleep at the switch, and allow strategic points to slip out of control as the British did, time after time, in their muddling hesitation. But Senators and Representatives who have to run for re-election are always fearful of abusive minorities and, being human, it isn’t easy for them to stick out their necks. If they can escape going on record on a hard decision they get along better.” Read this over carefully, for it comes from the typewriter of one of our most eminent and clearthinking commentators. It says things which “are not pleasant to hear. : In brief, you and I are told that while we must be willing to let Uncle S8am stick out our necks far enough to get into war, and that young men must be willing to stick theirs out by moving into what is geographically the Eastern Hemisphere, our servants

in Washington can remain safely on the fence in or-

der to protect their political hides, Yet we hear daily that the ration is in dire peril. Every citizen is. asked to sacrifice economic security and our boys to sacrifice their ambitions and hopes in the all-out effort. Well, then what's the matter with sacrificing political aspiratiens too? It is widely assumed these days that the people are too dumb to know what moves to make anyway. They must leave everything to the statesmen. If that's true, does it matter if a few men lose their seats in Congress because they go against the wishes of “an abusive minority” for nationgl defense? It burns me up to hear it said they can't give up political office for their country when my boys may have to give up their lives.

Questions and Answers

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search. Write your questions clearly, sign name and address, inclose a three-cent postage sta Modical or legal atvice eannot be given. Address The y Service Bureau. 1013 Thirteenth St. Washington. D. C) =

Q—What sort of climate does Honolulu have? A—It is mild and équable. The extreme rang of temperatures is 52 degrees to 88 degrees F. the average is 70 degrees F. The rainfall is very ir. regular, but. never slight, ranging 40 to 60 inthes Q—What are “hard time tokens?" ° A—These were political token 8. tr ole