Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 July 1941 — Page 10

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1941

A STUPID STATEMENT

BERLIN dispatch quoted “authorized sources” as predicting “sensational revelations” to the effect that the United States aims to make South America a “colonial dependency.” Ho hum, we thought. Goebbels is dreaming up another one that will fool nobody. And then we turned to the next page and read an Associated Press account of an interview with a member of the United States Senate. Senator D. Worth Clark (D. Idaho), was quoted by the A. P. as suggesting that the United States “take over control” of all Latin America and Canada. He also was quoted as saying that “the good-neighbor policy has been a failure” and that “instead of talking about sending soldiers to Europe we ought to think about using them here in our own hemisphere.” We are amazed that a man of Senator Clark's previous record could say such nonsensical things. Dr: Goebbels himself, with all his resources of imagination and mendacity, could not have done a more complete job of libeling the foreign policy of this country. You may be sure that the Nazi's South American network of newspapers and radio stations and printshops is working overtime to circulate the profound pronouncement of the distinguished American statesmen, a member of President Roosevelt's own party, a Senator from the same state as the late William E. Borah. Friends of this country in Latin America and Canada will have plenty of trouble knocking this one down—explaining that Senator D. Worth Clark is talking only for D. Worth Clark, and not for the United States Senate, nor for any group in the Senate, nor for the state of Idaho, nor for the Democratic Party.

“CONFIDENTIAL” . “BEGIN NING his statement before crowded galleries with the request that the press treat it as confidential, Senator David I. Walsh . ..” etc. That, from a dispatch about a debate on a bill giving the Navy the right to use a secret detective force. We think the incident extremely important, because it deals with a widespread misconception, namely, that a thing can be kept confidential by being kept out of print. Furthermore, there is a real danger in trying to confine news circulation to word-of-mouth, the size of the danger being in ratio to the size of the news. When a statement is put in print or goes into the radio files it becomes a matter of record. It can be challenged. But when its circulation is limited merely to listeners it can, and will, grow with every telling. Being unrecorded, there is no limit to the conversational exaggeration. Bandied vocally, it expands until the molehill becomes a mountain, the mouse an elephant. 2 - - - 2 2 Senate gallery authorities say that at least 1000 heard Senator Walsh. Assume that the press kept the remarks “confidential.” Figure four to a family—a formula accepted by statisticians. That 1000 becomes 4000 by the time dinner is over. Allowing for the intervening cocktail parties and the accompanying alcoholic supercharge, the number is very considerably enlarged, though exact statistics on that are unobtainable. Anyway, a geometric progression is set up, a chain-letter process without the letter; without a record and with all the exaggeration that goes along with the verbal, backfence, peddling of a secret. 5 2 z = 2 2 What Senator Walsh said went out in the routine of news distribution, was printed, broadcast by the radio, and thereby recorded. But if that had not been the process, the exaggeration we have described would have resulted. What we are driving at is this very human fact--you haven't got a secret if you tell. That goes for wartime or peacetime. And it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference whether you tell one or a thousand. Voluntary censorship dealing with military or any other kind of information must, to be effective, start at—and be confined to—the source.

TEN CAPITALS BOMBED

F Eurcpe has set out deliberately two years ago to ruin itself, it is hard to see how it could have done a better job. Run down the list of the great pre-war European cities, and realize with a shock that of them these 10 have been bombed: London, Warsaw, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Belgrade, Helsinki, Berlin, Bucharest and Moseow. Bombs have also fallen in neutral Dublin, while Madrid still bears deep scars of the Spanish Civil War. Rome has escaped, probably due to the residence there of an international religious leader, the Pope. Athens escaped ; Stockholm still stands, but the men who have been for 20 years preparing to subject Europe to this blood-bath have already succeeded in subjecting to the ravages of war more capital cities than any conqueror of the past.

THE NEXT TAX BILL HERE will be more tax bills to come after the pending 315-billion measure is enacted, says Chairman Doughton, of the Ways and Means Committee. And in the next bill, he says, it may be necessary to levy a general consumption tax and to reduce exemptions so that a larger number of citizens will pay income taxes. Anyone who has looked at the budget must admit that more severe taxation is inescapable. And no good purpose can be served by postponing action. Why wait until next year when we know already that, even with the additional taxes now pending, this year’s deficit will be $10,900, » 000,000?

THAT'LL TEACH HIM! A CHICAGO woman who ran down a jaywalker married

one little safety rule.

him when he got well. That’s what comes of breaking |

Fair Enough

By. Westbrook Pegler.

‘George Spelvin, It Seems, Wasn't ' + The Only One Caught Napping at The Time Draft Bill Was Enacted

EW YORK, July 30.—This little incident of the elastic draft law ought to. be a lesson to all of

us, but more likely it will be no such thing, for |

George Spelvin, American, is mentally lazy and careless and uses headline impressions and catchwords in lieu of information on matters of vital importance. : Specifically, if you should ask Mr. Spelvin today to state the meaning of the Selective Service Act he would reply that this was the one that required all the young fellows to spend a year in the Army and learn to shoot and march. He still thinks it limited that service to one year, you know like in France, before the crash— only in France maybe it was two or three years or whatever, but, ’ anyway, everybody had to do it and we have got so many people that we don’t only need but one year.

Of late Mr. Spelvin has begun to learn that there

was a kicker in the law which permits Congress to keep the one-year men beyond their time in case of emergency and he is pretty sore about that and suspects trickery or sharp practice. But still, Mr. Spelvin hasn't read the law which was published in many of the papers at the time and, not to pretend that I have, this is by way of admitting that this Spelvin, who should have studied it carefully as a duty in his line of work, hasn't yet glanced at a copy.

OREOVER, I have just finished a conversation with another Mr. Spelvin, an editor, who is supposed to keep himself thoroughly informed and who, furthermore, has a son in the armed forces, but hasn't read the law either. Like millions of others, he thought it was a flat one-year service law with no trick clauses or fine print and he thinks the reason why the catch, or reserve clause, escaped his attention was that all of us were thinking about the Presidential campaign at the time, which may be so, but might not be. Probably very few of us would have read it through, anyway. One critic has blamed the American free press for failing to examine and discuss the whole bill and, on the basis that the press owes the public careful, efficient service in return for its freedom, he is right. The press apparently booted one in this case and should have given Mr. Spelvin the neglected facts in Jjolting headlines in recognition of the fact that he comprehends only those things that he is belted over the scalp with, day after day. However, I should like to point out that this very failure by the papers, whatever the excuse, proves how necessary it is for the press to function as a sort of voteless third house of the legislative branch and present to the people arguments for and against various big issues.

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HE people do not hear the Congressional debates or read the record which not only lacks intentional funnies and other ticklers with which we surround and season the facts of life in the papers but also runs drily on and on in the oratorical vein which is hard reading. The people must and do rely on the press for such debate and this instance of failure to emphasize and reiterate not only puts us on warning to be more watchful but justifies us in discussions which sometimes are regarded as nothing but heckling of great and good men in the public service, There is no doubt that this American Government known as the New Deal is tricky and sly, although the draft law is not an example of its cunning. The psychology ‘of the New Deal and its morality have been slick almost from the start in 1932 and the papers have done a fair job, I think, of discovering marked cards, sometimes after the hand has been dealt and bets have been in order. Our New Deal statesmen will disguise issues and mask intentions and the people may sometimes resent being told that their Government is trying to slip something over on them, but if the objections are raised and properly emphasized for the public attention that is the end of our responsibility. Congress then decides and takes the praise or blame. In the case of the draft act everybody was drowsing and George Spelvin has been no more startled than the editors to discover the rest of its meaning. n

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Business By John T. Flynn

Government by Crisis Which Calls For Subsidies Marks 'New Order’

EW YORK, July 30.—A New York college dean has just told a batch of school teachers that they must look forward to an era of constant crises for the next 20 or 50 years. He advised them to educate children to adjust themselves to crises and changes. He did not say from . what source the crises would arise, but it is very clear what will cause them. They become essential to the current crop of rulers around the world. If there is no spontaneously generated crisis, then the ruler must create one. In a sense we may say that the world—including the United States—is living under what might be called “crisis government.” But that does not wholly clear up the matter. The crisis is merely a technique, a device which becomes necessary in the type of government economic policy that dominates every nation, including ourselves. We will be nearer the truth if we will say that we are living under a system of “government by subsidy.” No American needs to doubt this. For the past 25 years, to put it mildly, most of the world has been living by government subsidies. The Government subsidy to the farmer, the workman out of a job, troubled bankers, the bankrupt mortgage corporation, the defaulting home owner, the farmer owing arrears on his mortgage, the city and state in fiscal difficulties—these have heen the order here for the last eight years. it is the easy way. But thére is one difficulty about it, and this difficuity gets greater with the vears. It involves the raising of huge sums of government money. At first this seems simple, but the moment comes when it frightens all those out of whose substance the money must come or whose economic

security it threatens.

can be done only upon one condition—that there | Therefore, in 1933, when we began in | Congressional act and Presidential order, the basis of |

is a crisis.

the power exercised was that we were in an emerg-

ency. Never since the declaration of those separate | and individual emergencies have we declared that |

they have ceased to exist. To do that would be to invite the public to protest against the subsidies and the exactions which make them possible. The moment came

have these crises diminished. In the beginning we proclaimed a crisis handed a few hundred millions to Americans out-of-work. Then we got subsidies in this nation one way or another upon one crisis or another. Now crises in Canada and South America and Asia and Africa and Europe are met by the one unfailing remedy—subsidies. The subsidies are going by the billions to Britain, China or Russia. Who would have believed that when we began handing modest subsidies to Uncle Hank in Kansas that we would end by passing them along hy the billions to Uncle Joe Stalin in Russia? :

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So They Say—

THE PRESIDENT has the country put on a limb

now, and we have got to strengthen the tree at the base —Alf M. Landon, 1036 G. O. P. Presidential can-

{facts, knows this second aim can

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _-

How Most Un

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Says

We Are Heading for Some Serious Trouble Unless Drastic Changes Are Ordered in the Defense Setup

EW YORK, July 30.—Unless we soon get some kind of efficient overhead command, control and co-ordination of this mammoth economic war

! in which we are already engaged to the hilt, there | is going to be hell to pay in this country. From every

| dependents.

point of the compass are signs of volcanic disruptions in the ways of life and labor by which breadwinners feed their families. For example, no official with a single responsibility like price control should be permitted to order so drastic a step as 50 per cent reduction in automobile production without consultation with other chiefs of our economic effort. It amounts to arbitrary paralysis of a system upon which millions depend for their living— = employers, employees and their The sudden embargo on Japan was per< . haps wise and justifiable but what study was made of the effect on American requirements—both mili

3 tary and civilian—of the sudden cessation of supply

The Hoosier Forum

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

WONDERS IF U. S. ALSO MUST BEAT BRITISH By A Skeptic, Indianapolis

The Times editorial on Mr. Welles’ post-war aims causes me to commend both. Mr. Welles’ second point “that no peace which may be made in the future would be valid or lasting unless it established fully and adequately the natural rights of all! peoples to equal economic enjoy-, ment” leads me to ask whether he] expects the U. S. to defeat the Brit-| ish in war after Hitler is defeated] with or without our active aid. He and everyone who knows the]

only be accomplished by such a war if the British win this war. President Wilson had like aims and all of us know how his ideals were treated at the peace conference.

2 2-8 SOME WORDS OF PRAISE

FOR WENDELL WILLKIE By S. H. S., Indianapolis. About 90 per cent of my friends happen to be Republican. Last fall Willkie was a great American, a real American. A man with whom, in implicit faith, they were ready to entrust the fate of our nation. Today they call him perfidious, Why? Willkie has not changed from the man he was last fall. He is still engaged in trying to preserve our American way of life against the peril that threatens to destroy that way of life. Never in our political history have party members so swiftly and so drastically turned against their candidate. It's not easy to cause voters to believe, and admit publicly to the belief that their judgment at polls was so allout wrong. It looks very much as if many fine people among us are being befuddled and misled by wellorganized, swift-poisoning propaganda outside of cur two political parties. Where does this propaganda come from? It is aimed with deliberate intent at destroying our unity in the face of enemies of democracy. Lately this propaganda has suggested “new leadership” in the United States. Doesn't this all add up to the fact that a new party—a revolutionary party has sprung up here under the guise of the America First Committee? What is all the skulking under cover about? When are they going to reveal their platform and name their mysterious new “leader”?

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

DEPLORES VANDALISM AT CITY POOL By R. W. Weber, Indianapolis.

Looking over the collection of knives, files, nails, broken glass and the like taken from the Ellenberger swimming pool, I couldn't help wondering what manner of mentality would be responsible for endangering the lives of swimmers in this manner. It is almost beyond belief. Later, I began to wonder how often the Ellenberger pool was cleaned. Certainly such a collection of articles couldn't accumulate overnight or even in a week. Why don’t you people make a little investigation to see if the pool is cleaned often enough?

* 2 A DISSENT TO VIEWS VOICED BY LANDIS

By R. H. Sherwood, Indianapolis.

(A letter to Congressman Gerald W. Landis.)

Dear Mr. Landis: I heard your broadcast some time ago on the radio, and it was a mighty good speech, as a speech, but the trouble with it was that you were, in my opinion, and the opinion of many, many others, completely on the wrong side of the fence. Don’t you realize that to end this mess, Hitler has to be beaten? All the other countries in Europe, and you can count them, beginning with Austria and going right through the list to Russia, have refused to show any guts but have simply armed themselves as best they could and waited until he attacked them in his own time and his own way, one by one. So far they have all been defeated except Russia and it is very much to our advantage that she continue to stand up to the German onslaught. You, and the people who think with you, are counselling that we get ourselves in the best possible defensive position and wait for Hitler to pick out the best tinfe to harass us. This is exactly what he would prefer. All you say about the horrors of war is true, and nobody wants to send our men to

It is adopted because |

when these domestic crises | became a little irksome to the people, and so in 1937 | we began to hear about a new crisis—the crisis in | China along the Yangste River—and never since then

and

Side Glances = By Galbraith

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BY NEA me. 1.

"This suit is for a conservative something ith a

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old man around 40—show me little zip to itl"

Europe. On the other hand, if we clean up the Atlantic—that ocean which you and your group maintain is our safeguard against Hitler —the English will be immeasurably strengthened and encouraged to continue their valiant fight. All Americans, isolationists included, agree that they want England to win. It seems to me obvious that we should make possible the delivery «of supplies that we have undertaken to furnish. How ridiculous it is to put them on boats and chen see a percentage of them go to the bottom of the Atlantic. If insuring freedom of the Atlantic Ocean means some naval shooting it does not necessarily follow that we will have to send an expeditionary force to Europe later. That can be decided upon when the time comes. There is every reason to think that Germany will blow up internally if England can get sufficient material aid from us and hold out another year. Obviously, under these conditions, we should go one step at a time, the first step being to get supplies to Britain and then weigh the advisability of sending an expeditionary force. In the opinion of many this ‘question may never arise. If we followed the program that vou proposed we would find ourselves armed to the teeth, waiting for Britain to be defeated. Should that happen, then Hitler would dominate Europe, Africa and the

of such an essential commodity as silk? And what

provision was made to soften the shock? n ” on

RBITRARY allotments of many basic materials and of transportation, storage, power and even many such apparently unimportant things as cor= rugated card-board for shipping containers, threatens to choke or destroy tens of thousands of small business enterprises. All right, if that is necessary, but where sits any authority to make sure that it is necessary, or the authority to study and compose the justice of conflicting needs?

Financial and economic commentators, not under the various compulsions of official positions in come peting Government bureaus, are almost unanimous in the opinion that the seeds of a really dangerous price inflation are sprouting everywhere. That could be one of the greatest burdens that could be bound on the backs of the whole neople—worse than crushing taxes and mountainous debt. There has been a lot of talk and gestures, but what really effective action has been taken to check that possible catastrophe? You can’t control rising prices without controlling

| rising wages and prices of food. This Administration | seems to lack the stomach for that for fear of labor

and agriculture. And yet price control is as necessary" to protect people in those two fields as it is to pro-_ tect other people. What agency is studying this vital complex as a whole and reporting frankly and honestly to the American people on this problem?

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HE new tax-bill is another evidence of lack of governmnetal guts.. It is positively vicious in its adherence to the old Huey Long formula of “soak the rich.” That is all right. I have yet to hear a complaint from people in the higher brackets except as to the cynically unjust compulsory joint return which vastly increases taxes on some heads of . families if their wives happen to have an income too. But the cowardice of the tax bill is that it doesn’t. broaden the base of taxation and make everybody pay some part of his income, be it ever so small, to to the great national effort. There is apparently no fear of soaking the note so-rich by excise and other hidden taxes that are much heavier but for which no politician fears to be blamed. But a courageous Administration seeking unity’ through justice and with an efficient economic general staff working to balance all these burdens would lose no time in frankly and courageously exposing all such things as are discussed in this column and at" least trying to get our American economic motor clicking on all 12 cylinders. 3 It will have to be done eventually but why do we have to suffer all the inconvenience, useless sacri fice and possible danger of disaster by not doing it in time—by not reorganizing the executive side of Government for efficient co-ordinated action right now?

Editor's Note: The views expressed bv columnists in this newspaper are their own. They are not necessarily those - of The Indianapolis Times,

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HE FIRST WORLD WAR brought a slump in religion. Maybe the second will revive it. We

Atlantic Ocean. We all agree that | it would be very difficult for him | to send an expeditionary force across the Atlantic, and he may not attempt to do this for several years, but with air bases in South America, and the Caribbean, we could be forced to maintain ourselves as an armed camp for a generation in order to forestall any attempted invasion. Agreements with him are worthless, as you ‘know. I think you will agree that this country cannot remain indefinitely arried to the

within our own borders. » = » PAYING A TRIBUTE TO MRS. FERGUSON By Mrs. Grace Johnson, Vallonia. In Mrs. Ferguson's article of July 26th she said she had a rumor that virgins were likely to return to our literature. Would the people remember what a virgin is? How can they, when they see a woman or a girl two-thirds in the nude every time they look out their door? I wonder if this modern age would read such literature should virgin characters be brought back? She said chastity was as obsolete as the button shoe, and innocence went out with the fascinator. For the sake of the coming generations let's put on one of grandmother’s “four petticoats,” a pair of button

shoes and a fascinator and try to bring back some old - fashioned chastity and modesty and save our girls and boys from this terrible race of fast living. We might lessen some of our nation’s ills if we patterned after our grandparents more, Mrs. Ferguson's writings are good and plain and tell many truths.

TO ‘DICKUMS’

By NELLIE G. OWENS

Hushed is your song, Little bird. You've sung it To me so long. Through sunshine and shadow, You added your cheer, And always you brightened My cloudy skies drear. In that faraway land Where you've taken your flight To the Master Who noted your fall, Maybe other ears Attuned may hear And know again Your old sweet song.

DAILY THOUGHT

The law is good, if a man use it lawfully. —I Timothy 1:8.

THE LAW: It has honored us;

may we honor it.—Daniel Webster,

teeth without an economic explosion |.

can only hope so, for every day it becomes more apparent that man is searching desperately for some thing to live by. He won't find it in political ideolo< gies, nor in scientific research nor in any miracle of modern invention. There must be a return to - a vital religion or our cherished civilization will fall into a heap, destroyed at the core by its own rottenness. Did you know that 50 per cent of the children in the United States get no religious education whatever? Those are the figures released recently by Mrs. Imogene McPherson (no kin to Amy), who is director of Greater New York's Federation of Churches. By the trial-and-error method we have discovered at last that a religion of ritual which never touches the economic or political life of a people is worse than none at all—because it is sham. : . There is something vaguely retributive these days in the sight of intellectual leaders beating their breasts about patriotic inertia. The young are being urged once more to give their lives for their country, but I say to you that no man gives his life willingly for his country unless he has already dedicated it to God, or in other words unless he is devoted to some high principle which, to him, symbolizes God’ because it is right. And there is no doubt that our intellectual lead ers during the last two decades did their share ir setting up false idols for the young to worship. The’ themselves laughed loyalty and -duty out of existence They substituted the libido for love: they talker about sex but never about soul; they preached 2 defeatism worse than that of a truce with Hitler—a defeatism of the spirit. Today one doesn’t have to be a preacher or a ree former to see how evil are the consequences of theip work. The Ten Commandments have been repudiated: and moral laws repealed. And of late we observe the strange. alarming spectacle of a free people being urged by these same intellectuals to study the Nazi’ holy book “Mein Kampf’—although few suggest that we dust off our own Bibles and read them.

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will answer any question of fact or information, not involving extensive ree search. Write your questions clearly. sign name and address, inclose a three-cent postage stamp, Medical or legal advice cannot be given. Address The Times Washington Service = Bureau, 1013 Thirteenth St.. Washington. D. C.)

Q—What is the horsepower of the “Hurricane® fighter Planes? A—Ten hundred and thirty. Q—Where were the scenes for the photoplay, “Western Union,” filmed? A—Besides those made in Hollywood studios, loca tion scenes were taken at Kanab, Utah. ; Q—How long did Charles Evans Hughes serve as Chief Justice of the United States? A—He was appointed Feb. 3, 1930, by President * Hoover, and served until June 30, 1941. Q—Why doesn’t the President name a General in the Army and an Admiral in the Navy as Secre= taries of War and Navy in this emergency? ke A—No officer of the Army or the Navy can hold a civilian post either by election or appointment, with this exception: Under title V of the statutes that authorize the creation of the War Department, 'the President is empowered to authorize the commande

‘ing cfficer of the Army, or any branch of the Army,

temporarily to perform the duties of Secretary of War without resigning his commission in the Army. J

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