Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 September 1941 — Page 20

I PACE 20 senses .

The Indianapolis Times

RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE ~~ Editor Business Manager "(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD President

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delive ered by carrier, 12 cents a week. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year, outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

p> RILEY 5551

Live Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

Owned and published daily. (except Suniday) by The ‘Indianapolis Times E Publishing Co., 314 W. Maryland St. E

Member of United Press. Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, ‘and Audit Bu-

teau of Circulations.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1041

THE SUBWAY SERIES WHAT most of America has been praying for has come to pass. The most colorful baseball team in years has won the National League pennant and the World Series next week brings together the polished and powerful New York Yankees against the comical and courageous Brooklyn Dodgers. ; Ma$ we rise to point out that it’s a grand thing for all of us. It’s like a tonic. For more than anything else right now, we need to escape from the worries and ‘terrors of the world about us. a And so, if only for a few hours each day, next week we'll get just what the doctor ordered—the subway series.

GIVE THEM A CHANCE

INCE June practically no aluminum has been available

~ for non-defense industries including, among others, auto-

matic refrigeration. | This industry alone is now saving aluminum at the rate of more than 20,000,000 pounds a year, enough to make 2500 fighter planes or 700 bombers. The saving has been made without closing down the refrigeration factories and throwing 85,000 to 40,000 employees out of work. The Government didn’t tell them to cut their production schedules. Instead, they were left free to use their wits and their research departments. So they found -substitutes for aluminum and kept on operating. Some refrigerators being produced today contain not an ounce of aluminum. : ! Now steel for non-defense purposes is also said to be getting short. But, in the case of steel, an arbitrary curtailment of production of refrigerators—and of other “consumer” articles—is suggested. If the refrigerator plants must cut their production by half they will have to close down half of their equipment and, presumably, fire half of their employees. a Why do it that way? Why not tell the refrigerator factories and the other factories similarly situated, how much steel can be spared to them after defense needs are met, and then let them produce all they can with that amount of steel? Let them find substitutes or redesign their products, using the same ingenuity they used when the aluminum shortage hit them. Possibly they couldn’t get around the steel problem. But it seems only common sense to let them have a chance—to leave them free to seek a way of keeping their men employed until defense jobs are available and to keep their businesses going and earning the wherewithal to pay taxes.

PAGE A HABERDASHER JESSE JONES says the RFC’s Defense Supplies Corp. i8 ~¥ buying $100,000 worth of Russian manganese, asbestos, chromite and platinum—with an advance of $50,000,000 to finance Russian purchases of American war supplies. It is out of our line to encourage non-defense spending, but we doubt that any American would seriously object if Jesse would seal this deal with a lagniappe, a little extra gift—say a couple of bucks to buy Joe Stalin a new shirt, and a tie. :

THE “PLEASURE” CAR

EDERAL and private agencies concerned with the petro- ~ leum problem have emphasized, as the American Automobile Association says, the notion that the passenger automobile is “a pleasure car.” The A. A. A. does well to protest vigorously against this distorted emphasis. Millions of American families derive pleasure from the ownership and operation of automobiles, and surely there is nothing wrong with that. Recreation—pleasure, if you will—has a place no less essential than work in the nation’s life. And the use of automobiles for pleasure is one of the mainstays of a $5,000,000,000 travel industry which employs workers, earns dividends and pays taxes. But the private automobile is not merely—not even chiefly—‘“a pleasure car.” Says the A. A. A.: : “Although owners of private passenger cars use only 80 per cent of all petroleum products, they and they alone are asked to bear the whole brunt of conservation of gasoline. “What. are the facts as regards automobile use? Sur-

veys have shown that 77 per cent of all trips by automobile

are for necessary purposes, such as in connection with earning a livelihood or closely related business pursuits. “More than 2300 cities with a population in excess of

1214 million depend upon private cars for transportation,

being without local mass-transportation systems. “So far as automobile-owning families are concerned, the picture of workers’ homes clustered about mill or factory is obsolete. On the contrary, 70 per cent of workers in carowning families go to work by automobile. “Automobiles are now owned by 76 per cent of American farmers and 78 per cent of farm trips are for necessity use. Certainly these figures do not jibe with the generalization of automobiles as pleasure vehicles.”

FAIR WEATHER 2 HE so-called “father of Daylight Saving Time,” the venerable Robert Garland, former Pittsburgh councilman, has just come out-with a theory that doesn’t do his brainchild any good. : ; Mr. Garland, noticing a report that American soldiers in 1941 are wearing bigger shoes than the doughboys of 1918, says feet are bigger because of Daylight Saving— because the boys in many States have had an extra hour of daylight during the summers and have used it for sports and exercise. = K., Mr. Garland. But wait till the ladies, who also have feet, hear about your_theory. And meantime you'd ; be packing picking

U.S. Aviation

By Mai. Al Williams

1 WONDER HOW MANY peo-

ple understand the use of the aerial gun camera. Well, fighting airmen must learn to shoot. There are several methods for teaching them. To the pilot of the singleseater fighter, shooting means aiming the guns fixed to the fuselage and wings of his plane. Aim the .ship and you aim the guns. The infantryman shifts his sights by moving his arms and hands; the fighter pilot presses on

the rudder bar and moves the control stick of his.

craft. ‘Good aerial gunnery requires perfect co-ordination between eyes, brain, hands and feet. The pilpt has his gun sights anchored on the ship in front ‘of the windshield, When the cross hairs of his sight are on the target, he presses the tiny button or half-inch trigger mounted on the control stick. : In short, the fighter pilot is actually chine-gun nest—with all guns blasting a stream of lead and tracer bullets as he presses the button or trigger. At short intervals in the belt of ammunition are tracer bullets, their rear ends loaded with phosphorous or some other suitable material which is set afire by the propelling charge of the cartridges. The tracer bullets leave trails of thin vapor behind to show the gunner exactly where his fire is going.

Must Fly Without Effort

IN THE INITIAL stages of training a fledgling fighting airman to shoot in the air, he fires at ground targets or targets anchored in the water. A favorite target for over-water firing is the shadow of your ship on the water. In the next stage he is taught to shoot towed sleeves—cones of cloth towed by other planes. But all this is still. merely preliminary to the real shooting, for the imitation targets are decidedly unlike the real enemy aircraft targets he will have to shoot in actual war, and they are either fixed in position on'the ground or in the water, or they travel in a straight line when towed by other planes, The real thing is to teach the fighter pilot to fly his ship without conscious effort in such fashion as to maneuver for favorable position against an enemy plane. We can’t shoot our own pilots and planes, so it is necessary to substitute something for real bullets to check the accuracy of marksmanship. :

It Quickens the Pulse

THIS SOMETHING IS the aerial camera gun—a small motion picture mounted on the gun or an the fuselage. On each frame of the film the gunsight’s cross hairs show_when developed, as well as the position of the target aircraft. The position of that target plane with reference to the cross hairs, judged against the courses of the firing and target ships, determines the accuracy of the firing. For instance, if you jump on the tail of a target ship and photograph your cross hairs right on its center, you are adjudged to have washed out an enemy plane and pilot. ! But if you are firing on a plane flying at right angles to your ship’s line of flight, then you have to establish on the photo that your judgment of the “lead” was correct, the “lead” being that distance you must aim ahead of a moving target to compensate for its speed and for the time it takes your bullet to get to it. You face a nice:little task of co-ordination and judgment of timesnd distance when you try to nail an object slashing across your gun sights at four or five hundred feet a second. Add to this the excitement of holding your fire until you can outmaneuver your opponent, who is working with the same idea in mind, namely, to get on your “tail”—and you have something to quicken the pulse of the most phlegmatic individual,

Britain vs. Vichy

By Helen Kirkpatrick

LONDON, Sept. 26—British troops have not entered French Somaliland and will not do so until the Vichy governor hands over without fighting to the British authorities in East Africa, it is learned here following the Vichy assertion that tiie British have attacked the French post of Assamo. A radio report received from Djibouti, port and principal city of French Somaliland, stated that the British general, Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, had issued an ultimatum to the Governor of Somaliland. This, said the report, was followed up by a British march across the frontier from Ethiopia and British attacks from the Gulf of Aden. In London the War Office has no confirmation of such a move, which in other quarters is labeled absurd. From the time Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland fell to the British, French Somaliland has been cut off from all supplies save those that the British have permitted to enter. Early offers to the governor for handing over Somaliland to the Free French were rejected. A second offer, to evacuate women and children to Madagascar, was' turned down by the Vichy governor. : :

"Why Fight?" Ask British

ULTIMATA HAVE BEEN dispatched to Djibouti from time to time but none of them, so far as can be learned, mentioned the use of force. ‘Two sent by Gen. Sir Archibald P. Wavell pointed out the necessity for a British blockade in view of the presence of the Italian armistice commission in Djibouti and the probability that the Italians would use imports to provision beleaguered and isolated Italian units in Ethiopia. Each reiterated the offer to evacuate women and children and indicated that the responsibility for allowing them to suffer from the blockade rested on the Vichy governor. French Somaliland has been blockaded for more than six months and the situation there must be increasingly difficult. The British expect capitulatipn at any time now and see no reason why blood should be shed when the siege will accomplish the same purpose.

So They Say—

When millions of lives are lost and tens of millions of lives are ruined because of an insane ambition to get everything everywhere under one thumb, then I think it is up to us to help to stop it—William S. Knudsen, director-general, OPM. 7 * * *

X “ v We must be tough-fibred enough to make all sacrifices, including both property and life itself if necessary, for the attainment of the objectives which we think essential. —Walter P. Armstrong, president nominee, American Bar Association. ® Ww *

In modern life the ultimate controls lie with the

little people who actually labor with their hands on the mechanisms which keep civilization going.—Adolf A. Berle Jr., assistant Secretary of State. * »

The protection we devise for our dependents will

prove as fragile as an empty egg shell unless Hitler is defeated. —Lewis W. Douglas to the National ‘Association of Life Underwriters. : :

Christianity has an opportunity in China today the like of which has not appeared in the world in a thousand years.—Rev. Charles H, Corbett, Church Committee for China Relief. . » *

There are those who maintain that in gaining the world of the modern city man has lost his soul.—

Dr. Ernest W. Burgess, University of Chicago.

flying a ma- 1k

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

History Written on t

he Walls of Europe :

The Hoosier Forum

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

HAM FISH ‘GETTING INTO TROUBLED WATERS’ By Claude Braddick, Kokomo

Isolationists are becoming so dismayed because President Roosevelt stubbornly refuses to ask Congress to declare war on anybody, that Rep. Ham Fish of New York has decided, as a last resort, to ask for a declaration himself. : Mr. Fish should think twice before taking this step. Fishing in troubled waters may produce some piscatorial surprises, including the biggest one of all, the very fish he is angling for—which would be a pretty kettle of fish indeed! How then would he explain at the next election that the Roosevelt Administration “got us into a war”? Mr. Fish should be reminded, too, that future historians will record the outstanding fact that he asked for a declaration of war, and regard as “fishy” (or neglect altogether) his ostensible reasons for doing so. How about it, Mr. Fish? Do you wish to go down in history as the fellow who “got us into war?” Or at least tried his durndest? ” 2 2 S. 8. SCHOOL SITUATION TERMED ‘DISCRIMINATION’ By a South Sider, Indianapolis, Why does not all of Indianapolis get behind the effort for a new high school for the South Side near Garfield, bearing the name of Manual Training? Nobody protested when Shortridge moved out of its old building on Pennsylvania St. and got that handsome new one on N. Meridian. Since then, Washington High was built on the West Side and Howe on the East Side and Tech has gotten many new things. But the South Side is expected to put up with the old, antique building we were going to school in in the early days of 1900. If this is not outright discrimination, what it is? :

2 n= CHALLENGES LOCAL UNIT OF AMERICA FIRST

By an Ex-America Firster, Indianapolis

I formerly belonged to the America First Committee. I am not a Jew, nor a New Dealer, nor am I of British descent, I am simply a decent, law-abiding, Jeffersonian Democrat. I joined the America First group because I thought it a sincere movement. I ceased my connections shortly

(Times readers are 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.)

before Mr. Lindbergh's Des Moines speech because I felt his talks were based on too-biased opinion. Now, the America First Committee has absolved Mr. Lindbergh of any fault whatever in charging that the British, the New Dealers and the Jews were trying to drive this country into war. I am now wondering if. Mr. Merle Miller and his associates here concur in this opinion that Mr. Lindbergh is’ guiltless. I take it that their silence means assent, : 88 8 CONSIDERS TALK OF WAR AS PLAIN SLAUGHTER

By an Isolationist, Shelbyville. There is a lot of talk about isolationists being traitors and being Roosevelt-haters sand peddling race hatred. ‘This is not so. I am against the United States being involved in war. I favor all aid to England. I do not approve of Senator Nye or Senator Wheeler or Mr, Lindbergh. They are obviously Roosevelt-haters, determined to do anything by fair or foul to win their point. : There are millions like me and my friends.— We want England to beat Hitler. We think, . however, that. this: country can be of the most aid to England by not getting into war. If Mr. Roosevelt will declare a full national emergency, prohibit the right to strike and

‘demand 100 per -cent production of

defense material, he will have the country 100 per cent behind him. If we go to war, we will have to turn all our factories into production for our own needs and England will get nothing. By the time we are ready to do something about fighting, all will be over in Europe. Hitler will be boss of everything. including the British Isles, and we will be left holding the bag. Why can’t these people who want to go to war see this? They permit labor unions to strike for days and days, tying up precious hours of production and then say we are ready for war, How can we be ready? : ue

We need to produce guns and

Side Glances—By Galbraith

tanks and airplanes by the hundreds, not by the tens. For us to think about war now is to think of slaughtering our young men like s0 many cattle.

ss 8» CHARGES CITY OFFICIALS PLAY POLITICS WITH TAXES

By A. W. C., Indianapolis I have been fuming for the last 24 hours over the brazen statement of Mr. Gisler of the Park Board that now is the time to put the tax rate up because people have the money. I have never heard of such a selfish and short-sighted approach to public problems. If

that is Mr. Gisler’s way of thinking,

he has no right to hold the office he does, or any other kind of public office. got on : I wonder if these local officials realize that this country is on the verge of going to war; that the Federal Government has already passed the biggest tax bill in our history; and, that every single citizen in the United States is going to have to sacrifice as never before. Now is the time for cities and states to be cutting every non-de-fense expenditure to the bone, But wk at. are our own Indianapolis officials doing? Why, trying to push

get away with it. > Instead of letting politics take a holiday when emergency comes in,

they never have before. , » 2 ”

ANGERED BY CINDERS BEING PUT ON STREET By George P. Posthumus, 1035 N. Tremont A 2

By this I request the one who has the authority to fire the street commissioner or the one who is responsible for putting cinders on the street at 1000 block N. Tremont Ave. Last year I had my heuse painted and then they also put cinders on a hard surface road to: be ground to dust by the wheels ‘of automobiles covering roofs (making cistern wa-. ter unfit to use), having to live with doors and windows closed and made

‘my house look like it had not been

painted for 10 years. : ‘Now, ‘they are doing. the same bone-headed {rick again. If they can not do a better job of oiling we rather have the chuck-holes than the damage to my property, and I hereby request the street cleaning department to come and sweep all the cinders from the street. ; There is much said about enforcing the anti-noise ordinance. This means to me any device that ptoduces noise. And if the noise is made for no sensible reason, this person is violating the ordinance.

allowed to sound the bells at any time of the day acting like a neighborhood alarm clock? This should be stopped. he

TO MY MOTHER

Because I feel that, in the Heavens

above, # The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I lon have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, 2, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, In setting ‘my Virginia's spirit free. My mother—my own mother, who died early, : Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so

dearly, : . And thus are dearer than the mother-1 knew. By that ‘infinity with which my

e Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

DAILY THOUGHT I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.—John 8:12.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 2 104F

Gen. Johnson

' soap”’—or rather—‘no steel.’

up the tax rate as far as they can|

our officials start playing politics as|

Why is the church at Holmes Ave. |

Says—

' WASHINGTON, Sept. 26—1In all the growing overhead control for the purposes of speeding up industrial mobilization, who is _ charged with making the maximum and quickest use of transportation? Is is impossible to avoid . superlatives in dealing With this = subject. On the surface they may seem to be exaggerations but they are not. ; > : Take the case of a ship loaded with war supplies for England. There are plenty of most kinds of supplies. The trick is to get them overseas. If the “turnaround” (time. consumed in loading, unloading and round trip) of that ship is cut in half, it is not hard to see that what - you are doing is just doubling the rate and the - amount of supply. No amount of jumping up and down and yelling about the need for increased factory effort would be half as effective as a successful attempt to increase the speed of transportation bothg here and abroad. We found that out during World War 1 when we * cut in half the “turnaround” time of trens-Atlantic ships—transports and freighters. If it hadn't been * done we could hardly have made half the effort we ° did. It was done by a variety of devices the best-of *

| which was increasing the speed of loading and un-'*

loading both by mechanical devices and better organization and unrelenting drive and effort. The case at sea is not quite the same now due to magnificent distances and lack of port facilities, but the principle is the same for the domestic or even the.. overseas problem.

‘Who Pulls These Guys Together?

TAKE AS ANOTHER CASE the supposed gasoline shortage in our eastern states. It is quite clear now. that there is no gasoline shortage. It is a transporta-. . tion shortage. So what do we do? Mr. Ickes says: . “Build a pipe line.” Mr. Wallace’s SPAB says: “No . The Association of American Railroads says: “Use ‘our idle tank cars.” Mr. Ickes’ people say their idleness is “theoretical.” I have seen the figures on poth. sides. They are contradictory. But this is just a question of fact. Somebo(y ought to be able to decide what is truth. Look out your car window as you pass through oil towns or distribution centers such. as Savannah. There you will see rank on rank of emply - tank cars. I am informed that the average standst at Savannah of 133 tank cars in July was 15.4.days. Of 45 cars the standstill was 36.6 days and of some: 15.7 days. soot I use these somewhat controversial figures only by way of illustration of the fact that some dynamic: two-fisted guy should be given the job of making Sammy's tremendous transportation system clink into high gear. Sure, I know that Ralph Budd: who isa. top-hole railroad man has a little fraction of the job as to railroads. The Maritime Commission has part’ of it as to ocean transport and Jerry Land, head of that commission, says that at least a part.of the solu-_ tion is concrete barges for towing—as: this column ° advocated months ago. But who pulls all these guys together, including Mr. Ickes, and gets a combined and agreed result The answer is as in dear old Bert Williams’ classic song—"“Nobody.”

We Need a Transportation Boss

SINCE THIS COLUMN started to point up this - discussion it has been deluged with suggestions—for example, that trucks freighting east from the unre--stricted area be required to carry the gasoline for their return trip in drums and that eastern truck freighters headed west stock up out there, et cetra. a None of these suggestions alone will solve the problem but a combinatino of them could dent it. Who is doing that—again “nobody.” : I am glad that John Carmody is going to take a census of American motor vehicles. He ought to in-" clude air vehicles. We are duplicating the best civilian, truck, bus and air transport system- in .the™ world with a military system which is idle most. of the time. : ; $n. log LE There is a ridiculous blind-spot here and it ought™ to be covered by appointing, if only in an advisory“ capacity, al experienced chief of transportation.

A Woman's Viewpoint = By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

SOLDIER BOYS HAVE the spotlight. But if you have praisegg to spare, save a little for the soldier girls in all the lands of the earth, many of whom face a more fiery ordeal than giving up life for country. That sacrifice is reserved for brave, fighting men, but for women, spared from bombs, there is heartbreak and loneliness, and the years dragging out their weary : length in suffering more bitter than death. How jauntily that pretty girl walks to: her job this morning, unaware, perhaps, that this very moment Mars snatches from: life the one who was to have been her lover and husband,

Everywhere beyond those horizons that bound the Seven Seas live young women who will never become old wives, because when wars end, there is a new scarcity of men and sometimes those who remain are helpless, weak or ill, ‘ .

What Is National Glory?

BY DESTROYING WEALTH and manpower war is hard on economic systems. But it reserves its last cruelest reprisals for women by removing from earth potential husbands and fathers, thus leaving countless girls to face an existence bereft of profoundest: joys. The sacrifices asked of us are actually far more terrible than those demanded of men—whate “ever their lot may be. ae Every girl widowed before she is wed gives up those “ancient, beautiful things” dear to feminine hearts and necessary to feminine happiness. What to us. are fame, honors, medals, career, or national glory, when those old, lovely, commonplace experiences, without which life is always empty and meaningless for women, are no longer ours. - = . No need to tell you what they are. They are so ordinary, yet so universal, that they go unnoticed until beyond our reach. ip A man’s football on the steps at ‘evening; the sound of whistling in the bathroom; a baseball and a doll on the living room floer; a rumpled pillow beside your own; a sleepy baby’s head upon your shoulder, : SNEOETL

4 —— wt » - Editor's Note: The views expressed by columnists in this newspaper are their own. They are mot necessarily those ;.of The Indianapolis Times. ; 2A

——

Questions and Answers: (The Indianapolis Limes Service Bureau will answer 8ny question of fact or information, met involving extensive research. Write vour guestions eléarlv sign napie and address, inclose a three-cent postage stamp, Médjeal or legal advice cannot be given. Address The Times Washington Service Bureau. 1013 Thirteenth St.. Washington D.: GC)

Q—Where is the ink used to print United States paper money made? SR Ls "A—In the’ ink-making division of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Washington, D.C. =~ | Q—Have there been many serious accidents on any of the new superhighways? ~~ ' ,°. ©... ’ A—Along a six-mile stretch of so-called “perfect” .highway in Texas, 17: deaths have resulted from automobile accidents in four months. No reason has been

excellent highway is conducive: to 8p straightaway stretch with only a ne .and virtually no billboards or trees to, The high accident record on the Per pike, called the best-highway enginee from the safety standpoint, recently r Seiment of a legal speed maximum our. ' pr Q—Give the real name of the

[Everything is worth what its pur-