Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 December 1941 — Page 12

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MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1941

UNITY “Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes The drumming guns that—have no doubts.” KIPLING wrote that, back in 1894, of “An American” and “The American Spirit.” America has been attacked. The drumming guns are sounding. And many problems have been solved on a Sabbath day. Chief of these is the problem of national unity. We will have that unity—from here in. America now turns, as Kipling said, “a keen, untroubled face home, to the instant need of things.”

IN WAR

IT came, not by attack from Europe as so many feared, but in the Pacific, which most Americans believed impossible. Japan has attacked us without cause. The United States was still pleading for peace, still offering Japan honorable friendship, when she struck without warning. The bombing of Hawaii, the torpedoing of ships on this side of the Pacific, were not acts of irresponsible commanders or even the result of some sudden decision by the Tokyo government. The orders must have been issued, and confirmed by the Mikado, many days ago to permit the aircraft carriers and submarines to reach these battle stations so many thousands of miles away. The treachery was complete. It was premeditated. It was carried out while the United States, in patience and good faith, listened to long professions of friendship masking her plans for surprise attack. So be it. They have played us for suckers. So we have seemed to them—for did we not supply them with the steel, oil and other war materials to fight us? Yes, we paid that price for peace. And we lost. But in the losing, we gained something which Japan lacks-—something essential to give a peaceful and democratic people the will to fight and the will to win. That essential is clear proof to Americans that their nation is not the aggressor but the defender. JAPAN has provided that proof. The attack on Hawaii united America is a common horror and in a common resolve—a unity as grim and complete as if Japan had struck individually at 130,000,000 Americans. Whatever the initial military and naval gains from her betrayal, they are insignificant beside the defense spirit and untapped power which she has heedlessly provoked. As this newspaper for many months has called for concentration on Pacific defense, for all-out preparedness, for an end of strikes as usual, business as usual, luxury as usual, so today we repeat those now too obvious necessities. The losses suffered in the battle of Hawaii will not have been in vain if they turn Americans from fears of Atlantic invasion in some distant future to the Pacific reality ignored so long. At last we may stop underestimating the Japanese. Hitler is attacking, indeed, but through the Japanese, as he has so long tried to do. We must fight with everything we have. It will not be easy. But the greater our concentration and the greater our sacrifice, the sooner the victory.

AND LABOR

WHAT were defense industries last week are war industries today. To restrict their output, by strikes or any other preventable cause, endangers American lives and delays American victory. How best to prevent strikes is still debatable, but the absolute necessity for preventing them is not. We hope that, in the light of that fact, those who profess to lead and to speak for organized labor will now reconsider their positions. Heretofore they have insisted that any attempt by Congress to legislate for prevention of strikes is an attempt to “destroy” unions and “enslave” workers. And that labor will not submit to such legislation. Public opinion demands legislation to prevent strikes, not because it wants to shackle labor, but because it does not want labor to deprive the country of weapons it must have to defend itself—and, now, to win a war. SAY that the great majority of union members are loyal Americans and that comparatively few of their total number have struck in defense industries, is certainly true. But it is no answer to the demand for legislation. Why did that demand arise? Precisely because it was demonstrated, time after time, that bottleneck strikes could do damage to the defense program that was out of all proportion to the number of strikers. And now it is no longer theory, but ugly fact, that each such strike was in some degree preventing the nation from being as well prepared as it should have been for the present crisis. Granting that only a minority of organized labor has refused to control itself, the public wants assurance that this minority will now be controlled. It has little faith in promises of voluntary co-operation by a divided labor movement whose leaders refuse to co-operate even with each other. It believes fervently that Congress must act. If If the spokesmen for labor will now accept that reality —if they will abandon their attitude of blind opposition, cease encouraging resistance to whatever legislation may be enacted, and concentrate on helping to enact wise legisia- . tion—they can do their country and the labor movement a great service.

FT HE Steelman Arbitration Board has given John L. Lewis his closed shop in the captive coal mines. We hope

this award has settled one vexing labor problem without

creating a host of new ones. The chances for that happy outcome will be enhanced if Mr. Lewis, while maintaining

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK, Dec. 8.—An election of certain officers will be held next Tuesday by Local 244

of the Browne-Bioff Movie Projectors’ Union in which a group

of more or less honest members

will try to break the power of Louis Kaufman, the business agent, who is a crimimal of pretty much the same loathsome character as George Browne, Willie Bioff, Nick Circella, alias Dean, all rodent types who muscled into

the Newark, N. J., branch of the this election will be held under court is almost certain that the Kauf-

in a previous case as one of the union officials who lived a parasitic life by the toil of rank and file workers who had to turn over their salaries, whole, to certain of the union bosses. Kaufman is not up for re-election, having extended his own term as business agent, but the nominees of the mob in power are known as the Kaufman crowd. The administration, or mob, probably will walk off with the election, even under honest conditions, if that phenomenon should be achieved under court supervision, because those who have strung along with the mob have enjoyed the best jobs and other advantages.

Crook From Way Back

KAUFMAN is a crook with a criminal record dating back to 1913, when he was 21 years old and was sentenced to a reformatory for a petty burglary. He was given an indeterminate sentence and was paroled, but a few months later, in January, 1914, he was caugnt again, this time in a stickup which was the early specialty of his criminal colleague, Nick Circella, alias Dean. For that he got another indeterminate sentence and served until June, 1916, when he was released to win his way upward as a bargaining agent for working saps under the A. F. of L. By coincidence, both Kaufman and Dean are now awaiting trial in the Federal Court in New York on indictments similar to those on which Browne and Bioff recently were sent away. Although his early crimes were rough jobs, Kaufman is not a tough hoodlum, but is rather on the slimy, conniving side and has avoided personal risks and operated through extortion. He has run in all the established rat holes of underworld politics in Newark for many years now and was so influential that some years back, Frank Brex, then deputy chief of police, in charge of the detective bureau, removed his criminal record from the open files, and later busied himself in behalf of an unsuccessful effort by Kaufman to obtain a full pardon.

Reviews Slave Conditions

BACK IN 1935, Vice Chancellor Maja Leon Berry of the Jersey Court of Chancery, in a decision and opinion reviewing the condition of utter slavery to which this racketeer had reduced helpless American workmen, remarked that of the very few men who had been admitted to the valuable status of full membership in the racket, two were closely related to high officials of the Newark police department. One of these was John Brex, now a member of the local's executive board, the son of the police executive who removed Kaufman’s record from the open file and recommended a full pardon for him. To be positive that he meant Brex’s son, and not to guess at it, I asked Chancellor Berry if he meant Brex in the blind reference, and I have before me his letter saying, “Brex was the police officer to whom I referred in my opinion.”

Allergic to Work

IN THAT SAME opinion Chancellor Berry discussed the practice known as “working on the arm” whereby a B-class, or slave, member of the union had to work two jobs, one for himself, the other for one of the union bosses and said that for years Kaufman had been drawing a salary from one of the best projecting jobs in the local’s jurisdiction in which a slave did all the work. “The defendant Kaufman has not worked at all since 1929,” said this opinion delivered in 1935, but my own investigation, and that of my diligent colleagues of the Newark Evening News, fails to disclose any evidence that he ever performed a single hour of work at any lawful occupation in all his life. Nevertheless, his crowd is almost certain to be re-elected while he is under indictment as a betrayer of labor because some of the workers apparently are cynical and more interested in their own preferred jobs and advantages than in decency.

Editor’s Note: The views expressed by columnists in this newspaper are their own. They are not necessarily those of The Indianapolis Times.

Far East Showdown By Leland Stowe

CHUNGKING, Dec. 8 — As Japanese naval units steam toward the China Sea and America, British and Dutch land, sea and air forces stand mobilized for action throughout the Pacific, the feeling grows here that the Far Eastern showdown may be a matter of hours, or days. The latest developments may be merely the climactic phase in the first war of

nerves waged by the democratic

allies, but Tokyo's reaction remains unpredictable. Unquestionably, high Nazi officials and strategists in Tokyo are doing their utmost to propel the Japanese into opening up another British front toward Malaya, thereby tying up the ABCD forces in the Pacific. Those who are most familiar with Japan’s present economic and military situation say that she would suffer much more from the newly extended war today than either the United States or Great Britain and that her war chiefs realize this.

On the contrary, it is by no means certain that the British Government and the British Far Eastern commanders are willing to recognize this fact, or to do anything so un-British as to take the boldest course

unless dragooned into it by Washington.

This dispatch from Leland Stowe was written just before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

IF THE British will fight the Japanese the moment they invade Thailand—not merely move a few miles up the Malayan Peninsula while the Japanese occupy the remainder of Thailand—Tokyo will surely reflect long before invading. It seems most dubious, however, that the British will announce such intentions unless the American and Dutch Governments do the same. Therefore, the biggest determination in a showdown with Japan remains in Washington and whether President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull are prepared to inform Tokyo that any transgression beyond such and such special point or boundary means that America will fight. If that is done categorically and jointly with the Anglo-Dutch, the soundest Far Eastern observers are convinced that the present crisis may be passed though an eventual conflict seems unavoidable sooner or later. Copyright, 1941, by the Indianapolis Times and the Chicago Daily News, Inc.

So They Say—

To try to put the lid on labor organization in this country at this time would, in my opinion, be disastrous.—William H. Davis, chairman, Defense Mediation Board.

the closed shop for his union, will hereafter maintain a closed mouth for himself.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Still the Only Light of Asia

The Hoosier Forum

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

'THE WORST SUFFERERS

WILL BE FARM CHILDREN’ By J.E. J. As coming events cast their shadows before so the indications point to another A. E. F., with its natural disruption of our ordinary business, especially the business of growing, processing and transporting food and clothes. The pinch is being felt already in increased prices and this is just the beginning. Each year it will get worse. For example, I raised four boys on the farm; three of them are making five times as much off the farm as they could make on it. Then last week the Army took the youngest. It goes without saying that my farm cannot produce as much as it has done. Multiply my farm by several million and you have the answer.

The worst sufferers of the farm shortage will be farm children. It will mean more days out of school; more work after school; more children with kangaroo backs. In the last war we kept our home fires burning but in our “all out” zeal for dear old England, we are about to put out a lot of our home fires.

We have no reason to hope for improvement in the farm situation because our government is still controlled by the same incompetent bunch who thought the way for the ill-fed to get more meat was to kill off five million pigs and 200,000 sows; who thought the way for the ill-clad to have more clothes was to plow under 10 million acres of cotton. Whose idea of social justice was to deny the benefits of social security to those who needed it most—farm laborers and domestic servants.

Some of the most brainless of the brain trust are proposing that we train some “farmerettes” to relieve the farm labor shortage. But I doubt if even the warm magnetic voice of Mr, Roosevelt will be able to persuade the American girl to parade around a farm with the temperature 110 in the shade, and

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious con-

Make

your letters short, so all can

troversies excluded.

have a chance. Letters must be signed.)

no shade, and the sweat running rivulets of mascara down her chin. ‘WHY DOESN'T CONGRESS

TAKE A COOLING-OFF By G [obscured] D. Sallee, 5801 Woodside Drive, Paging Mr. Smith—his house is on fire! When last seen, he was going to Washington as a statesman, and when last heard of, he had copied some pages and the technique from the Kansas Industrial Court Law, declared unconstitutional 20 years ago, and embodied it in his anti-strike measure.

I believe Westbrook Pelger pulled a fast one by stating Congress didn’t have the guts to pass it. I further believe he knew copies of his column, including his remarks, would reach certain Mr. Smiths, who might act in haste, and repent at leisure, thereby giving labor the scare of its life,

According to ex-Governor Allen of Kansas, who stated “on his return from Italy in 1935 Mussolini had copied some of his Industrial Court Law, and established the lire by making the workers labor nine hours for eight hours pay, then taking the money to finance the government.” This brought a hell of a laugh from the employers of men; labor got sore, so did Mussolini, and by decree he ordered the employers to match labor's one hour pay, which gave the government 2 hours pay to finance the war, and stabilize the lire.

Both Italy and Germany since have enacted anti-labor laws, under the subterfuge of Axis necessity. Under the title enforcement of the Smith Act provides the U. S. District Courts shall have authority to enjoin any person from violating the Act. Penalty—Unions would lose their

i

3

“Lester has very decided views, you know- he says if we didn't

live so far away,

Side Glances-By Galbraith

he'd go down to Washington and give Congress a piece of his mind!"

legal standing, employees would also lose their rights, and be refused employment, also unemployment compensation. It would be very interesting to know why Congressmen didn’t take a cooling off period to concentrate and think about a constructive bill before passing such a screwy piece of legislation. . . .

CONCERNING HENRY FORD AND THE U.S. ROLE

By Harrison White, 218 E. St. Joe St.

“We hold these truths to be self evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those truths were taken from the wisdom of the ages, through the souls of our fathers.

The Constitution of the United States is based on those truths. Recently Henry Ford spoke glowingly of the future world as in one great federation. He said, “We never received any benefits from the first World War and asked none” and said in fact that because we are paying for this war, it would not come amiss for us to ask that the world enter such a federation as “the federation of our states.”

It was just recently that a high British official told the British Empire in fact, “We are not going in debt. The United States is feeding us and paying for this war.” So if we are also feeding and paying for the Chinese, the Turks and the Russians we should in good reason propound Mr, Ford’s suggestion to the world, in those words taken from the wisdom of the ages. If they are to be maintained in the United States, is there not some source in our government by and through which those truths could and should be presented to the world and every part of it at this time as a basis for peace, in lieu of that 150 billion which at best spells only defeat?

A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG

Faintly as tolls the evening chime Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time, Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past!

Why should we yet our sail unfurl? There is not a breath the blue wave to curl; But, when the wind blows off the shore, Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar, Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast, The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past!

Utawa’s tide! this trembling moon Shall see us float over thy surges soon. Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers, Oh, grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.

Blow, breezes, blow the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near and the daylight's past! —Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

DAILY THOUGHT Woe unto them that rise up

early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink.—Isaiah 5:11.

PALATE, the hutch of tasty lust, desire not to be rinsed with wine- Gerald M. Hopkins.

wife and

MONDAY, DEC. 8, 1941

A Hot War!

By George Weller

SOMEWHERE IN THE GULF OF ADEN, Dec. 8.—If troop ships pores were not of iron, one would say that they perspired too. It was hot in the Indian Ocean and it is hotter now in the Gulf of Aden. They say that when we get into the Red Sea, that oven, where Africa and Asia lie to left and right of us, will really turn on the heat. This is the route plied by the giants of Great Britain's maritime fleet, their tween-decks choked with troops, their forward and stern bulkheads cluttered with squatting Africans and Asians. It is a hot way to go to war, no matter where you come from. From Nairobi, Kenya Colony, to Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, it takes four hours by plane from anything from a colonel to a major-general. rank is somewhere between an African tent-carrier and a Sandhurst lieutenant-colonel—this is where

a foreign correspondent is put—you have some 14

days of travel before you. Ten of these are spent aboard ship, mostly in convoy. Although the nearest transport with its graybrown uncamouflaged sides and lackadaisical smoke wreath, is about 300 yards away, you soon get the impression that it is crowding you. In this heat it is too close for comfort. It’s hot. You don’t want anything or anyone near you, even if it's a ship.

Even the Fans Get Tired

EVEN THE STATEROOM fans get tired whirling all day. They pause inexplicably as though to rest, After a few hours they resume work again. Nobody knows why they stopped, nobody knows why they started again. There was an electric flat iron aboard. After pressing scores of sweat-saturated uniforms all day long, it finally rebelled and refused to heat up any more. Someone suggested dropping it overboard but nobody can be found who feels strong enough to carry it as far as the rail. The gunners in the anti-aircraft towers, built above decks, sit motionless directly in the sun. You would not be surprised to see the pith helmets catch fire upon their heads. They have slowly cooked for hours in the sun, long past the point where perspiration is possible. Their faces have the look of a Thanksgiving roast which needs basting.

It Drops With a Plop

AT BREAKFAST AND luncheon officers and noncoms eat in two separate relays. Dinner they take together. Dressing for dinner consists in tucking in your damp shirt-tail, Old King’s African Riflemen and Gold Coasters tie extra napkins round their necks like hotel chefs and go patiently through the entire menu. It is perfectly good usage to wipe your streaming face, neck and arms with your napkin. But don’t try to wring out the napkins surreptitiously between your legs. It is not done. Simply allow it to drop with a wet plop to the floor and ask for a new, dry one. Most of the passengers prefer canned beer to bathtub juleps. Gliding over the waves from hot latitudes to hotter we leave bobbing upon the surface behind us the serpentine trail of tinkling beer cans.

Anti-Submarine Defense!

THE DEEPEST, STEADIEST drinkers and persspirers claim they are rendering a public service by sowing the cans astern. If an Italian submarine or a German raider slipped up behind the armed merchantman plowing ahead it might not hear. But we ourselves, standing by the rail, would certainly catch the sound, for the rattling beer cans against the invaders steel sides would give ample warning. This Falstaffian school of anti-submarine defense thinks the battle of the Indian Ocean could be won if the breweries of Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati would introduce gallon-size kegs of tinned beer under the Lease-Lend Act. They are perfectly willing to undertake themselves to defend the Atlantic convoys under the same plan. Yes, there is a war on. But the song they endlessly play on their portable gramophone comes from the United States and dates from the days of blackfaced Bert Williams, even before World War I. It is, “When That Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Ala. am.” Played upon a troopship in the middle of the suffocating Gulf of Aden, outside the cabin window of the only American aboard, it unquestionably deserves to be called a hot number.

Copyright, 1941, by The Indianapolis Times and The Chicago Daily News, Inc.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

THE BUSINESS of being a woman has become so come plicated that I've just about de-

cided to let Nature take its course. Mrs. Roosevelt says we must get ourselves ready to go out and harvest next year’s crops. For the average American dame, that certainly will mean abandonment of the usual beauty routine. Take it from me, girls, those red fingernails won’t last a split second in the cornfield or the cotton patch, and, so far as I've observed, a threshing machine in action never did anything in the matter of charm for its assistants. These dark hints from the First Lady must mean that, come summer, all our stalwart males will have been swallowed up by the Army, the Navy, munitions plants, CCC and WPA, while any leftovers presumably will be practicing the forward pass. I don’t mean to be impertinent, but the energy

expended every fall on the nation’s football fields

might be transferred to the harvest fields. But that would be bad for our morale—according to the most rabid fans—much worse than letting the women do field work while hordes of tough guys kick pigskins and others just stand idle, on strike or on some sort of relief.

Ready for the Strait-Jacket

But let that go. No sooner do I give up trying to figure it out, than I run across the statement below, and I'm now going straight to my desk fill out an application for admission to the State Insane Asylum. “Beauty,” says an eminent professor—speaking, mind you, to the very ladies who are supposed to be getting into harvest trim—“is a body fashion, produced automatically by woman’s harmonious emotional life; and bodily ugliness and unattractiveness are simply the hysterical by-products of a feminine soul torn by unresolved, unconscious conflicts. “In other words, what the unattractive woman believes to be her anatomical or physiological misfortune is actually the accurate bodily materialization rather than her body destiny. ...” That's enough. James, bring on the strait-jacket!

Questions and Answers

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Q—In which States are limestone deposits found?

A—Limestone is quarried in every State except Delaware and New Hampshire, according to the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

Q—What is papier mache?

A—A hard, strong substance made of paper pulp mixed with size, glue, rosin, clay, or the like, which is moulded into various articles.

Q—What was the maiden name of Gene Tunney’s where did she live?

If your