Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 February 1942 — Page 8

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The Indianapolis Times

ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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«ES RILEY 5551

Give Light and the People Willi Find Thew Own Wey

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1942

OUR UNIMAGINATIVE AIR WARDEN

UR air-raid warden comes through with these suggestions as household preparation for a raid: 1 Flashlight. 1 Kerosene lantern. 1 First-aid kit, with additional old linen for bandages. 1 Box of paper handkerchiefs, 1 Roll of paper towels. 2 Gallon bottles water for washing. 2 Bottles water for drinking. 1 Picnic kit, containing enamel cups, plates, silverware for six people and two thermos bottles. 6 Cans soup. 6 Cans tomato juice. Pound tea. Cans alcohol for ¢ooking. Pans, thin, to heat quickly for cooking. 1 Sand bucket on each floor as precaution against incendiary bombs. 2 Galvanized-iron 20-gallon cans for holding water, in basement, ready for instant use. 1 Ax. 1 Hatchet. 1 Shovel, long-handled. 1 Garden or tree spray, filled with water ready for e on incendiary bombs.

1 4 2

= ® = ® = » UR air-raid warden cites that list as the one he has set up for his own household—sizes to vary according to size of families. Now at first blush we concluded that our warden was ‘a practical man who had been thinking hard about his job and had devised all pertinent suggestions to protect his neighbors. But in light of recent news we fear he is sadly lacking in imagination. The appointment, for example, of Mayris Chaney, dancer and friend of Mrs. Roosevelt, at $4600 a year, to head up the teaching of rythmic dancing to children as a defense against air raids (OCD), and a competitive exhibit of water colors and sketches (OEM). No doubt, to our warden’s list should be added: 1 Night club entertainer. 1 Art collection. Nothing of course will more quickly douse a fire bomb than a nicely framed water color. And as for taking your mind off your troubles while the pineapples are bursting around vour blackout, what could be more soothing than a glide dance?

As for the cost—what the hell! After us the deluge.

TWO MONTHS ON THE DEFENSIVE

Fair Enough

‘By Westbrook Pegler |

DETROIT, Feb. 7.—This will be the who-dun-it chapter of this little series, the chapter having to do with the fact that we came right down to Pearl Harbor with a motor industry still largely engaged in production of passenger cars for individual use. Such vehicles still are often miscalled pleasure cars, a form dating from the time when the pri=vate car was a luxury of the well-to-do and was used for a Sunday ride or “spin” over lumpy suburban roads, but experience and con= templation of the near future prove that it is an almost indispensable carrier. Nobody has yet explained how we are going to do without it and the anxiety is nowhere more acute than in Detroit, where so many millions of cars have been made. But today the best minds of the community are wondering how 100,000 workers will be shifted from home to the job and back in three great mass movements daily, some of them as far as 100 miles a day, when the inconceivably vast Ford bomber plant goes into total operation next July. This is not the entire problem in Detroit, to say nothing of similar problems in practically all other eenters, but it will do as an illustration. It is the rather wounded contention of the motor makers that their rubber consumption last year did not reduce by as much as an ounce the supply available for war today.

Where the U. S. Fell Down

AT THE SOURCE there was unlimited rubber and the Federal Government, which was buying for the war, has itself to blame for its own failure to buy and store more on its own account. That millions of miles of tire service will be wasted on frivolous and uneconomical errands is inevitable and Just too bad, but a problem of public opinion and possibly of regulation. But why didn’t the industry take the initiative, warn the nation resoundingly that the cars and tires in service would have to last indefinitely, shut down last year and save time and material by total conversion of its plants for war work? Well, the automobile industry is not the Government, for one reason, and any such assumption of a duty of the Government to anticipate war and create war-consciousness would certainly have been denounced as war mongering with an eve to profits. And, finally, the big companies lacked orders from the Government for the performance of specific war tasks. Such orders as the Government had placed were being executed and here are several huge new works built from the ground up which argue the industry’s contention that its men of strange genius were not lagging when tasks were definitely assigned.

Pearl Harbor Spurs Output

THERE IS STILL some surliness and stalling, a hang-over from the bitter days of the sit-down, and the picket-line riots, but, on those war jobs which were in progress before Pearl Harbor, there has been a perceptible change of demeanor among the workers. Not even the necessity of mother Russia, whose sudden danger last June changed the war from a predatory adventure of capitalist imperialism to a fight for freedom in the minds of the Communist unioneers and strike leaders of the C. I. O, could quite overcome the sullenness of many men at the machines. But the attack on the United States by Japan caused a noticeable change and the great tank arsenal is bedecked with many home-made slogans and drawings bearing the insignia of the automobile workers union, exhorting the patriots to buy bonds. Did the manufacturers refuse or evade specific orders offered them, lest they lose private automo-

WO terrible months since the day of infamy—months of | defeat. Two more months to go, before sufficient Amer- | ican supplies may reach distant battlefields. Sufficient, not for quick victory, but at least for a fair chance. The weeks ahead are crucial. If the Allies can hold the | Java and Burma bases until spring, the worst in the Far | East probably will be over. If Russia can continue its | great offensive beyond the Smolensk-Dnieper-Crimea line, | the Nazi spring drives there and elsewhere will be crippled before they begin. Those are big “ifs.” For if Java and Burma, and their | delaying garrisons at Singapore and Bataan, fall Vetus | sufficient American planes and supplies arrive, the Pacific battle may lengthen into years. And if the Russians give | Hitler time to recover from his winter wounds, and if the | British continue to collapse in Libya, spring will bring a | bigger blitz than the world has vet suffered. The next two months will determine which it shall be. = rn = = SINC E that Sunday of Dec. 7—which seems so long ago — America has learned a lot, talked a lot, done a lot. But we have not done enough. The first shock and hysteria were followed by sober | resolve. Now there is a slight sloughing off of the will to | sacrifice. Some of the heroics have worn away. The job | is hard, more than hoopla. We read the headlines and hear the bulletins of how the valiant defenders on Bataan turn back every Jap charge. | So we properly cheer MacArthur, but foolishly assume that somebody soon will pass a miracle, wipe out the remaining Japs, and march back into Manila. We don’t know, or don’t want to know, that every day MacArthur's plight is more desperate. We learn that American planes in Burma are licking | the Japs 10 to 1, even 30 to 1; that the allied sea and air | fleets have “won” the great battle of Macassar Strait. But | we fail to face the unpleasant fact that the enemy, despite | these losses, continues to advance rapidly toward the Burma | Road in the north, and toward Surabaya in the south, the only major naval base of the allies left on that front. So we drift back into the false optimism which was so fatal on Dec. 7. We complacently conclude that—"now we have learned our lesson”—everything is moving along as well as could be expected, all in good time the tide will turn if we are only patient.

» ®

= HIS is a dangerous delusion. The enemy has no intention of giving us that precious time. It is fading with every tick of the clock, and the enemy is making better use of it than we are. Our crisis is not far off. It is here and now. Every plane, every tank, every ship today is worth 10 next month, 100 next fall. The first fighting planes shipped immediately after Pearl Harbor did not reach the Indies until this week. This nightmare lag of distance is inevitable. The battles of today are lost because of what we failed to do in December and before; the spring battles will be lost or won by what America produces and ships and convoys this week and

| “converted”

hile business to competitors still turning out cars and uncommitted to war tasks?

is worth asking, now that the whole industry is working in the war.

New Detroit By John W. Love

DETROIT, Feb. 7--What we used to know as the automobile industry is now mainly a collection of jobbing shops. Most of the plants will make parts for armament. A few will assemble complete weapons, like the Bofors and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns. The new industry superimposed on the old automobile organism in the Detroit district

Some of them just close off the ends These will put together the parts fed in from

guns, Your bomber business next year will be bigger than the automobile industry ever was, your tank business bigger than Ford Motor. It was fortunate nobody in the automobile industry had the idea the existing works could be to the assembly of these elephantine or the new buildings might not have time. Indeed. they have not all

mechanisms been erected been started

Ses iil

That I do not | know, but Congress could find out if the question !

{best and plenty of it.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Oil for the Lamps of China!

SATURDAY, FEB. 7, 1942

The Hoosier Forum

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

“A BINGO PLAYER AND PROUD OF IT” By Mrs. E. A. Hughes, 462 Holt Rd. In answer to Mrs. Dorothy White of Feb. 2 in Times Forum: You were complaining about this bingo thing in your city, yet you were at the railroader game and you said you were on the bus. I wonder if you felt you were law abiding at that time. You know that bus is a special for players only at the special rate of 25 cents. Mrs. White, what is wrong with you? I am a player from Indianapolis and go quite often up there to play and I'm telling you I would rather be in that hall playing bingo than out on your Anderson streets being knocked first one way and another by your young men and women drunks which has happened to me several times as I stopped at your stores. So Mrs. White, be fair to yourself and stay away if you don’t like them, but don’t spoil older people’s

s = “MR. CONGRESSMAN, WE ARE WATCHING YOU!”

By Mrs. E. M. K,, Indianapolis I think I will start agreeing with Wilbur G. Collinworth, Springville, on saying the Congressmen of America today are trying to pull a fast one on us taxpayers by sneaking a pension bill through while they think all Americans are just watching the Japs and Germans. Mr. Congressman, we are watching you, too. For if you had been in Washington, D. C,, to our benefit we would not have had a Pearl Harbor invasion. You would not have held our President down so he could not spend money for our own American Army’s expansion, But thank God, he did one thing, that was build up a CCC camp for the children of yesterday who were going hungry, and clothed and trained them to be strong, brave men of today and tomorrow. Also I agree with Walter Frisbie of the State Industrial Union Council on Army uniforms for our soldiers. Sure they should have the For $21 is I was riding

all they get a month.

pleasure because of your dislikes. |

(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.)

a bus Sunday a week ago when half iway into town two of our American soldiers caught a bus frozen and shivering. They didn’t even have an overcoat on. Nor their coat and pants matched or their suits fit them, either. Do you know that your American soldier out of his little $21 g month has to pay his laundry bill and dry cleaning? The ones you see so well clothed, they had the money before coming into the services or their parents bought them their nicer uniforms. Sure we pray to God with all our hearts they all come back and don’t (have to die as Fred Harrison, R. R. {9, Box 47-H, Indianapolis, said in this letter to the Forum. When you {wore your uniform, Fred Harrison, {I guess there were some criticisms made then. I know one thing, we Americans didn’t have to pay in taxes the price for your uniforms that we are going to have to pay for the uniforms the soldiers are wearing today. And this takes us back to the first of this letter, our Congressmen, with their high taxes and pensions. , ,

2 2 2 | “I LOVE CHILDREN AND DOGS VERY MUCH” Bas M. Barnhill, 2819 W. Michigan

In answer to Arthur S. Mellinger of 3500 W. 30th St.; In regard to children and dogs that was the most unkind thing I ever read. I don’t believe there is a neighbor living who wouldn’t have a smile and pleasant word for a little child. TI don't think dogs have a thing to do with having better children. Maybe what is wrong with a lot of children, they have been dumped out in the street to shift for themselves. Perhaps if they were kept off the streets instead of using them for a public

The trouble with the automobile factories was | that none of them had ceilings high enough for tanks |

or planes, or space enough between the pillars for planes. Your automobile plant today is an antique beside

{| the new high-ceilinged, air-conditioned, fluorescent- | lit halls where the big hardwares of war are being |

put together. One wonders if some of the automobile work will ever move back to its old homes. It is cheaper and faster to build new structures,

on new sites, than it is to rip out some of the equip- |

ment of the automobile shops.

Studebaker Plant Efficient

—a little plant, only 8000 men, but one of the most efficient” —is an example of the extent to which an integrated automobile works can be turned to munitions production. useful only as floor space. So is the gray-iron foundry, for 2ast iron bursts into fragments when hit by a shell, and the military people insist on steel plate or steel castings. As the dispatches have been telling, the assembly of passenger cars is shutting down What's to be done with these final assembly lines? Some of them are being taken apart, as with the world’s fastest line, that double-track arrangement at the Plymouth plant here. But several of the other lines are being left intact, for a little while. The Army may want more cars.

So They Say—

To stop when one is tired is the best way to save energy.—Dr. Helen D. Bull, New York State College

of Home Economics. -* * -*

}

next,

~ We need more guts than philosophy.—Dr. Dick inson S. Muller,

THE STUDEBAKER PLANT at South Bend, Ind. |

| |

Spring and sheet-metal shops are |

everywhere. |

Side Glances=By Galbraith

COPR. 1942 BY NEA SERVICE INC. T. M_REC. U.S PAT.

OFF.

"Sorry, dears, but | can't take care of my grandchildren tonight! After raising one famliy I'm catching up on some

parties of

playground, we surely would have better children. Personally I believe you despise dogs and perhaps if a child com=mitted a misdemeanor, you would be the first one to crab about that. If you think it is so easy to put a dog out of the way, why don’t you try it? If you have a tender spot in your heart please read “The Tribute to a Dog” by Senator Vest. I can’t imagine anyone being so brazen as to suggest destroying dogs because they happen to get on the street. I saw a small boy the other day poking a stick at a big police dog that was chained in the yard. If that dog could of gotten loose, what do you suppsoe would of happened to that little child? Children should be taught to love a dog and have respect for their feelings also. Truthfully I don’t believe a dog would go up and take a bite of anyone unless it was a mad dog or was being teased. So these words are my feelings in regard to children and dogs. I love them hoth very much.

So" Mr. Mellinger, when you get ready to declare war on the dogs, let me know. Why don’t you pick on something your size, not a poor dumb brute? 2 ” 2 “I WANT EQUALITY FOR THE FARMER” By James R. Meitzler, Attica.

Everyone knows there is no ceiling on wages anc! that the price control

./law put a ceiling on farm prices

even if that ceiling was not as low as the President and the labor unions wants. I quoted authorities showing workers are getting higher than World War wages, and prices showing the grain grower is getting approximately one-half World War prices and stated all the farmer wants is equality with labor.

From this Mr. Taylor deduces I want war prices for farmers and a $1 a day wage for labor. About as accurate as his statement, “Wages have not caused this inflation.” Then Mr. Taylor wisely asks, “If workers have no buying power, how can the farmer have a market?” Well, Mr, Taylor, if farm prices are only one-half labor’s wage, how can labor have a market? Don't you believe in live and let live?

Then comes the Department of Labor reporting factory average weekly wage went up more than 20 per cent in 1941 while the cost of

{living rose only about 10 per cent.

At the same time C. I. O. President

«| Murray urges 5,000,000 C. I. O. mem-

bers to demand more wages because

{the cost of living is rising faster

than wages. Taylor, I want equality for the farmer. You want your wage to be twice his or more than twice. If the farmer works for $1 a day that is enough for you. If you get war wages he should get war prices.

NINETY-NINE IN THE SHADE

O for a lodge in a garden of cucumbers! O for an iceberg or two at control! O for a vale which at mid-day the dew cumbers! O for a pleasure trip up to the Pole!

Then O for a draught from a cup of cold pizen. And O for a resting-place in the cold grave! With a bath in the Styx where the thick shadow lies on And deepens the chill dark-running wave.

-Rossiter Johnson (1840-1931).

of its

DAILY THOUGHT

Behold, God exalteth by his power; who teacheth like him?— Job 36:22.

TO DAZZLE let the vain design,

my ownl"

to raise the thought and touch the heatt, be thinel—Pope,

Gen. Johnson Says—

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7-It {is rare to pick up a paper these days and not find a biographical or character sketch about my classmate Douglas MacArthur, Since he is just now about the most luminous figure on the globe that is easily understood. Everye body wants to know what manner of man he is. Because he is a most unusual type and time for research is so short the danger to Mac is that he will be made into a myth—a paragon of perfection to which no man can aspire in daily living.

You can’t be brought up from boyhood with a man under dd West Point conditions and believe he is any myth or not understand him as well as you would your brother, More than one battle and at least one campaign (the march through Georgia) was decided by the knowledge of one commander of just what the other would do in a given set of circumstances—knowledge gleaned from the cheek-by-jowl living among a few score cadets at the academy and in service afterward.

Born Without Fear

FOR EXAMPLE Sherman (or one of his staff) knew that the way to Savannah was open, because the headlong Hood would surely strike at his come munications, and wear himself out against the rocke bound Thomas, No, MacArthur is no admirable Crichton and, far from being superhuman, he is as companionable a comrade as a man could wish—affectionate, generous, considerate and kind. He does have certain qualities in the superlative. He was simply born without the emotion of fear. He does not lose his head in making decisions under any excitement. He has far better than a good mental equipment. By itself it is not genius but when you add to it a fourth superlative quality it amounts to the same thing. That fourth quality is a passion for perfection in everything he does. For this he will make any sacrifice of time and effort. He has one great weakness. He has the instinct of a great actor for the limelight. When he gets it he is not unlikely to pose. He deserves it now as richly as any hero in history, but even when he doesn’t, he is apt to use words appropriate to that glare and sometimes they could make him look a little silly.

He's No Gen. Pope

PERHAPS THE only record by Robert E. Lee of a departure from ice-conversational propriety was when somebody showed him the order of the bombastic Federal Gen, Pope, coming from the West to retrieve the disasters of the Army of the Potomac. It assured his soldiers that he was accustomed to seeing only the backs of his enemies and, in derision of precedent commanders, was captioned “Headquarters in the Saddle.” Lee’s comment was? “Queer place for a general's headquarters.” Almost immediately the battle of Second Bull Run (or Second Manassas) was fought and Stonewall Jackson had made the great white hope of the Western front look like a busted lance corporal at a country fair, Gen. MacArthur will never make exactly thas kind of bull, because, regardless of his flair for fine writing and pulp paper, “come the dawn's” he has everything else it takes to be a great soldier and, which is the: point of this piece, a very human soldier.

Editor's Note: The views expressed by columnists in this newspaper are their own, They are not necessarily those of The Indianapolis Timos,

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

WOMEN ARE BORN ex« tremists. They never do anything by halves. Look at all this pother about knitting, for instance. Just about the time every female be= tween 8 and 80 has armed her< self with needles and settled down to work, comes a report that the amateurs should be stopped because wool is being wasted. There are hints now that some of the stuff turned out won't be usable, anyway, and that the feminine contingent has taken its orders too seriously. A little knitting is good for morale and the women's section of Civilian Defense, you see, but we're overdoing it. I'm not surprised. Having lived through the last war, and watched the ladies feel patriotic and noble with knitting in hand, I am prepared to go all the way with our critics who cry, “Hold! Let's have moderation!” At the moment there is no such word in the feminine lexicon. The rage is at its peak. Fever runs high. Battalions of knitters surround us. Woolen garments in the making billow about us like surging seas wherever we go. In church, at cone certs and lectures; in busses, cabs and street cars, No matter where you turn, the knitters are hard at it. Even the children are going strong.

Other Things Important, Too

ONE TEACHER I know whose patience finally cracked went to her superintendent and said, “There's a place and a time for everything. I've come here to announce that I won't have knitters in my classroom. I'm hired to teach history to these girls, and while they're reciting history to me, they're going to concentrate on history and nothing else.” “Bravo!” said the superintendent, whose word we should echo. It's time we used a little common sense and called a halt to this over-enthusiasm. Let the knitters knit, but let them not overlook other equally important things to be done. As it is, many are so tangled in their skeins that they can't see the war for the wool. Church is no place for knitting, either. We owe it to the preacher and to God to give them our whole attention.

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Burean will answer any question of fact or information, not involving extensive re« search. Write your question 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—Can gift packages enter Canada free of duvy? A—Duty-free entry of gifts, excluding advertising matter, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, or merchandise for sale, sent or taken to friends, where the value does not exceed $5 Canadian (about $4.45 in United States money) in any one case, is authorized by Cae nadian tariff laws.

Q—How much steel is required to build an aire plane? A—The amount varies widely with the type of plane. Statistics show that manufacturers buy an average of more than five tons of high grade steel for each military plane they make. Q—Does chlorine gas have a distinctive color? A-—Chlorine is a greenish yellow gas. Its color suggested the name ‘“‘chlorine” (from the Greek word

“chloros,” meaning greenish yellow), which was given . it about 1810 by Davy.