Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 February 1942 — Page 10

PAGE 10 The Indianapolis Times

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

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

Price in Marion Coun-

ty, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a Yeal,

outside of Indiana, cents a month.

«SP RILEY 8551

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Woy

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co, 214 W. Maryland St.

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard News paper Alliance, NEA Services, and Audit Bureau of Circulations,

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1942

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE is reported falling. The public reaction in this country is one of helplessness—the nightmarish feeling that we can do nothing about it. But we can do something. At least, we can refrain from hysteria. That may not seem much, but it is very important. It is bad enough to lose a battle. It is worse to lose morale, for that will lose us more battles. Public pressure in the long run determines government policy and military strategy. So it can be either helpful or harmful. It is most harmful when it demands scapegoats. British public opinion got its Singapore scapegoat weeks ago when the commander-in-chief, Brooke-Popham, was fired. The battle of the Far East has not been going better since then, but worse. Which means there was more than a weakness in command, there was also weakness in supply.

» n ® ” s "THERE is no mystery about that. Prime Minister Churchill, and Foreign Minister Eden have stated that, in the difficult choice between fronts, they shorted Singaore. Pp Secretary of the Navy Knox also publicly defended the policy of fighting Hitler first and the Japs second. Then public reaction here and in England, and official Australian, Dutch and Chinese reaction, forced a modification of that Anglo-Ameriéan policy. The change has not had time to produce results. Criticism of the original get-Hitler-first strategy seems futile and unfair at this late date. Though the gamble failed in Libya, it paid off in Russia; and Churchill may have been wise in trading Britain's lesser losses in Malaya for Hitler's larger losses in Russia. ® » = = = 2 UT what matters now is the future. Either we can retreat from the Pacific, or we can fight. We cannot fight successfully unless we go all out. A few planes, a few ships, a few regiments, will only produce more heroic but fatal Manilas, Hongkongs and Singapores. The American people should be told by the President why the Battle of the Pacific continues to go against us, and prepare either for more retreats or for total war against Japan. The people need more facts, and fewer hopeful communiques about winning battles which we are losin}. Americans at home can take it, too.

#

TURN STAMPS INTO BONDS

TOROM many cities come reports that large numbers of people who have bought defense stamps are turning them in for cash instead of converting them into bonds. The assistant postmaster at Cleveland, for instance, discloses that only 44 per cent of $279,897 worth of stamps redeemed in January went into bonds. It doesn’t help the Government's war financing to buy stamps, keep them a few weeks, and then cash them in. On the contrary, it hinders. It is a meaningless transaction, involving waste of paper, effort and bookkeeping costs. Exchange your defense stamps for bonds and keep the bonds. When you do that your money really goes to work, earning interest for you and helping to win the war,

“WE SEE BY THE PAPERS” TE read of the terrible plight of Gen. MacArthur’s bat-tle-scanied troops in Bataan and at Corregidor-—out-numbered, short on weapons and rations, without word of long-awaited reinforcements. That makes us feel sad and ashamed. We read the stern admonition of War Production Boss Donald Nelson: “Until final victory is achieved all of this nation’s vast resources of men, materials and machines must be directed to the production of an ever-increasing quantity of war materials at an ever-increasing speed. There can be no compromise with the achievement of this objective. Everything else is secondary.” That makes us feel a bit more hopeful. Then we read a la-de-da press handout from the Office of Emergency Management, telling of 2582 water colors and sketches by 1129 artists entered in the “first war-time art competition,” of 109 of these pictures being purchased by the Government at a cost of $2410, to be exhibited first at the National Gallery in Washington, and then taken for a tour around the country. And again we feel discouraged. It may be that we just don’t understand about where the “finer things of life” fit into a war of death, blood, tears, sweat, toil and taxes. Just the same we suspect that several other literalminded citizens in the Filipino jungles and on that fortress isle in Manila bay must have a jaundiced eye for water colors right now,

FAILURE IN A CRISIS

[EON HENDERSON was correct when he told the General Federation of Women’s Clubs that the price-con-trol bill, now about to become law, is weak and inadequate. It specifically hinders attempts to hold down the cost of living, he said. It can not stop increases in food and fiber prices. It is an altogether insufficient weapon against inflation. All that is true. It is true because the bill has been written in political fear. Fear of the labor lobby, which has prevented any step toward stabilization of wages, although wage costs are an important element of prices. Fear of the farm bloc, which has demanded and obtained preferential treatment for agriculture at the expense of the general welfare. The Administration cannot escape its share of the blame. But the Congress which has squirmed and dodged and compromised for a half a year to produce this thorSugnlt unsatisfactory measure—a measure which could

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

DETROIT, Feb. 11.—My score in the matter of prophecy is terrible but still I just shut my eyes and swing at any old thing. So here we are again, this time to predict that the despised industrial magnate or big businessman will presently receive a new social and political rating in our national community, not necessarily’ from the Washington ideology set, but from an increasing element of both Houses of Congress, from the combatants of all services and from the public. I doubt that many of them would want to keep social around Washington, anyway. They wouldn't care for Joe Lash, the discoverer of the fountain of youth, who is still a wideeyed and innocent juvenile and a model for young America with one divorce behind him at the age of 32, and they might not gee with Dean Landis or Harry Hopkins. In their personal feelings they aren't likely to forget their experiences of the last eight years. It wasn’t so much what was done to them as the kind of people who were chosen to do it,

Patriotism Comes First

THE RANCOR of the defeated Southern states which persisted so long after the war would have been less bitter and lasting if the men who went down to reconstruct them had not been such evil swine, However, because these businessmen are patriotic and because doing is their habit of life, they will turn in war achievements in their line, which will rehabili= tate them with their fellow Americans, whose opinion counts. is The tasks which the Detroit big businessmen have done already are enormous but only a start and yet, the great buildings and machines which have hopped into being like trick drawings in an animated cartoon, are beyond appreciation by the statesmen, politicians, factional bosses and ivy-league theorists and lawyers of the dominant group. One great trouble of ours since the panic struck has been the absurd disproportion between politics and our industry, by volume and ad valorem. Reformers got in our hair and we have been lectured and educated out of our wits by bleedinghearts who saw no good in anything American, although Europe and particularly mother Russia copied the achievements of these very businessmen.

Businessman Is the Captain

AND NEVER mind the line about labor with an uppercase L and the obscure engineer and chemist having done it all. Without the organizing genius and the daring imagination of the promoters and executives, the man with the hoe would still be his oid self and his field would not now be converted with a plant almost a mile long and a quarter mile wide housing machinery more than two stories high, all created within 11 months. The businessman has been the captain of the team in all its major victories and but for him the fighters wouldn't have a chance for their lives in this war, Are they in for profits? Yes, if any. They are in it for patriotism first, however, and they have the intelligence to realize that when it all adds up there may be no such thing as profits, money or even private ownership as we understand them now. They are thinking only of turning out such an’ overwhelming mass of weapons that the fighters can finish the war in the briefest time and with the smallest possible loss of American lives, for their sons are fighting, too. I asked a big one if he thought his company would still own the plant after the victory. “One thing at a time,” he said. “Does a man on his wedding day worry his head about how he is going to get a divorce?”

This and That

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11. — Mayor La Guardia's recent suggestion that all of labor's overtime earnings and all of industry's profits be paid for in defense savings stamps and war bonds has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. It was a good enough suggestion as one device for preventing inflation by holding back money which might otherwise be spent on civilian goods, and for providing enforced savings which might be spent beneficially during the post-war recovery period. But the ide:. has to be abandoned for one very practical reason. As the stamps and bonds are now issued, they are convertible into cash 60 days after issuance. A number of industries are finding that out now —in a big way, They gave their employee stamps and bonds in the form of Christmas gifts and yearend bonuses, thinking this was a good way to encourage thrift among their employees and help the government at the same time. But practically all these gift stamps and bonds are now being cashed as quickly as possible. ” 5 s THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD was six years old recently, and though NLRB used to be the biggest news in Washington, this sixth birthday and the accompanying sixth annual report received scant notice. A summary of the board's sixyear record before the courts, however, is worth noticing: 2 The U. S. Supreme Court has enforced 26 board orders in full, enforced six with modification, and denied only two. In the same period, the Circuit Court of Appeals enforced 140 board orders in full, 102 with modification, and denied enforcement of 56.

Washington Jig-Saw

PUERTO RICO and Virgin Island distilleries will be permitetd to continue making rum instead of converting to industrial alcohol. . Five million more non-agricultural workers are now employed than at the height of the boom in 1929. . . . Treasury procurement office buys nearly 400,000 items, from pen points to locomotives. . . . “Hoof and horn meal,” powdered as a slaughterhouse by-product, has been found effective in quickly smothering incendiary bomb fires, . . . More than 2000 U. S. cities and towns with a total population of 12.5 million have no form of local public transportation. . . . U. 8. nurses in this war will triple the 21,000 nurses recruited for World War I... . Farm Security Administration will have 100 mobile, migrant labor camps. in operation for seasonal farm workers this summer. . , .

So They Say—

What we need today is not so much comfort as more of the kind of faith that will make it true of us as of the scientist, that the word “impossible” is to us much like a spur to a horse.—Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor New York's Riverside Church.

* * *

Never in all history has there been such a tidal wave of hatred in Europe as now has welled up against the Germans.—George H. Earle, former U. S. Minister to Bulgaria. ak * * : We are not going back to anything. - We are going

haa

A oa LEE

Part of

INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _____ the Fifth-Column

Job

The Hoosier Forum

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

ATTACKS NIGHT PARKING AS SERIOUS MENACE By T. V. X., Indianapolis I wonder if our defense committees of Indianapolis realize how dangerous night parking in streets is? They don’t allow parking of any kind on a public highway.

Yet they let cars park all along a main street. Sometimes one can’t even walk through. It’s bad enough in the daytime but at night it is very bad , .. There is a law that says you must have a light on your car when you park in city at night. I don’t think this has ever been enforced, yet it must have been a good law or it

never would have passed.

The new defense law says, I believe, that if there is a blackout you are to pull next to the curb at once. But how on earth could you pull in to a curb with cars there? If there should be an explosion, fire, wreck or what might happen during these war days, it would pe impossible for fire trucks, ambulances, doctors and so on to get close enough to a building or house to be of any service . .. People who have garages should put their cars up at night or park them from main heavy traveled streets. Apartment house owners should provide garages or parking lots, and if they must park in streets make them display a light of some kind 00

* 2» 49 “NOBLE CONGRESSMEN VOTE THEMSELVES A PENSION” By H. A. Wilson, Coatesville

While listening to a newscast the other day I heard a commentator say that Donald Nelson had refused to ask the members of OPM to give up their positions with private companies and devote all their time to speeding up defense at a proposed salary of $10,000 per year. According to Nelson these men have obligations to meet which would be impossible at the proposed salary since they are accustomed to getting many times that. Yet Nelson, Knudsen and the rest of OPM think the draftees should consider it a patriotic privilege to sacrifice their jobs to serve in the

(Times readers are invited their these columns, religious con-

Make

your letters short, so all can

to express views in

troversies excluded.

have a chance. Letters must be signed.)

armed forces at a measly wage of $21 per month. These young men do not have the obligations that the wealthy friends of the party in power have but they are just as important. Yes, our officials in Washington are a conscientious lot. Their motto seems to be “All for me and the devil get the rest” instead of “One for all and all for one.” » = 8 “WHO DUMPS TRASH ON THE HIGHWAYS?” By Arthur S. Mellinger, 3500 W. 30th St. Mr. Kwitny, 2929 Ruckle St., took a contrary view about the letter I wrote about dogs. I forgot to put in the letter that the child attacked was only five years old. I never heard of anyone who thought that a child only five years of age would be responsible for its acts. So many people come to the defense of a dog for its acts that first it was teased or provoked to bite someone. There is a humane way of putting dogs, and cats too, out of the way; that is a rifle. I have dore it to cats that had become chicken thieves, I did not sack it up and haul it away and dump it upon someone else to be a “bird killer.” There ought to be about five or 10 million cats put out of the way, so the birds could have a chance to multiply and take care of insects. For instance, we are practically helpless in the face of the “Mexican bean beetle.” Incidentally, cats and dogs are not the only thing city people dump algng our highways. Where do all the beer cans, trash, paper, and even garbage come from? You will find it mostly on the right hand side of the road, leaving the city. Then it comes from people who

~

° COPR. 1942 BY NEA

ic. T. M.

aan

“Yes, that was the hand wien we went down four spades doubled, | ro

Side Glances=By Galbraith

. 8. PAT. OFF.

Eat

age goming out of the city. Is not a public highway as much of a front yard as your own? Would you want country people to throw trash on your front lawn?

When anyone has no more respect for a highway than to use it for a dump he is lacking in civic pride. Junk cars do not throw that kind

{of trash along the road.

If you can afford that good car you can take care of your rubbish.

” 2 2 A PROTEST FROM RISING SUN, IND. By Abbie L. See, Rising Sun Just how did it occur to you, Mr. Rocker, that Hoosiers at Rising Sun, Ind. should change the name {to Pearl Harbor? You seemed to {have selected the most discordant name in the whole of the archipelago. Sure the name would always be remembered, but as a constant reminder of things unpleasant, also as the graveyard of many of our American boys. Are you a dreamer or just nothing to do but think up names? . . . The people of Rising Sun, Ind., mind their own business (wish you would mind yours) and are all doing what they can for war defense. If the time ever comes when the people here want to change the name, they will most surely select the name,

82 8 URGES U. S. PROVIDE 10-ACKE HOMESTEADS

By Thomar Lloyd, R. R. 6, Box 437 To develop moral strength and financial soundness, I move the Government buy one 10-acre farm in each square mile of farm land over the whole country, put on each a good two-room house, sell them to families of the low wage class. The cost of these farms should not exceed two thousand dollars each. This would give a new life to many hopeless people and a place to start to help themselves, and that stimulant to good citizenship, a home. Farm life has gone stale, it needs revival and a resettlement. The people have been moved off, now the farms are just a mechanized desert. Back to the land, our God given heritage for a new life.

# 2.» “TAKE ALL THESE CURS

TO THE COUNTRY” By E. Pervine, Indianapolis I am speaking to Charles Kwitny who claims he knows about dogs. Of all the silly statements I've heard, yours is the silliest. You say that “if a dog bites a child you are sure the child done something to the dog first.” That is absurd. In my neighborhood you have to carry rocks if you want to walk the streets in safety. I wholly agree with Mr. Arthur S. Mellinger. Mr. Kwitny, if you are so fond of dogs, why don’t you go to the country and take all these curs with you?

THE ORIGIN OF THE FORGET-ME-NOT

When to the flowers so beautiful The Father gave a name, Back came a little blue-eyed one (All timidly it came); And standing at its Father's feet And gazing in His face, It said, in low and trembling tone, “Dear God, the name Thou gavest me, Alas! I have forgot!” Kindly the Father looked Him down And said: “Forget-me-not.” ~—Emily Bruce Roelofson (1841-1921)

DAILY THOUGHT

The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.— Psalms 11:5. §

_ WEDNESDAY, FEB. 11, 1043

Gen. Johnson

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11. —The question of taxes on excess war profits is a tough one. It becomes apparent that Manufacturer A has made a profit of 20 per cent, even 200 per cent, and we are all shocked. But did you ever stop to think about the history of that cone tract? Let's say it is something / like the breech block of a minor - cannon—a difficult forging and machine job that has to be perfected in every part to measurements of exquisite fineness, The young officer who brings it in knows all about its design. Perhaps it has 45 separate parts. He dise cusses price per finished product with several good firms in that business.

Bince no one in their industry has had any exe perience on that kind of thihg, they make their best estimates. A’s is the lowest. The pieces go into the shop and are divided up among the various foremen. Now if there is anye thing a machine shop foreman loves to do, it is to show up how little a mere theorist with a drawing board and a wooden model knows about getting a product through the shops.

Foremen Have Their Fun

EACH FOREMAN goes to work, simplifying these pieces, adapting them to his equipment and reduce ing both the number of parts and the number of operations, Such cases are the exception rather than the rule, but there are plenty of cases where the number of parts, of operations and the amount of cost has been reduced by less than half—with a better product. The changes are accepted, but the contract stands. Sometimes the estimated profit ig multiplied. There is another basic reason why percentage of profit on a single contract is no proper measure at all of “profiteering.” I know it isn’t done in just the way I am about to describe, but, to simplify a complex subject, I am using that way which is approximately duplicated many, many times monthly in practice, A man takes a contract to build a complete bate tleship. Let us call it by a term used in the oil= drilling industry—a “turn-key” contract—that means that he will do all the work and deliver the vessel ready for her trial run in three years. When you look at his books you find that he has made a profit of 10 per cent on the contract price— and hell begins to pop. The figure runs to millions,

Suggesting the Answer

BUT HERE is another much smaller manufacturer —forging and stamping parts of the steel carriage of a pistol for $1.80. Look at his books and his profit turns out to be 9 cents each or 5 per cent on the contract price—just and patriotic citizen that he is, But look a little further. It took a month's time to run his product through the mill—not three years, He made 60 per cent per annum on the contract price or 360 per cent figured on the same basis as the ship, Finally, the percentage of profit to investment is the only reasonable gauge and even that is not easy You can’t figure “excess” profits on war profiteering on any easy formula, I can’t see any way out except some form of retroactive taxation, with a good deal of discretion left to the Government to reach in and take profits in excess of the reasonable and customary earnings on either investment or turnover in the same or similar kinds of business.

on Ray Notes Tue views S10 vied by columnists in this aper are their own. ey are not necessarily t of The Indianapolis Times, mcs

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

\

“SHE'S ALWAYS KIND.” The other day I heard that said about a certain woman, and although I did not know her I wish I might, for those words are the finest of all compliments. Yet how seldom we hear them, Many other qualities have been put above kindness in the last two decades. It has rated low in the list of feminine virtues, We say, for instance, of someone we admire, “She’s lovely,” or, “she’s charming,” or, “she’s clever,” or, “she’s smart,” and somehow it is enough to ingratiate the person in our favor. The sort of brittle brilliance represented by women of the Clare Boothe and Dorothy Parker type has had a tremendous vogue. The wisecrack was esteemed above wisdom or sympathy, and many naturally simple persons worked hard to shape theme selves into artificial beings because sophistication was the fashion. We didn’t like to be ourselves; we wanted to fole low the popular patterns, no matter into what alien fields they led us. I think we are now coming into a time when kindness will be restored to its rightful place—at the very top of the list of human virtues, It's taking a war to knock the nonsense out of us and make us realize that we women must hold fast to “the ancient beautiful things” or the war, and possibly a world, will be lost. :

Kindness Is a Grace

TODAY THOUSANDS of out sex are engaged In the healing arts. Girls are training to be nurses and Lelpers, and wives think about how they can be better partners to their husbands and better mothers to their children. In a universe of woe, the individual feels a heavier responsibility for keep ing alive, within her little circle, those qualities that make life worth living. When so many people are afflicted by secret wore ries and sorrow, careless words that hurt must be withheld. How can we tell whether the salesman to whom we speak sharply may be brooding over a son in a far-off place of danger? Perhaps the woman with the haunted eyes, who irritates us by her wit lessness, may have heard yesterday that her boy is dead. Maybe the shiftlessness we are so quick to resent covers up a breaking heart. In a period when humanity is so beset by pain and grief, kindness is a grace every woman should cultivate.

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will answarsany question of fact or information, not involving extensive ree 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—Are employers compelled to pay for the waiting time during black-outs, under the Wage-Hour Law? A—Acting Administrator Baird Snyder declared recently that time spent by employees on the preme ises of an employer covered by the Wage ‘and Hour Law during black-outs or air-raid alarms, when no work is done, need not be compensated for as “hours worked.” : Q—Please give the ranks and branches of the armed service in which the four sons of President Roosevelt are serving. A—~—James is captain of Marines; Elliott is, captain ‘the A ; Franklin Jr. is a lieutenant in