Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 February 1942 — Page 10

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MONDAY, RUARY 16, 1942

{

CHURCHILL'S LEADERSHIP

F words could wipe away the British defeats of Singapore and Dover Strait, Churchill's . deeply moving elo‘quence yesterday would restore the Allies’ certainty of victory. But words cannot win the war. * Only much faster Allied effort on the production and fighting fronts can save us all. | Mr, Churchill, of course, knows that his effective answer must be on the land, on sea, and in the air. There , is no other answer to Japan and Germany. One factor in turning the tide, as he said, must be British unity and Allied unity. Britain came through the trial of 1940, and Russia survived the assault on Moscow, partly because defense - was not destroyed by internal

bickering.

8 = »

» ” 8 HE backbone of morale is confidence in the leader. Because the people believe in him, Mr. Churchill is worth

many battalions. If the London reports are accurate, the growing lack

‘of confidence there is not in the leader himself. It is in the:

allegedly second-rate cabinet officers and military chiefs who surround Churchill. Certainly we in this country have no desire to judge Churchill harshly. He is very popular here—perhaps even more popular than in England. I cover we have an understanding sympathy for Mr. Churchill's Weakness of failing to surround himself with strong men and to delegate authority. For that, also, is the chief weakness of our own President-Commander-in-Chief. 3 Allied victory depends largely on sustaining and strengthening the great leadership of Roosevelt and Mr. chow tha Each is carrying too heavy a load—the results

show that. We hope each will speedily find stronger associates, with the ability to help these two men to lead us “forward steadfastly fogether into the storm and through the storm.”

x ey 000,000 TO SPARE

abest temporary unemployment is occurring in T= where the automobile industry is changing

over to war production. Michigan has lan unemployment-compensation reserve

of $135, 000,000. Evidence placed before the House Ways

and Means Committee in Washington proves that Michigan can make all the regular unemployment compensation ~ payments to: disp. iced workers, plus all the added benefits ‘which the McNutt-Hillman bill would provide from Federal funds—and still have $100,000,000 left in reserve. Which is but another bit "of proof that the purpose of the McNutt-Hillman bill is “not to serve a need, but to use a subterfuge to federalize the states’ unemployment-com-pensation systems. . Messrs. McNutt and Hillman should abandon his power grab, and devote their energies to placing skilled unemployed men in war industry jobs now available, and to training others in the skills that will be needed in the multitude of jobs that will open up soon. There will be work for all who can work.

HELPING THE LOBBYISTS

HE American Federation of Labor looks with approval on pensions for Congress. chairman of the A. F. of L.’s national legislative committee, in a letter to Rep. Robert Ramspeck of Georgia author of the pension law. | This, we suspect, will be news. to a good! many union members, However, Mr. Hushing’s attitude is easy to understand. When Congress votes a special nefit for its own members, it becomes more difficult for {Congress to refuse special benefits demanded for members. of other groups. The task of lobbyists and other pressure blocs is made easier. Which strikes us as a compelling reason why pensions for Congress should not have been voted—and why, having been put through without adequate consideration, “the scheme should be repealed.

'NORMANDIE NEGLIGENCE

HE Normandie was a $60,000,000 trust in the hands of the Navy Department. The great reconditioned ship was almost ready for her task of carrying desperately

a needed re-enforcement and aid to United States soldiers

and sailors fighting and dying on distant war fronts. Months

- of difficult and costly salvage work, even if it proves prac-

ticable, must now delay that task! Small wonder, then, that what happened to the Normandie has been a serious blow to civilian confidence and morale. Signs of negligence have become so grave that only

: another Roberts’ commission appointed by .the President

can compel adequate answer to the question millions of ~ shocked Americans are asking. :

dis should, and will, be held accountable for what DI pens ‘from here on. : ihe OCD's 8 Alper stables aren’t cloansed ina month,

Fair Enough

ty, 3 cents a copy; deliv-

So “says W. C. Hushing, |

By Westbrook Pegler

CHICAGO, Feb. 16.—Walter Lippmann is one of. our “best known cosmic columnists, dis-

tinctly on the scholarly or doubledome side and a conscientious and responsible man. He is not known as a news-and-fact reporter; however, so he gave me a start Thursday when he wrote from Frisco a piece that seemed to me to be a cry of alarm. His trouble in the role of Paul Revere is his reputation as an essayist. What Lippmann said belonged in no column over near the editorial matter but under a black line outside. Tightened up a little bit, this is what he said: “The enemy alien or fifth column problem on the Pacific Coast is very serious.” The coast is in immi-

‘nent danger of combined attack from within and from

without. The peculiar danger is in a Japanese raid accompanied by enemy action inside American territory. The combination can be very formidable. “For, while the striking power might not be overwhelming at any one point, Japan might do irreparable damage if it were accompanied by sabotage to which this part of the country is especially vulnerable.”

Do You. Gel What He Says?

“THIS IS A SOBER report,” he went on, “based on what is known to be taking place. The Japanese navy has been reconnoitering the Pacific Cogst testing and feeling out the defenses. Communication takes place between the enemy at sea and enemy agents on land. There has been no important sabotage, but this is no sign that there is nothing to fear. It is a sign that the blow is well organized and held back until it can be struck with maximum effect.” From that Lippmann, goes on to urge the mass evacuation and mass internment of enemy aliens,

“| most of whom, of course, are Japanese.

Do you get what he says? This is 2 high-grade fellow, with a heavy sense of responsibility, trying to tell us that the enemy has been scouting our coast, a fact unknown to our people, that the Japs ashore are communicating with the enemy offshore and that on the basis of “what is known to be taking place” there are signs that a well-organized blow is beihg withheld only until it can do the most damage. That probably means reservoirs, harbors, oil stores, naval works, bridges and the big power works and radio stations and shooting of our civilians by Japanese residents in military groups and civilian garb.

We Booted One!

WE ARE SO DAMNED dumb and considerate of the minute Constitutional rights and even of the

political feelings and influence of people whom we.

have every reason to anticipate with preventive action! : The' Germans round them all up and keep them in pens. loose anywhere in Japan or the territory she holds. But we have to be fastidious and shysteresque like a

|’lot of guardhouse lawyers and the first thing we

know it's Pearl Harbor and we even bury inside the papers a warning by a man whose reputation for sober responsibility justified immediate alarm and

-radical preegutions.

Our papers are operating under great difficulties and strain. We can’t investigate half the important tips that come to us or give due prominence to information which we do confirm. Nevertheless, we have done much fine work and our worst sin has been our poisonotis optimism expressed in the overemphasis on petty victories. But in this case I say we booted one, for if what Lippmann- says is true we should have been all over

the story within a few hours and the Japanese in’

California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.

This and That

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16. — Washington’s newest night club is haif a block from the Treasury in a limestone palace once occupied by an investment bank. . .. The wool labeling act which went into effect last July is being hailed as a great protector of consumers in wartime, when the tendency might be to reduce quality. . . .

Anti-prohibitionists now charge the false rumors of over-indul-gence at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6 and 7 were started by an English prohibition society with German connections. . . . Almost 48,000 communities in the nation depend completely on highway transportation. . « « British blackout traffic accidents increased a fifth in the second year of the war, : cent of U. S. rayon production is earmarked for Latin America. . . . The Army's shirt buttons are made

-from vegetable ivory, the tagua nut of Ecuador.

Need Some Place to Stay?

U. S. BLACKLIST of business firms sympathetic to Axis now has 3650 names in American republics, 18613 in other countries, , . , Washington has 115 licensed lodging houses and 500 homes listing rooms for tourists. . . . If you come to Washington and want a room phone REpublic 2600. It’s the new clear= ing house for all hotel and rooming house reservations. « +» » Messengers using their own bicycles must be paid an extra half cent an hour for day work, a cent an hour for night work, according to new wage and hour iaw ruling. . . . Another wage and hour ruling is that employees changing to work clothes at the plant must be paid for five minutes dressing time at both ends of the day. . .. One new ar plane rolling off the assembly line every nine inutes equals 60,000 planes a year. . . . Twelve out of every 1000 women arrested are charged with murder, 17 with driving while intoxicated, says the FBI.

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

So They Say—

If we in our own sphere of life shall give more

sweat it will mean less blood to those of our brethren who are fighting our battles and less tears for those | | mothers and fathers who have unselfishly given their | | boys to the service of our beloved land. —Archbishop 1 | Spellman, Catholic Diocese of New York.

I consider that every artist who isolates himself | ffom the world is doomed. I find it incredible that an

artist should want to shut himself away from the peo-

ple, who, in the end, form his audience. ~Dmitri Shos- |

takovich, Soviet composer and fire warden.

The attitude now seems to be that men without |

teeth can live just as well in the Army as they have . up to now out. of the service.—Brig.-Gen. Lewis B.

’ | Hershey, Selective Service director.

» * *

For the rest of my lifetime I think there will be sufficient to do trying to get the world back on its So oe Sos, # ase Brin post.

There isn’t an American or- Briton on the

. « » Four per |

* : »

Cligrsicksr-Ameriean Style!

~>v |

U. X RAD ON

S. NAVY GILBERT-MARS HAL, ISLA N Ds

‘The Hoosier Forum

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

“REAL CUTE TO SEE WHICH SISSY WINS OUT” By Mrs. E. Rietel, 1037 Chadwick St. . I have been getting a big “bang” out of the Forum the past week or so. It is going to be still more interesting “to see who wins the dog question, “The three old ladies” are having a time by themselves so I'm not going to root for any one of them. I mean “Mr. A. Mellinger, Mr. C. Kwitny and Mr, E. Pervine.” It will be real cute though to see what one of the big sissies will win out. Talk about women! I bet they would be swell for a “sewing bee.”

” 8 » “A SUGGESTION ANENT THR MILITARY HIGHWAY” By W. M., Indianapolis Just a ‘suggestion in regard to a

military highway around Indianapolis:

Why build a 25 mile highway from U. 8S. 67 (via Shadeland Drive and Arlington Ave.) which becomes a dead end road at the railroad crossing, south of Troy Ave. This proposed highway would serve only to connect with one military highway —U. 8. 31 to the south. We hope the war will be over before the time it would take to construct this highway. At present, we have three arterjes that connect four U. S. highways to the east, namely: U. S. 67; U. 8. 40, U. S. 52 and U. 8. 29, and by using Arlington Ave. Emerson Ave, and Sherman Drive, to Raymond St. it will connect those with four U. S. highways to the south, namely: U. S. 31 at Shelby St. or Madison Ave, U. S. 135 at Meridian St, U. 8S. 37 at Bluff Road or West St., and U. 8S. 67 at Kentucky Ave., any of which will make connection with Ft. Knox. To do this would require the widening of Raymond St. from Arlington Ave. to Kentucky Ave., of which two-thirds is rural district. The balance - from State Avee. to Bluff Road passes through residential district. , To relieve traffic within the city, a ‘wide highway of less than one mile could be built on Keystone

’

Side Clances—~Ey Galbraith

1Troy (via

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

your letters short, so all can

troversies excluded.

have a chance. Letters must be signed.)

Ave. along side of the Sarah Shank Golf Course, between Raymond and Keystone Ave.). This would make outlets for U. S. 31, U. 8S. 135 and U, S. 37 by way of Troy Ave., taking some of the traffic outside of the city limits. With “war time” conditions as they are now, why not use the difference in the cost of this highway

construction for materials for the|

defense of our country? o 8. 8 “GOD BLESS AMERICA... °* BUT NOT WITH BANNERS” By Earle S. Bailey, 21 E. McCarty St. Since the war started we have seen various size and quality banners on which were the words “God Bless America.” That is a prayer.

We do not know in what way the makers and displayers of these banners wish the U. S. to be blessed! by God. Perhaps some wish it to

continue as it has been for the last|

12 years. Well, America could stand some blessings. . . . Will God bless the U. 8.? Yes, he will if. . .. A repentant person cleans up so that the Lord can smile upon him. What? America, repent? What can she do in the way of cleaning up? Well, how about rotten politics? How about poor circulation of money? How about chain stores, trusts, etc.? How about the 10 thousand drinking places that are no longer called saloons? How about night sclubs How about unchaste dressing on the street— not to mention the public bathing beach, which is an embryo nudist camp? What about the character blighting shows? What about com-

panionate marriages - and lax divorce laws? Will God bless America? Yes, when America blesses God. . , , Fancy banners with the printed

prayer will not, of themselves, do it. » ” ” MR. MADDOX CONSIDERS US SUBVERSIVE, TOO! By Edward ¥. Maddox, 959 W. 26th St. It is my opinion that the printing of subversive propaganda in time of war, at least, is just as subversive for the editor who prints it as it is for the person who writes it... Now the editor of The Times Das published in the Forum a proposal ‘by George O. Davis which is a cunning, subversive proposition to establish a totalitarian slave system over this nation.

Of course if the editor desires such a system imposed on the United States there is some reason on his part for printing such dangerous stuff, but if he is not in favor of junking our whole American way of life in favor of a Soviet or Nazi system it is hard to understand what good motive he could have to keep bringing such dangerous and subiversive propaganda before Times readers.

8 » “I SURE WANT TO HELP THOSE POOR CONGRESSMEN”

By Charles King, 1311 N. Tuxedo St.

I sure want to help those poor Congressmen out and 100 million more want to do the same.

Now there is poor Congressman Bbehne. He sure needs more money. He has a poor father to take care of. Now to do this, there is an old blind lady down the street who gets $9 a month, Take $4 from her and take a little from the rest of them until you get poor Boehne’s $8000 from Indiana., Then Indiana will have set the example “for the Congressmen of other states. Then the mad house on the hill I don’t want them classed and reclassed. I want them all to get same pensions for they sure need the money. . .

several items in t dogs and children and would like for the writers to read the following.

We have always had children and we have always had dogs and I think that every child should have a good dog. I raised a family of four boys and they had a dog and wherever you would see the children you would see the dog. I don’t see why a child should not have a dog but the dog should be trained the same as a child.. If a child cries for a few minutes the first thing is spank the child, but a dog can stand and Bark and howl for hours at a time and half of the night and what happens? Nothing! Now many owners of dogs: gladly tell you how smart their Is and if you will stand and teh him, he will show you the: tricks that the dog.can do. But at the same time he will let the dog sit in the yard and bark and howl for hours and half of the night .., . In a large city on the west coast, if a dog barks between 7 p. m. and

|8 a. m,, the owner is fined. I hope

that they will adopt that law here.

DAILY THOUGHT

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lond ~Psalms 4:5.

NEAT. GOOD 3. ses humbly 11

eu

Cen Johnsoh:,

Says—

i WASHINGTON, Feb, 16-1 18 } getting to be’ ‘inpopulai to be "making “mouritains’ of mole~ hills” by talking too much of two “little setbacks” at the beginning of a long war—referring to our idefeat at Hawaii and in the | Philippines and the British dis “asters'in the Far East. The complaint in my fan mail is that I talk too much of these and too little of our “triumphs” like the Russian Resistance and the one in Macassar Straits and in the battle of production on thé home front, ' The truth is that I know little about our “triumphs” except that part that is officially given out. But I can look at a map and in my earlier years, was trained | to read one with special emphasis on its military | aspects. \ We were all given to understand that we would | follow British strategy in the Far East. It was easy | to see that the whole of that combined strategy was based on holding the Japanese in. check by use of the naval and supposed air supremacy we thought we could pool and that all that depended on vastly exe tending our lines of naval and air action by use ot the great naval bases and depots, particularly at Singae pore and Honolulu and, to an extent, Manila,

Let's Look at the Map

IS IT A “little setback” to have the basis of our whole world-strategy shot out from under our feet in a few weeks’ time? Pearl Harbor is no! permanently impaired but our losses there, combined with British naval losses off Malaya whittles away our naval supremacy and the loss of Singapore as a base reduces the areca of our naval effectiveness by 2500 miles. Our supposed aerial supremacy is proved to: be something in the future and, even then, without suffi« cient bases, that has yet to be proved. Like everyone else, this writer was thrilled at the headlines of Nazi reverses in Russia but when you lack at the map, you see that the ground recovered is about one-seventh of the ground lost. While this includes some highly important keypoints, no military student could look at that map and see much menace to the essential military position/ jot - the Nazis.

The Rough, Unvarnished Truth

THE BRITISH CAPTURE of Benghazi to which Mr. Churchill pointed as his excuse for not preparing the defenses of Singapore and why we were not bet« ter prepared in the Philippines and Hawaii, isn’t nice to talk’ about any more. It is the Germans who hold Benghs zi. Another looming danger is what may happen in China if the Burma Road, now sorely threatened, is cut. One great strength of that resistance was the faith of Chiang Kai-shek and his people in his white allies. . No American who has not lived in the Orient can imagine the value of “face” or strong outward appear= ance to an Orinetal. Once that is gone from a man or a people, there is a severe back-sliding in the esteem of Eastern peoples. We have recently lost it by landslides. It certaine ly can’t help the dogged defensive determination of the Chinese. ] Now the question of this column is, should all this be glossed over or withheld from this country? If it were a nation discouraged and fighting in the last ditch, perhaps yes. But it is a nation that seems scarcely to realize that it is in a war and totally in different to its own dangers and obligation. Not one of these things should be exaggerated buf it never did any person or any people harm to tell them the rough unvarnished truth.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HOW GLADLY WE welcome change—of weather or political seasons. Just on the edge of spring I always get dead sick of winter, and right now I'm just as sick of Democrats. Politically speaking, I mean. As folks, nothing can be seid against them. But a long dose of the same sort of people in office . can be as tiresome as years of the same kind of weather — and as dangerous. Probably I got that way from living in Oklahoma, where we've had men of the same party complexion running us without respite since 1907. Democrats, Democrats and still more Democrats, of all descriptions, from finest thoroughbreds to basest mongrels. You'll admit there is too much sameness about that. I know a few Republicans, of course, but they're in their politiagh dotage, so to speak, always ‘dreaming of past splendofs and no good for future planning. Now I can die happy. I've actually met a real, live, Republican Governor and I realize that, though rare, the species is not extinct.

They Talk About Their Kids, Too

THE LIFE STORY of Harold E. Stassen, Minnew sota’s young chief executive, resembles an Horatio Alger tale with all the trimmings, Sure, he worked his way through college, with regulation honors, by acting as a Pullman conductor on a Chicago-Mine neapolis run. He graduated from law school at 2— fancy that! Then, after 10 years, during which he married, fathered a son and did political ladder-climbing, he found himself Governor—the youngest chief execu« tive in the United States. He still holds that title, although he is now reunding out a second term and has reachgg the ripe old age, of 34. What's more, he’s tall and handsome, and looks as if he could be hard but never tough. Maybe he was softened up for my visit by the recent advent of a baby daughter, born Jan. 23—the first baby, by the way, ever born in Minnesota's executive mansion, Kathleen Esther Stassen has a brother, Glen, who is

"5 and whose photograph looks out at visiters from

his father’s massive desk at the St. Paul State Capitol with small boy appeal. We talked about children—governors, 1 find, are just as. silly about theirs as the rest of us—and about whether the poor old G. O. P, Has a future, and if so, what it is. Governor Stassen is hopeful. And 1 feel a little better, since seeing a Republican in the flesh func tioning in a high elective office. It goes to prove that things are never as bad as they seem, for in low moments I have thought such Specimens Bay gone to join the dodo. . | i :

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