Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 February 1942 — Page 13

: polis Times REHOLDER MARK FERREE Rd or ~~ Business Manager (A SORIPES HOWAS 9 NEWSPAPER)

"ROY W "HOWARD RALPH E President

Owned and punish = Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delive daily (except Sun | dds Pla cent

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3 - Mail pibssripiont rates Member ¢ United Press,

in Indiana, $3 a year, Scripps - Howard News- outside of naianh, 6s paper Alliance, NEA

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1042

THE WARNING THE U-boat attack on the Aruba area is probably our luckiest break since the war began. Itisa terrible warning, but unlike Pearl Harbor 1 not crippled Jas—not yet. Seven to 10 tankers s damaged is a very small price to pay for the disco anal that outlying Caribbean defenses of the Panama C and of a major allied oil source are inadequate. If shells from the enemy subs had not gone high, they might have fired the largest refineries in the world—the source of half the oil for the British navy, army and air corps before the fall of Palembang, Sumatra, and even more important now. If the pack of U-boats, after piercing the outer defense screen 500 miles to the east, had by-passed the Aruba temptation and continued their straight line to Panama, we might have paid much higher for the warning. »

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” 8 8 . TE questions raised by this daring enemy raid, deep into our most. closely guarded waters, are as numerous as they are obvious: Is this another Pearl Harbor case of the Navy and Army, which share the patrol responsibility, being asleep? “ Is this another case of depending too much on shore stations and ships and too little on air patrol? At what place in the defense line of islands and guarded channels screening the Caribbean did the enemy find a convenient hale? In the American part of the line, or the British? ~~ We have no doubt that the President and the chiefs of the fighting services are seeking, and will find, the answers to these disturbing questions. Meanwhile, the nation is fortunate that the warning cost so little.

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THE INDISPENSABLES

WHEN it comes to bad timing, here’s a beaut.. On the very day that millions of American men were registering for the draft, Selective Service headquarters in Washington revealed that it had issued a “directive” authorizing local boards to grant draft deferment to labor leaders. Also to employers’ labor-relations men, and to Government labor-liaison men. This came on top of a similar announcement about movie people. It’s going to be a great comfort to your draftee, as he rolls off a hard cot before dawn to catch a transport for parts unknown, to reflect that the walking delegates, the dues collectors, the picket-line strategists, the men who call out on strike “the men behind the men behind the guns,” are safe, along with Hollywood glamour boys, for the duration. 3 If there’s anybody that can be spared from civilian life right now, certainly it’s the gentry who have sand- ‘ ‘bagged carpenters and laborers for extortionate union dues before Si them to help build Army barracks.

RIGHT TO THE POINT \ HOMAS H. REED, the former director of the National

Municipal Consultant Service,was dealing in no nambypamby words in his address yesterday to the Rotary Club here. Running a metropolitan area, said Mr, Reed, is like fighting a war. The prime need is unified control. Not - five or six different governments; not three, not two—one. Abolish your township setups, put the enire county under one administration. Call it what you will—city or county —have one government handling zoning, planning, police, health, school, fire, all the problems that go into running one gignt community. | ‘ giant. is war-time and you can’t go into any huge public works program. But you can plan, said Mr. Reed. And you can straighten out your governmental problems. 8 =» = | 8 8 =» A HAT Mr. Reed had to say was particularly pertinent for Indianapolis. What i is going to happen in the postwar days to come? Whit is happening even now? Why, the building program keeps spreading in an ever-outward arc. Out beyond the city limits. The problems of police and fire protection, of traffic control, of health rules, all these are Baphigesrdly handled by various overlapping agencies. 2 Yes, it’s time for Indianapolis to come of age, to start thinking of consolidating our many-headed governmental ‘monster. Time to start planning for one county-wide | government. |

way of making democracy work.

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‘COME ON, MR. COFFEE

NONGRES MAN COFFEE of ‘Washington arose in the P House the other day to lambaste newspapers for attacking ensions for Congress.” ~« “Will the newspapers,” asked Mr. Coffee, “tell ow much it costs the taxpayers for the subsidy we give to them through their use of the second class mailing privilege? From $90 ,00 ,000 to $1 20,000,000 a year the news i e subsidized by the taxpayers, because it costs re to send out their papers through the mail than they payethe Post Office for this service.” The genleman is co ect. The newspapers do got. a beidy from the Government. And, as we have said be2, this subsidy was voted by Congress and should be reled by Congress, We repeat what we have said previ-

apolis T es and the Scripps-Howard orwant no free ride at the taxpayers’ expense, We : t of distributing our newspapers.” ra chance to. support a Will Mr.

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Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

CHICAGO, Feb, 18—Edmund Scott, a reporter for PM, the strange journalistic whatizzit which Marshall Field runs in New . York, has written a shocking account of conditions aboard the Normandie and along the New York waterfront, generally, under

the domination of the Longshore- |

men’s Union of the A. PF, of L., which is' an unconscionable racket

with a long underworld history. |

. For authentic background on this union read “Dock-Walloper,” the memoirs of Dick Butler, an old underworld character who formerly was an official of the racket along the Chelsea piers and as a side job delivered Harry Thaw from Matteawan, a historic jailbreak. It was ghosted by Joseph Driscoll, I believe, and not only reads well but checks well against the known’ facts of life on the West Side waterfront. Scott recently was assigned to obtain work as a longie aboard the Normandie. He joined the union at a cost of $26, marked down from the standard price of $100, without the slightest inquiry and was put to work on the Normandie notwithstanding his own intimation to the business agent of the longshoremen that he had been “in trouble” and might be using a false name,

The FBI Certainly Knows It

SCOTT WAS PICKED for the Normandie job by the union and when he had written his story his editors spiked it because, they report, it was “a blueprint for sabotage.” However, PM says the gist of the piece was communicated to Capt. Charles H. Zeerfoss, the

chief of the anti- -sabotage division of the Maritime

Commission, and that Zeerfoss scoffed and warned the paper to get Scott out of there “before he gets shot.” Scott reported loafing by the men and himself, stalled a total of one and one-half hours in one day, locking himself in staterooms aboard the liner to smoke, He saw 20 open barrels of excelsior into which a saboteur could have tossed a match and learned that there were no precautions against sabotage by fire through any of the simple chemical devices which the Germans used freely Jo ignite cargoes in the last war. The character of the Longshoremen’s Union cannot be unknown to the FBI. Or any other Government agency. It is a job monopoly extending to the vital shores of Staten Island and Jersey where racketeers rule with despotic power and prey on the en not only for fees and dues but for various shakeowns.

You Read It, Too, Eleanor

I AM RATHER glad PM did it because when I explode such stories they are instantly denounced as “labor baiting” by such journals which have played up to these rackets along with Mayor LaGuardia whose sympathy generally runs with pickets and unioneers and against his own cops whose loss of morale is largely attributable to that. The Longshoremen’s Union not only certifies the longies but actually qualifies the guards who are supposed to protect property on the piers. This union was responsible for the rise of Harry Bridges because its acquiescence in the pitiless robbery and exploitation of the workers put them in a mood to adopt any leader who would pretend to be their friend even though he should exploit them, himself, in the interests of the Communist conspiracy. The attention of Senator Wagner and Mrs. Roosevelt is invited to the story of Edmund Scott in last Tuesday’s issue of PM which certainly will not be accused of union-booting, having started life with a large Communist cell on the editorial side and buttered the union fakers consistently down to now,

U. S. Aviation

By Maj. Al Williams

THE OUTSTANDING explanation for the ease with which the Japs raided Hawaii is the failure of the Army and the Navy to coordinate the materiel and personnel at their disposal. Co-ordina-tion between the Army and Navy has been much of a myth, still is, and very possibly always will be, unless something is done to take . responsibility for co-ordination out of the hands of officers of the two old services and put it in the hands of a unified Supreme ‘command. The average American can readily recognize that, when the two parent services do not co-ordinate their efforts, the air forces of those organizations are left in a vacuum. The Roberts report flatly states that, “The major part of the damage to ships in Pearl Harbor resulted from torpedoes launched from planes.” That means that what damage wasn't done by aerial torpedoes was done by aerial bombs. The entire damage at Pearl Harbor was done by airpower.

The System Is Impeding Us

HERE WE FIND again the recurrence so customary in this war—airpower constituting the striking power against surface and land forces commanded by non-fliers. Admiral Kimmel was not an aviator; neither was Gen. Short. What they knew and thought of airpower was based upon hearsay and was influenced by the prejudices and jealousies found in both their parent organizations for anything with wings on it. The Army and the Navy have never co-operated effectively, either in peacetime or in wartime, and they won't co-operate until we have a supreme command, in which will be represented the third and most potent arm of modern warfare—airpower. It’s the system which is impeding us in this war. We've got to have a ‘unified high command, and we've got to have our three national weapons—Army, Navy, Air—under the jurisdiction and at the orders of that command, set up in such fashion that they can be wielded in the best interests of the safety of the United States.

So They Say—

Not since the days had much of a chance to lose a war. And we have a chance to lose this one.—William L. Batt, chairman, Inter-Allied Raw Materials Board.

nominee, 1940.

If we went to e, | ington to get, and is than giving ~Lord ister. |

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I see Tio difference’ between ‘the man. who |

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thumbs down on Wagner, because he was,a German, |

and the man who bans Mendelssohn, because he. was a Jew. ~=Psems Taylor, composer. ; 2 « * :

We live best sinuiy shat we di sot want

f the Revolution have we ever |

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[Where We Are Right Now

The Hoosier Forum

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

“WE NEED MEN TO PULL, NOT TO GRUMBLE”

By O. O. Dismore, Scottsburg

Kindly inform me and others in this Forum just what are these columns writers trying to do. Kill the G. O. P. Party or just stir up hard feelings? It looks sometimes as though ‘Hitler had them in hand. Some of them seem to be of a very jealous nature. Why cause all this perplexity in times like these? Seems fo me by the looks of these pictures they might be able to man a gun. If behind a gun I am sure they would feel so much better, for then they would“ be doing something worth while. . . . We need men to pull, not aramble at every litfle thing. They remind me of two dogs that were fighting on a bridge over a bone, growling, holding on till they saw their own reflection in the water, Then started to bark, of course the bone fell into the water and was lost. . . , " 2 »

‘INDIANA SHOULD LEAD IN ABOLISHING DISCRIMINATION’

By John W. Crook, pastor, Scott Methodist Church, 2121 Martindale Ave. « + + For the past few weeks I have lost many nights’ sleep, thinking of the many embarrassments the Negro citizens of this state and other states meet every day and week through discrimination and prejudice and brutish treatment.... The millions of Negroes in these United. States are loyal and love the Stars and Stripes, and are giving and will give their last drop of blood to defend it. The heart of Indiana has always been to do justice to mankind. During the days of slavery Indiana was one of the stations of the underground railroad, helping to send the slaves from Kentucky to the land of freedom... . I am writing to Governor Schricker to ask if he will do his best to apbeal to Indiana, and ask that we lead the other states in carrying out the President’s command that we abolish all prejudice and discrimination. I was in a small restaurant the other day in a hurry to go to the hospital to administer to a sick girl, with a fellow minister from another city, and asked to

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make - your letters short, so all can have a chance. Letters must

be signed.)

be served a sandwich and a cup of coffee; they refused us unless we would go to the kitchen; we refused. to go to the kitchen. and then stopped in a sandwich shop, and there again we were refused service unless we would go out the door to drink it. I don’t think that you know of such conditions in

“Glorious Indiana.” It is also hard!

for Negroes to buy a sandwich on the highway. I am... appealing to the Governor of Indiana in the name of the Great God of the. Universe to ask Indiana to lead in abolishing these conditions in this great state and other states of the Union. He has the privilege of finishirig the work that was started years ago by Abranam Lincoln. » ” »

“NO MIDDLE GROUND IN NATION'S WAR EFFORT”

By A “Little” American, Indianapolis We read much in lamentation of the] evident complacency of the Anierican people toward our position in a war-mad world. . , . We read the people. are,ready to bear down and go after the serious business of winning this war. But, since sacrifice and patriotism is a requirement of all Americans in times like this we are not going to get “het up” over the war until those prices for freedom are paid by all Americans, not just we little folks. For example, every radio program break is filled with an appeal to save your breakfast food boxes, or your old newspapers for they are sorely needed in our war effort. Are they trying to kid us? Each 24 hours the front porches of the city and the mail boxes of the country are receptacles for tons of

cheap, worthless, hand bills and

Side Glances—By Galbraith

circulars sponsored by certain adherents of “Business as usual” and evidently their slogan is “Forget Pearl Harbor.” How can the American people be other than complacent in the face of such a farce? Either certain materials arg needed or they are not needed. There is no middle ground. If such things are needed to help| ® preserve our homes, is it not also needed to preserve their business? I have a sneaking opinion that paper is needed and there is one way in which we, the people, can be patriotic. Save those hand bills both for defense and to remind us that their sponsors are no more American than Hirohito who is also using our “scrap” for his own selfish ends.

2 ” 2 “MAYBE ADOLF WOULD TAKE MAYRIS OFF OCD’s HANDS!” By Margaret Stearns Reese, Thompson Rd. At the most critical period in all history for the United States and indeed the world, with men fighting and dying, enduring hell and deprivation for a paltry $21 per month, Mrs, Roosevelt appoints a dancer in the OCD at $4600 a year. There are thousands of Civil Serv-

ice employees in the service of their

country who never have one whole night at home with. their families, who go all hours, in any kind of weather, who out of loyalty to their Government turn down one high salaried defense job after another for from $1440 annually upward to $2300 yearly. These men receive no medals for valor, they get no heaglines, they

are the unimportant mirfority who|

keep your country’s mails moving on schedule. They receive no time and .a half on Sunday, nor double time, and when they return to their homes, they are too tired for any social life, These men are not leeches. They are not chiselers and they render a service just as valuable in proportion as our armed forces, They buy bonds and stamps beyond. their means that their money might help Uncle Sam. But the American people are certainly not making such sacrifices to pay Mayris Chaney $4600 a year, What has she got to offer that is so valuable? Let her get a job in the theater where she belongs—if she’s good enough, and if she isn’t place her on relief like others were and give her a WPA Job for about $10 or $12 a week. When this country is at war and on the losing side at that, when we are painted dark pictures for all of 1942 and perhaps much longer, why can’t Mayris Chaney volunteer her services? . We're willing to work and save and make every sacrifice for our armed forces but we're not going to see Mayris Chaney haul down $4600 a year for a pair of slick legs when our sons are being sent all over the world for any $21 a month. Someone ought to page old Adolph Schickelgruber, he goes for dancers. Maybe he could take her off the OCD’s hands.... EJ » » “WHISKY TAXES IN STATE

JUST AIN'T HAY” By Si Gilbert B. Stambre, 3021 N. Keystone

I have just finished reading Mrs. willard G. Gray's letter in the Forum and wish to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with her. We may spend on.whisky and the like but we also buy defense bonds and stamps. What, pray tell me, are a few measly paper sacks and being rationed on other things that actually are not necessities to a million dollars a day in taxes for whisky alone in Indiana, and “that aig hay” Think that over, Mrs. Tay.

DAILY THOUGHT The labourer hy of. his

longer satisfied with ‘the answers they get.

Gen. Johnson says—* oe

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18.—The escape of the German fleet to the -Helgoland Bight wasn’t just a playful little game of hide-and-seek, 4 . When it was nicely bottled up on the French coast, Britain at least knew where it was and could” and should have ridden herd on: it without tying down too much. of her dwindling navy. Now it is like: some. nameless terror in the dark. The British, and perhaps we, will have to weaken their naval strength in many places to seek,

t | find and destroy it and prevent some new and hideous

raiding and-surprise attack anywhere on the earth's. surface. Furthermore, after what happened at Pearl Harbor, and: to the. Normandie right under our noses—anye thing may happen. + There @are at least three great French capital ships and many lesser crafts. The Italian navy may not be so hot, but it has a good deal of modern tonnage;

The Questions People Are Asking

IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE that these remnants might be gathered to make. a f ble high seas fight arid what is not impossible to bap! n these days may happen. The British navy problem is completely changed by Singapore. The long route around Africa is, as Mr. Churchill says, the only way left open to them to the Far Bast. If we are to send a great A. E, F, to New Zealand and Australia nak is the route we must take. With all our shipping for either navy or mercantile marine there is not enough tonnage in sight or builde ing to ship, supply or convoy a great army, People talk of our carrying on the fight in the Far East. Few stop to ask “Why?” or “With What?” How much of our Navy was crippled at Pearl Harbor and how long will it be before we can repair and use it? What is the actual state of the British battle-. ship fleet which should have blocked the straits of Dover for the German escape? People are asking such questions. They are no They have a right not to be satisfied, because so many. of those answers have proved misleading or downright. untrue.

"The Truth Is Not Being Told"

IN THE MEANTIME, the bedlam of confusion, in< competence and waste at Washington re-echoes throughout the land. There is a constant jealous grabbing for power and the foundations of power seem to be the multiplication of inexperienced personnel to do the work by many that could be done by few. Its superstructure is the attempt Jy each bureau. cratic chieftain to duplicate or displace something that is being done by another. Why? Because it im= proves the resulting work? No, because it Inflated the stature of the successful power-grabber, Take the question of deferment for the draft om account of employment in a necessary industry. Well, under the guise of having a “labor supply” adminiss, seation, direction of this function of the draft, after Nites battle among the Secretary of Labor, Paul McNutt, Sidney Hillman and several others, has been: won by Hillman. This was simply a struggle for power. It is just. an instance of what is happening in several places, It is why things don’t get done. It leads to a con viction that is sweeping this country—that the truth’ is no being told and that, if it were told, it would be almost too nauseating to suffer.

Editor's Note: The views expfessed by .coluninfsts if thie ’ newspaper are their own.’ They are not necessarily . those - of The Indianapolis Times. i

This and That

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18— Eighty per cent of the automobile: | and truck trips are for fewer than: 20 miles. . , . Fewer than 2 per ‘cent of the cars and trucks go: | more than 100 miles from their: | starting point on any one trip. . «+ » Fifty-four per cent of farm: tractors are now rubber tired, ,.. | A hitherto nameless peak in the: Great’ Smokies has been dubbed: Mount Lanier, after the southern: poet, Sidney Lanier. . . .. Floyd Odlum says the united: nations must outproduce the Axis two-and-one-half: to eme to win, and that it will take from two to three: months just to place the orders for munitions now: appropriated for by Congress. . . . Two hundred thous! sand “lead men” are to be trained by July 1 to ine struct war workers anc break them in on new Jobs, + « + Leon Henderson's Price Schedule No| 99 was on. aspirin,

Taxicabs Into Ambulances - WASHINGTON TAXICABS are being organized’ into ‘emergency amubulance units; .| Municipak anti-smoke ordinances may be upset by difficulties in getting low-smoke coals, . . . Tin’ mn cans has been reduced from 15 to 1.25 per cent. « +'« The fire pump Industry is stepping up production from 30 to 100 units a day. . , . The typewriter industry, which made a million machines last year, will cut production 25 per cent and convert to ordnance production. . . ; Brush makers must use only 45 per cent imported Chinese pig bristle, substituting horsehais, nylon, sisal; badger or ixtle, . . . Canadian and United States price administrations are co-operating to set maximums on newsprint, , , . Consumers who find retail sugar prices more than 1 cent higher on a five-pound bag than they were in the first week of December should pro< test to the storekeeper.

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Questions and Anwar:

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will answer any: auostion of facet or information, net involving extensive res. search. Write your question clearly. sign mame and address, : inclose a three-cent postage stamm, Medical or legal advice’ cannot be given, Address The Times Washington Service: Bureau, 1013 Thirteenth St.. Washington. D. C.) 1 :

Q—Why is Carnation Day celebrated in connection of the birth of President McKinley? | A—The anniversary of his birth has been observed as Ce Bower a a twa vrs om I Ks Wins vorite flower and he always wore one in His but hole. The choice was made by the Carnation Lea

Q—Is it true that the sun rises over the

end of the Panama Canal? : A—An oddity of the Panama Cana is that

Pacific terminus is farther east than the Atlantic The axis of the Isthmus of Panama is to southeast. The canal was built southeast, almost at right angles to the strip ancl the Pacific end is about 27 miles east of lantic end. Thus, since the sun rises over the Pacific end énd of the Panama Canal.

cumseh at the Naval Academy? A—The original statue, known to shidshipmen| as “The God of 2.5” was once the figurehead. on frigate Delaware. In 1601,’ bronze replica was ee: ir mark for the