Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 April 1942 — Page 23

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FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1942

GAULEITER LAVAL

IVE French diplomats walked out of the Vichy embassy in Washington and offered their services to the Free ¥rench, because they could not stomach Hitler's greasy gauleiter, Laval. Who can? Not the French people, certainly. Return of the Vichy Quisling to power was a signal for such sabotage as has not been known in that unhappy country since the armistice. Long the most hated politician in France, Laval now receives the loathing reserved in every country for the traitor. Not only French democrats and liberals plot and pray for his end, even the reactionary element that favors a French brand of fascism distrusts the German tool. And the senile “collaborationist” Petain—who made terms with Hitler because he thought Britain was finished, and the allied cause lost—hates Laval most of all. Whatever went on in the dark brain of this archbetrayer of the republic to make him a Hitler agent, only scientists of abnormal psychology can fathom. Being human, he must have wished at times to turn back. But he cannot turn back. There is no place to go and no one to accept him. Spiritually he is a man without a country. His very life depends on Nazi guns and Gestapo. He will be tried and executed or assassinated when Hitler fails—if not before. : But, meanwhile, his evil shadow cannot obscure the real France, the France which cradled democracy and lifted civilization. Though our great sister republic seems dead politically, though her power of self-defense is palsied and she is betrayed into the hands of the enemy by her own leaders, the France of liberty will live again. Hitler recognized failure when he finally named Laval his gauleiter of a slave state. Frenchmen will not forever remain slaves.

THE AUTO’S HERE TO STAY (PUT)

O sensible person—except maybe a few U-boat skippers who will find fewer coastwise tankers to torpedo—can complain about the rationing of gasoline in the east. Oh, maybe there’ll be some harmless squawking at first, and some unkind remarks behind the unsylphlike backs of Leon Henderson and Harold Ickes, but it has always been a precious right of Americans, when things go wrong, to designate a goat or whipping-boy. And both Leon the Hen and Harold the Ick are well schooled in rolling with the punch. (Incidentally, thinking back to last year when the Ick was prematurely wringing his hands about the oil situation, it’s amusing to see him curry the public this time by accusing the Henderson office of undue pessimism.) But it must be plain by now to everybody that America hasn't got enough transportation—tankers, pipelines, tank cars, river barges or whatnot—to fuel the fleets and the war industries, and the busses and trucks, and at the same time enable the whole population to continue wearing out its tires with customary abandon. Rationing is a means of conserving essentials for the war program which it has been government policy to postpone until there was no alternative. But now we are beginning to get into it. Next month civilian consumers will register for sugar as well as, in the east, gasoline rationing. We already are on a much stricter rationing basis for autos and tires. = » = = #® » THE war is beginning to disrupt our daily lives. But only | beginning. Before many months there will be far | more drastic changes in the civilian scheme of things. We will advance from mere inconveniences and modest restrictions to major readjustments. Instead of skimping on every-day commodities we will be daing without many of them entirely. The gasoline ration will force many of us to street cars, busses and more footwork. It will stimulate the ‘“‘ride-to-gether” movement. But is that so bad? It will be a pipe for us, compared to the sacrifices of our fighting men, compared to . the dangers risked by the seamen on tankers. Even the restricted quantities promised by the OPA would be luxury for most of the other peoples of the world. As the war goes on, the civilian will pay and pay more. He will pay in higher taxes, in restricted activities, in the loss of many comforts, in more government regulation, in more calls on his time, his energy and his money. Things will get tough. They must. The sooner they do, the better for us, and the sooner we will go to work, to the limit, to win this was, . Qur sacrifices will be little enough. So live that we can look our fighting men in the face.

SHORTAGE OF SEAWATER!

JT will come as a surprise to many, who had heard about Alcoa’s monopoly (until recently) in the production of aluminum, to learn that about 43 per cent of this continent's output is made in Canada. Notwithstanding the huge expansion in American extraction of the light metals, we are told that still we need more aluminum and more magnesium from the Dominion. As for the aluminum, this is understandable. With our enormous plane program, there is almost no limit to our requirement. But why can’t we produce all the magnesium we want? A bathtub full of seawater contains more than seven pounds of the metal, and_ there is no visible scarcity of seawater.

ITS GENERALLY TRUE, TOO

them in the carpenters’ and teamsters’ cases, the

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK, April 24 — It should not be necessary for the stanchest friend of American labor and the first man to challenge and attack the worst enemies of the worker to answer the cry of “labor baiter” which has been raised by the now frightened and desperate corruptioneers, parasites and fakers. However, I think this had better be done be- : cause there really is something to the Hitlerian proposition that a lie, if big enough and told often enough, presently begins to numb the people’s judgment and, in time, will convince them of something which they know to be false. Up to now I have scorned the accusation that I am anti-labor, not only because it is too obviously false and too obviously intended to divert attention from rogues caught in the act, but also because I have been too busy verifying countless instances of brazen rascality and shouting up the terrible danger to the freedom of every American man and woman which is written into some of our laws and mest union constitutions and several supreme court decisions.

“I Know My Stuff”

AT THE RISK of seeming immodest I will say that there are very few persons in the United States who know as much as I do about the organization, the constitutions and by-laws, the practices, the revenues and the personalities of unions. There isn’t much that anyone ean fault me on in this field because I have studied my stuff diligently, and I know what I am talking about. I am challenged sometimes on the ground that I don’t tear into war profiteers and some corrupt practices of business and thus, even to some honest men and women, seem to condone by silence evils which deserve the enmity of all conscientious citizens. The reason is not condonsation at all. The reasons are several. For one, business is responsible and subject to restraining laws and regulations. For another, I am not an authority on big business. For still another, the ground is very well covered by a number of competent journalists who know their subject as well as I know the subject of unionism.

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Here's ‘Mud in Yer Eye!’

Faas oF Sa

FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1042

ERR

“lI Believe in Wagner Act”

I VENTURED INTO this controversy when mire was a very unpopular cause and do not intend to quit now that the real enemies of American labor are on the defensive and on the run. Through my efforts American labor has learned that unions, as now constituted and conducted under the existing laws, are a menace to the freedoms and the form of government that this country is fighting to preserve against Hitler and the Japs. Congress also has stirred slightly. And, no doubt about it, notwithstanding the perniciousness of the decisions and the reasoning behind

courts in a number of other decisions have begun to reclaim from the boss unioneer some of the natural rights of millions of human beings which had been seized away in the tumult of the New Deal's so-called social program. Am I anti-union, then? Let nobody tell you that. I believe in the stated purpose of the Wagner act to

The Hoosier Forum

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

“THE WORKERS WE NEED WE MUST TAKE” By T. C., Shelbyville President Roosevelt's war manpower commission is an important step in the right direction. It recognrizes officially what long has been apparent, that the recruiting of labor for production ranks on full

parity with the conscription of manpower for the fighting services.

enable workers to bargain collectively through agents of their own choice. The closed shop and its variations, which are only disguises, forbid freedom of choice and compel American workers to accept repre-

Step by step, slowly but surely,

{we are approaching the goal of uni-

versal war service. The men we need to carry guns

sentation by agents whom they would reject if they were allowed to.

“I Am Against Coercion”

I AM AGAINST coercion by employers, which is forbidden by the act, and equally opposed to coercion by union agents, which commonly consists of plain thuggery and physical terrorism, and which pointedly 1s not forbidden. I am against extortion of money from the workers and the common practice of slugging men in union meetings for daring te ask questions about the disposal of their own funds. It must be established that ne alien nor anyone with a criminal record may hold office in any union, all accounts must be reported to the government, union funds must not be used in the interest of any candidate or political issue except by unanimous vote of the entire membership and in the event of such consent and contribution the treasury of that union must forfeit its exemption from the income tax. Given these and a few other reforms the American worker will be rescued from the clutches of those

cunning and dictatorial exploiters and enemies of free | labor who have the gall to call themselves his leaders |

and his friends.

| dustry.

Too many of our own candidates stand for more than the

Pacific Mixup By Ludwell Denny

WASHINGTON, April 24—In another reshuffle Gen. MacArthur has lost authority over the defense of New Zealand—if, indeed, he ever had such jurisdiction. That, apparently, is what delayed organization of the MacArthur united command until a few days

Prime Minister Curtin of Australia last week listed New Zealand in the group of nations agreeing to the MacArthur command, but the general’'s own statement left it out. The New Zealand minister in Washington asked that the president clear up the mystery, but the White House said it was a military secret then, The secrecy is now lifted in part by a story from NecArthur’s headquarters which says: “Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, U. S. navy, has been ordered to New Zealand to organize a joint U. S.-New Zealand naval command, which will be outside the zone commanded by Gen. MacArthur.”

Wars Are Not Won by Rote

THERE HAS BEEN talk about New Zealand ob- | jecting to a united command under an American, | That seems to have been an exaggeration, if not entirely inaccurate. The flat statement of Premier Curtin, as well as the disappointment expressed by the New Zealand press over exclusion of that country from the MacArthur command, suggests that the hitch was mot in New Zealand but in Washington. The appointment of Ghormley seems to demonstrate the willingness of New Zealand to serve under an American.

Wars are not won by rote, or successful strategy

determined by consistency. If the president-com-mander-in-chief and the Pacific war council separate New Zealand from the southwest Pacific command, there must be some excellent reason. So far as Maec- | Arthur is concerned, he doubtless has his hands full. | As for the public, the test is victory. The sooner this long period of erganization and reorganization is completed the quicker the com- | manders, whoever they are, can get on with the job | of licking the Japs.

So They Say— History probably will speak of tiie present ballvhee as the Second World War, but every war while it lasts is THE war —George Bernard Shaw.

¥ * * +

Thus far ne industry has functioned more admir-

ably in the war effort than the transportation in- | Bastman, director of office of de-

we take, and cend them where they | will do the most good. | The factories we need to manu-| facture armament and munitions! we commangdeer, snd tell them what | to do. The workers we need te serve those factories we must likewise take, and assign where they can serve most efficiently. ” = 8 “THEY, TOO, ONCE THOUGHT IT COULDN'T HAPFEN” By S. B. H., Indianapolis We can't buy new automobiles. We'll have to use the old jalopies year after year, instead of turning them in every spring for new models. We can't buy tires. We'll have | to walk to stores and bridge parties {or else use busses and trollies. Stores and laundries and various |service agencies are saving tires and gasoline, Our demands for quick service are coldly rejected. We have to plan now and take advantage of regular pick-ups and deliveries. Refrigerators and stoves and radios and washing machines are not being made any longer. Dealers are: running out of patterns in linoleum. We can’t get aluminum percolators or other cooking dishes. Sugar is short. Typewriters aren't on sale. We can't have cuffs on our trousers. It's terrible—or is it? Suppose the next time somebody begins lamenting our hardships you pin him down to specifications. Exactly how much have we been hit by the scarcities, the rationing, the deprivations thus far? We are escaping very lightly thus far. Suppose we were in Britain, We

(Times readers are invited to express their these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make

views in

your letters short, so all can have a chance. Letters must

be signed.)

wouldn't have been rationed on | tires—because for two years and a ‘half there wouldn't have been any {new cars and petrol rationing would have permitted us to drive no more than 200 miles a month. We should be accustomed long since to scarcity of most types of food—not merely a few. We should be limited to one suit, one coat and a few haber{dashery items a year, and should long fervently for the good old days |wnen only trouser cuffs and extra { pants were banned.

Suppose we were French,

Poles, or Serbs, or Czechs, or | Greeks—or Chinese? To be sure, we're none of these. {Why compare us with those un- | fortunates?® | Because they, too. once thought it couldn't happen there, i “ % “MOST ABSURD PROPAGANDA

|I HAVE EVER READ” i

i By Commen Ameriean, Indianapolis

war I have read the Hoosier Forum for

or | Belgian, or Dutch, or Norwegian, or!

who has been carrying on a war of conquest for years. We and England are fighting for our very lives and hope to maintain our liberty and eventually abolish slavery wherever it exists. He says it is unthinkable to call it Hitler's war. Poor innocent Hit ler, it is sad that Historian cannot be with him when justice finally overtakes him, Or maybe it could be arranged. ” o » “WILL DIRT TRACK AUTO RACES BE ALLOWED?” By Mrs, C. E. Henderson, Franklin I notice that the dirt track midget auto racing are advertising their racing dates for the summer. The public has been asked to cut their driving speed to 40 mlies per hour, the big oil companies every day ask their radio listeners to save on gas, oil and tires. Will the state officials allow the waste of gas, oil and rubber in these weekly dirt track racing? If | these races were only one day this | summer, the waste would not be so | great but if they are allowed to race [it will be regular every two weeks | some place in Indiana. | If the public saves on gas, oil and | tires all week, will dirt track racing | be allowed to burn it up on the | Sabbath? With the rubber shortage as critical as it is, everybody ought to be willing to save on everything our army needs to win this

® 8 2

years and have often been tempted ... vp US CAB STANDS . , .

letter by the Nazi who signs himself Historian is too much. It is the most absurd piece of propaganda I have ever read. He would call it Roosevelt's war, and classes Roosevelt with Napoleon and Caesar who started and carried on wars of conquest. He calls this war a crusade to |establish four freedoms and indi{cates that Churchill and Roosevelt

pecting and peaceful world, whereas, any who have read newspapers or listened to a radio, know that the present war was started as a war ‘of conquest and was well under way | before either Churchill or Roosevelt {had anything to do with it. | And this country did not enter (until actually attacked by Japan

Side Glances=By Galbraith

Ae af

yalhuith

DOS. 1982 BY NEA SERVICE. WNC. T. M. REC. U. 8. PAT. OF»,

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Fy:

"Here, young man, stand up and let

{ to answer some of them but the WE'LL STOP CRUISING”

By R. V. S.,, A €ab Driver, Indianapolis In answer to letter in paper of April 22, the heading of “What Unpatriotic, Stupid and Terrifying Waste” by R. W. G. of Indianapolis. Taxicab companies haven't priorities on new tires and are lucky to get recaps if any. But if you will come to the: office of the cab company and help us and the officials work out a way

started this crusade on an unsus-ithat when we get a call and the

cab gets there, driver gets a void because the party walked out and hailed another cab or got on streetcar, trolley or bus. The public does not think of that. The company and drivers are willing to stop cruising if the city would give us cab stands downtown to take care of business. The article “Live, Let Live” is true and if the people that can find fault with other people's business would right their own faults they would have all they could do. The taxicab companies sre worrying about tires so let them take care of their own business. If the people that can sit on the sidelines and tell the men behind the wheel of cabs how to do it end the officials how to run their business, why aren't they in the cab business? ® » = “MY VOTE GOES TO THE FIRST WHO SPEAKS UP” By Curious, Indianapolis For once, our Chamber of Com-

merce has a good idea that should win the favor of every citizen in our

candidates for four county offices express themselves on fee-grabbing in the offices which they seek. You and I know that while some of our public officials decry this fee grabbing, they still build themselves fine homes in and out of the eity threugh the extra curricular proceeds in their offices. Not that it isn’t legitimate, but it certainly Is against public policy. I haven't seen any of our candidates jump toe the stump yet and tell the voters that they'll be satisfied with their salary only. My vete goes to the first who does, EE ———————————

DAILY THOUGHT

For what is a man advantaged, i gain the whole world, and se himself, or be cast away?— Luke 9:25, :

me measure this across your Ns size."

city. The C. of C. proposes that the!

Your Tires By John W. Love

AKRON, O.; April 24.--It'll be an industrial miracle if the gov-ernment-financed plants for cooking up 700,000 tons of synthetic rubber annually are ready by the end of 1943, but here in Akron they begin to believe in miracles, No industry so huge has ever been created in so short-a time from such small beginnings, but that won't stop them. The people here who know how to make synthetic rubber say the squeeze is not going to be in the process itself so much as in the steel for the equipment and the new raw-material plants in the petroleum industry. The whele ball of wax will cost $600,000,000. If the manufacturers could just go ahead and expand or double and redouble the three or four synthetic plants they now have here, they could have a large capacity ready on time, but these and the petroleum end of the new industry would take more than a ton of steel for every ton of annual produce tion of rubber.

800,000 Tons of Steel Needed

UPWARDS OF 800,000 tons of steel will be needed, according to one source, and a lot of it will be staine less or chrome-nickel steel, and steel in plates come peting with ships. But William IL. Batt of the war production board has said that if it comes to a question of steel for refineries to make aviation gasoline or steel for synthetic rubber, then the latter will come first. The other problem, the supply of raw materials from the oil refineries, arises from the longer time it takes to build the works on that end. Akron is the largest center of the synthetic in=dustry, probably with a larger production already than all the rest of the plants in this country put together, and Akron has been making tires of the new substance for three years or more. The rubber manufacturers are cagey about talking on the subject of these synthetics and their plans for same—for a couple of reasons. One is that new factory locations and capacities appear to be under the same censorship rules the armament construction is. The other is that when the public hears the tires blow out next summer and really feels the pinoh for rubber, the pressure on everybody around here will be on the order of thousands of pounds per square inch. »

Pinch to Come in '44

WARREN C. PLATT of Cleveland, publisher of the National Petrolenm News, suspects the pressure will punch out into polities in a big way. Mr. Platt, who has seen in his time a lot of troubled oil poured on the waters, has an editorial in this paper headed “Rubber Shortage Blame May Decide Elections???” “Who is responsible,” Mr. Platt asks, “and who will have to take the blame when a few million car owners start walking in 1943 and 1944?” Will it fall, he continues, on Standard of New Jersey or Jesse Jones or President Roosevelt or the army and navy for not thinking snythetics were needed? Mr. Platt expects the shortage will be most acute about election time in 1944, “when more millions of American voters may be hoofing it along streets and even country roads than since the horse-and-buggy days. . . . As these voters slog along, weary and dusty, they will probably be thinking about who is responsible.”

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

JOINT INCOME TAX returns for husband and wife is a question under periodic discussion in treasury environs, where the problem of getting more money is deadly serious. It medns simply that the working woman would pool her wages with: those of her husband, in re= porting to the collector of internal revenue, which in turn would force thousands of couples into higher income brackets and make their taxes much heavier. Fair or unfair, this scheme would undoubtedly bring in more cash, Feminine leaders oppose it in principle. Some say it would be unconstitutional; others contend it would return women to the status of chattels, and amount to an abandonment of our American principles of equal rights, while still another group cries that it would vastly increase divorce. None of these reasons seems to me quite valid now, because we are in the midst of an emergency. Women fear backward trends, of course. They fear that their hardly-won rights will be lost and the work of decades undone,

Is This the Type We Have

HOWEVER, A LARGE number of rights and privileges in other fields are being canceled out by the war effort. Private ownership is going. Capital gives up profits. Certain industries have been liter= ally swallowed by the federal government, and there has been little complaint. Labor stands to lose some of its long-fought-for privileges. War inflicts these restrictions. The individual gives up his pleasures and privileges, his identity even, to take part in the mass effort. Americans expect and hope they will have their property and civil liberties and opportunities returned to them when the war is over. Unless they do, the American system is gone anyway. And certainly women cannot expect to get through the erisis with all their advantages intact. I hate to hear it said that we may be willing ta break up our marriages and homes as one way of evading higher taxes, If the millions of women who seem so eager to help win the war would rather give up their husbands than their money, then it seems to me both the women and the country are in a bad condition.

Editor's Note: The views expressed by eplumnists in this newspaper are their own, They are net necessarily these of The Indianapolis Times,

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will answer any aunestion of facet or information, met involving extemsive res search, Write your question elearly, sign name and address, inclese a three-cent postage stamp. Medical or legal advies cannot be given, Address The Times Washington Service Bureau. 1013 Thirteenth St.. Washington. DB. ©.)

Q—When was the first medical school established in America? A—On May 3, 1765, Dr. John Morgan and Dr. William Shippen Jr., established a medical department in what was then known as the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first school for the training of physicians organised in ‘America. Q—For what" price did Thomas A, Edisen sell his wireless inventions to Marconi? A—Orrin E. Dunlap in his biography of “Marconi” states that Edison, because of his great faith in Mare coni, sold his wireless patents for a ‘small amount of cash and quite a little stock.” He was offered much more for ais patents by competitors of Marconi.

Q—On what date was Al Capone released fr a 1 We i SAAC 6 of the

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