Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 June 1942 — Page 20

PAGE 20 The Indianapolis Times

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FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1942

IT’S NOT ENOUGH ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND tons of rubber were collected in the first six days of the drive for scrap. That will help. But it is far too little. Have you tossed your share into the pot?

DON’T FORGET DUTCH HARBOR!

HE alert defenders of Dutch Harbor fought heroically against the Jap air raid of June 3, but apparently they had very little to fight with. The press statements by Unalaska evacuees reaching Seattle make little or no mention of American planes—the chief or only defense seems to have been some rifles and anti-aircraft guns. That the equipment was far from adequate seems to | be the only inference possible from the following facts reported by the mayor of Unalaska and other evacuees: At least three days before the attack the authorities | knew of a sizable Jap task force in the north Pacific, and the night before the raid they knew a Jap carrier was within 400 miles of Dutch Harbor. That seems to indicate brilliant American scouting and intelligence service, but inadequate forces to intercept the enemy despite long warning. The accuracy of the enemy in bombing warehouses, | barracks and installations, and in machine-gunning the streets from a 300-foot level—with an estimated loss of only three planes out of 19 to 21 raiders—also suggests that there could not have been many American fighters in

the air.

= » 5 = " = UT of course the most tragic proof that our commanders lack sufficient sea, land and air forces to defend the strategic Aleutians is that Attu and Kiska islands had to be sacrificed—apparently even without a fight. It is now three weeks or more since the enemy occupied | those crossroads hetween the bases of Japan, Russia and | the United States. That brought the enemy 2000 miles nearer Seattle from Tokyo—near enough to shell Vancouver island and the Oregon coast with submarines. Tokyo claims that her army of occupation is moving | on from Attu and Kiska to other Aleutian islands—the | same stepping-stone strategy by which she conquered lower | Asia and the southwest Pacific islands. The American public does not profess to know all about | | military tactics, but it is certainly entitled to be as much | worried about the Jap advance across the Aleutians as the | British are worried about the German victory in Libya. Our people could cheer the concentration of American forces in Africa and England much louder if there were | more evidence of needed reinforcement of the Aleutian- | Midway-Hawaiian line. The enemy already has his foot | in our back door, and we had better not forget that for a second.

FINGERPRINTING ‘B

A S ONE by-product of the war effort, the number of | . a Americans whose fingerprints are on record is being | tremendously increased. The FBI has purchased 48,000,000 | fingerprint cards this year, supplying nearly 16,000,000 of | them to war industries and 10,000,000 more to the army and | navy. These cards, as they are filled out, are placed in the | FBI files. | In addition to the fingerprints of soldiers, sailors and | war workers, those of millions of other persons are in these | files. There is, of course, a separate division for the prints of criminals, The fingerprinting of aliens was made compulsory two years ago. Those of federal civil service employees, many public officials including the President, many bank employees and depositors, and of numerous others are in the civil files. Thousands of visitors to the FBI offices in Washington have undergone the process voluntarily, and the police depart- | ments of Indianapolis and other cities have invited citizens | to be fingerprinted. The notion that there is disgrace for the law-respecting in being fingerprinted is rapidly disappearing. On the contrary, there is foresight, safety and common sense. There is no more accurate means of identification. In case of accident, catastrophe or false accusation, this may prove of | priceless benefit to innocent persons or their families. Past proposals to require the fingerprinting of all men, women and children in the United States have been rejected,

partly because sgme prejudice remained, but largely because With so large a part of the population under- |

of the cost.

losing much of its weight. But whether or not there is mandatory legislation, it's a good idea for all who can to get their prints on record.

HOME FRONT ITEMS HE Roosevelt hotel at New Orleans advertises for 20 men to operate elevators— age need apply.” ... Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Garrette of Shadyside, O., bicycled 525 miles to Durante, Iowa, in eight days, both gaining weight on the journey. . . . Charles Morati, director of the Buffalo (N. Y.) Civic Opera and former leading tenor of the Paris Opera Comique, is working on the night shift in the blueprint division of the CurtissWright airplane plant. . . . Unpatriotic herring gulls, announces the U. S. fish and wildlife service, are damaging automobile tires by dropping clamshells on highways along the North Carolina coast. . . Conklin Mann, editor of the

| spondent. | men and events. { It would have been a great book if Reynolds had | | been able to suppress his irrepressible humor and just | going the process as a result of the war, that objection is | | part adds nothing. It detracts from the larger values | | of his job.

“no one under 65 years of |

New York genealogical and biographical record, has dis-

months of research tha resid a t President | La Guardia of New York City.

sovered arier four Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill are eighth cousins once removed. . . . And employees of a factory at Kokomo collected funds to buy a $25 war bond for Russell Grant, 10 years old, who earned it by Sallowing an angleworm

on a dare.

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK, June 26.—The Teamsters’ union of the A. F. of L. recently announced a decision by its executive board, the governing body of 650,000 men and women, which is important to all of us, for it has the sound of a threat to buy the coming congressional elections. The announcement said the board authorized Dan Tobin, the president, to “spend as much money ds is necessary to acquaint the public, and especially labor, with the records of certain congressmen.” That is a neat way of putting it. The locals which make up and support the international, or parent union, which has made this decision at the conservative rate of $30 a year per memsber, have an income of around $20,000,000 and the parent body, itself, gets around $3,000,000 from one source or another.

Of course, this is not the only union which will |

spend a great slush fund in this campaign. Many others will do likewise and all of them are, by the plain statement of Francis Biddle, the attorney general, political subsidiaries of the party in power. Altogether they have a total income of more than a thousand millions a year, to say nothing of many millions of accumulated wealth which can be slushed into the campaign.

Three Already Singled Out

THREE OF THE MEN singled out for defeat by the Teamsters are Howard Smith of Virginia, Clare Hoffman of Michigan and Carl Vinson of Georgia, Smith is condemned because he conducted investigations of racketeering by unions and unioneers and offered legislation to forbid certain corrupt union practices which are too notorious to need explanation here. Hoffman saw the invasion of Michigan by terrorists under the auspices of the C. I. O. auto workers’

| union and, in debate with Senator La Follette of Wis-

consin fought for a provision which would have outlawed the importation of rioters from one state to another, just as the importation of strikebreakers 1s forbidden. : Vinson reported on union income and some union activities in the war program in a way which antagonized the professional politicians and tax collectors of this great American subgovernment. A spokesman for the Teamsters said the campaign

| probably would be directed against “a majority of the

Republicans in congress because most of them have voted consistently against labor.” He also said that that had voted against President Roosevelt and against national defense, but this only amounts to saying that they are not members of the party in power which now goes into this campaign to buy up

congressmen in the manner of Huey Long with Louisi- |

ana state legislators of whom he said he bought and sold them like sacks of potatoes.

Plain Paid Political Propaganda THE PHRASE “to acquaint the public, and. espe-

| cially labor, with the records of certain congressmen”

has a legitimate sound. There is nothing wrong about the publication of information. But, of course, the information will be biased and angled, and the effect of the campaign will be paid political propaganda. Slush funds need not be used for the crude purpose of buying votes on the hoof, singly or by the herd. Slush funds are much more effective when spent to “acquaint the public,” and this year the unions are so rich and boldly contemptuous of the purity of elections that they are nearly all prepared to ‘spend as much money as is necessary.” If they succeed they will own the lower house of congress, body and soul, just as they now own the senate and the department of justice and the people will have to look to their state legislatures for laws

| to put down racketeering, union rioting and all other | offenses against honesty and government for which

so many of them are notorious.

New Books By Stephen Ellis

AFRICA—A ONE-MILE square plateau —a gallant British regiment—and Quentin Reynolds.

“All conscious thought was ban- |

ished by the hellish noise as the planes dove again. fell all around us and the world rocked and I found that I was talking to myself—out loud. I kept on talking while that part of my mind not affected so badly as the rest of it listened. I was saying, ‘Mom, I'll be with you in a minute. Wait for me, Mom." Then everything was all right

Quent Reynolds

| because I had something to hang onto. I kept talking | to my mother, . didn’t mind them because I wasn’t alone now.”

and when the planes came again I

That's just one passage from ‘Only the Stars Are Neutral,” Quentin Reynolds’ latest—and best—book of his war experiences. Reynolds got his greatest

| break when Averell Harriman took him to Moscow | and he was privileged to sit in with the Russians at {| that celebrated dinner when Josef Stalin made his | memorable toast, asking God to help Roosevelt in

his difficult task.

Hats Off to Him

REYNOLDS WENT TO Kuibyshev, he flew to the

{| Middle East with Litvinov, he went into the desert,

and survived, and then he swept back to England as Japan attacked the United States.

And back home he came in a convoy that was | RY | didn’t have the rest I had planned,” he writes at the |

| battered all over the Atlantic by wintry gales.

end, “but I did write a book. This is it.” Yes, this is great war reading. the first-hand experiences of a great war corre-

skip over the love-life of the correspondents. That

You've got to take your hat off to this fellow. He knows how to get stories and what's just as important how to write ‘em.

’ THE STARS ARE NEUTRAL by

ONLY ont 229 pages. Random House, New York. $2.50. in Reynolds

So They Say—

Before mankind takes them back into the family of nations the Germans must convince the world that the whole polluted system is abhorrent to them and will never rise again on their soil—Frank Rpt, secretary of the navy. * - »

In the post-war world we do not want any master races. Only slaves dream of the mastery of the world. —Sir Gerald Campbell, British minister to the United States. * - - The world isn't big enough to hold a Nazi form of government and an American democracy and that’s why this is a fight to the finish.—Mayor Fiorello H.

* * »

Hitler knows now that he has missed the bus. His boots are shaking. His henchmen are jittery. They

are definitely reckoning now with a defeat.—J. J. Zmrhal, pr ; Na of

| war.

The bombs |

It’s a book about

He takes you behind the scenes, to tell of |

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Design for Living!

FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1942

UNITED STATES SAVINGS

In Washington

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, June 26.—The punch-drunk ways and means committee of the house has prac= tically finished its four months’ fight over writing the new tax bill, and it's about time. For the last few weeks the committee has been arguing in circles, taking days to make decisions that normally take hours, The 20-odd members of the committee are tired, and frankly confess they have been getting on each others’ nerves. They even write letters to each other, to argue, after hours, on debatable provisions. The bill is, of course, one of the biggest ever written and that makes it a sizable undertaking. The committee hearings fill some 3500 pages of solid type. If you were able to stay awake long enough to read 50 pages a night, it would still take you six weeks just to read the testimony of experts and witnesses who appeared in long processions. And this wordage does not cover the executive sessions of the committee. Two full weeks, for ine stance, were spent in arguing about the corporate income tax provisions.

Coming: Manufacturers’ Sales Tax

AS SENT TO the floor of the house for debate and passage early in July, it will be a political tax bill, for this is an election year. The indicated total revenue to be derived is far below treasury suggestions. That may be changed by senate action, but the house committee has given in to demands to keep it low. The principal political aspect of the house bill is the absence of a federal sales tax. Labor and a lot of other consumer pressure groups didn’t want one and the treasury and the White House backed that stand. But some of the committee members predict a

| federal sales tax will be in the bill written next year,

| and no fooling.

Agitation for a general manufacturers’ federal sales

| tax has been brewing for so long that, once the elec-

The Hoosier Forum

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

“EVERY MAN IN OUTFIT IS BUYING WAR BONDS” By Pvt. R. Gardner Company B, 727 Eng. Brigade, Key Field, Meridian, Miss. Just a few lines to let you know how the boys down here are doing more than their part to win this The outfit I am in is 100 per cent loyal American. Every man in our outfit is buying war bonds. They are not only going to fight for victory, they also are helping to finance this war. We are doing our part. Let's go, America, and win this war. 2 ” o “WHY HIT UNDERPRIVILEGED WITH THAT SALES TAX?”

By E. P. A. Maybe I should disagree with your position that reduced income tax

exemptions are preferable to a sales tax, because the former would add {$100 to my tax bill, while the latter [would add something like $40. | Nevertheless, I concur. { I've a neighbor who, like myself, has two children. His income is about $1800. He pays no income tax, nor would he pay any if Mr. | Morgenthau’s proposal were adopted. |If the sales tax goes into effect at |2 per cent, he'll pay somewhere in | the neighborhood of $20. I have never tried to support a wife and two children on $150 a month, and from watching the economic gymnastics of my neighbor, I hope I never have the chance.

come, not from cutting down on a | few luxuries, but out of the bellies and off the backs of those two kids. Personally, I'd prefer to give up the extra can of beer I have at night before going to bed, cut my cigaret and cigar consumption in half and stay at home from some of the not-so-choice movies—that would just about add up to $100—than to feel that in order to have those things, the neighbor’s children would have ito give up more of the necessities

(Times readers are invited their these columns, religious conMake your letters short, so all can Letters must

to express views in

excluded.

troversies

have a chance. be signed.)

of life which they're now denied. When the boys on the Hill vote on the reduced exemptions versus the sales tax, let's see how many

of them value the little luxuries more than they do the food and clothing that the neighbor's kids need so badly.

$ #5 # “I'M FOR PEGLER—HE STANDS FOR FREEDOM”

By Wilson Curtis I think it’s about time that we free persons, as opposed to union collectivism, took a hand in this “Protest of Pegler” and his writings. If all persons who agree with Pegler would so indicate their feelings, I think the effect would go much further than counter-balance the mass attempt by the union sheets to down him. To me Pegler’s words indicate more than just thoughts. His column represents freedom of the individual which is the real America. That's what America is and for

‘how long? Whatever tax that family pays will

# 4 ¥ “WE NEED RUBBER! LET'S WHIP THE JAPS NOW”

By A Man From Texas We should not lose our reasoning facilities because we are at war. A man doesn’t have to study geometry to find out that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Here we are running around in circles because of the rubber .situation. We realize that a rubber

Side Glances=By Galbraith

come to my ! This me

"Nice going, Brutus—he' Il think | can't hold you and he's bound to

method certainly beats

famine would paralyze us. There are not enough horses and wagons to cultivate, harvest and haul to market the crops we raise, to say nothing of other transportation that is necessary. It takes four years to build a horse and it takes time, steel, wood | and skilled labor to manufacture) a wagon, so we need rubber worse than most anything else. But, instead of doing something about it, we wring our hands and weep. Since when did that become the American way? Rubber grows where it has always grown and nobody stands in our way except Japan. We have got to whip Japan some time, so why not turn everything else loose and make that our first order of business? That way we could get rubber and tin, and what is more important, we could release some 50,000 American soldiers held in Japanese prisons. It is not the American way to leave our boys to suffer in foreign prisons while we send help to other parts of the world.

2 un =» “HOW LONG CAN WE GO ON ENDURING SUCH PUERILITY?”

By Maxwell Pruitt

While the world bleeds to death and the enemy creeps ever closer to our continental shores, the democratic leaders hold more and more “conferences,” makes flowery gewgaws about the “brotherhood of man,” a “just peace” and then up pops another new slogan through our loud speaker! How long, O Lord, can this suffering world endure such puerility? This writer has no information as to how many bombers the allied nations have at the present time, but I would say that from what we have heard, that 25,000 would be a conservative figure. If we are in possession of such numbers there is no reason to my mind why, with the enemy all around us, we should not be bombing the hell out of him 24 hours of every day. If the democracies hope for even a remote chance of winning this war they will have to do something more formidable than coin slogans, hold secret pow-wows; and plaster the nation’s show windows with placards. Up to now, our cocksureness has rendered us incapable of thinking thinkable, much less of thinking the unthinkable that awaits us if we don’t get into action!

2 8 =» “RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND TODAY'S CRISIS”

By M. C. D. I should like to quote the words of the poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, which, in my opinion are so vividly expressed that they can well be applied to today’s world crisis: “I see her (England) not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before—indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloud, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a can-

”»

non.

DAILY THOUGHT

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?—I Corinthians 15:55. |

To die is landing on some silent) shore, Where billows never break nor tempests roar.

[Brg well we teal the metuly stroke ‘tis o'er.

tion is out of the road, it stands the best chance it ever has had for passage next year, although it was licked in 1917, 1921 and 1932.

The Headaches Pile Up

IN PLACE OF THE sales tax there will be new excise taxes, the good old familiar nuisance taxes that crop up in every war emergency. Things like taxes on checks and maybe taxes on soft drinks, These new taxes are hard and often costly to collect. There is no experience on collecting the proposed tax on freight and only the experience with social security deductions to tell how the fancy new salary withholding tax will function. From the treasury point of view, however, these difficulties are as nothing when compared with the difficulties of putting over a general manufacturers’ sales tax. Proponents of a manufacturers’ sales tax point out that Canada has put over the manufacturers’ sales tax without too much trouble. But U. S. tax experts say the problem of admine istering a manufacturers’ sale tax in Canada, with ita limited industries and a population of 11 million, can’t be compared to the problem of the highly industrialized U. 8. with its 130 millions.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

I'M SORRY TO learn that Adolf Hitler loves western stories written by people who have never seen the west. Frederick Oechs=~ ner, whose story of the Nazi lead= er's personal life was just published, tells us that one. Since practically everyone in the good old U. S. A, loves westerns writ= ten by people who have never seen the west, the Fuehrer’s fondness for them may be more normal than some of his other predilections., But with every new expose of Hitler's personality public confusion grows. Dorothy Thompson started out by saying he was a weakling and a nitwit. Since then a score of different versions of his habits and temperament have been given us. He's a maniac one day and a miiltary and political genius the next. To some he's a mystic, to others a pervert. One man contends he is learned and wise, while another argues just as hotly that his behavior is a form of paranoia.

Aha, Remember the Kaiser?

WELL, NO MATTER who is right or who wrong, I don’t like the guy, and I confess it gave me a turn to learn that he shares the average American man’s passion for two-gun literature. Somehow, I had ale ways thought of that habit as peculiar to harmless, decent, God-fearing citizens. Also, remembering how we used to hide the Diae mond Dick paperbacks in the haystack at home, resorting to them as delightedly as a sot resorts te his bottle, when such reading was supposed to be wicked for little boys and positively out of the ques~ tion for little girls, I wish Mr. Oechsner had left that part out oi his story. It's bad for morale, for it establishes a communion of fellowship between a whole lot of people and Hitler. At the same time, it cheers me up a bit. One can’t help but feel that, once the devil is licked, he may become as harmless as the late unlamented kaiser, woodchopping at Doorn—who, if my memory serves, also had a passion for westerns written by people who had never seen the west.

Editor’s Note: newspaper are their own. of The Iadianapolis Times,

The views expressed by columnists in this They are not necessarily those

\

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will answer any question of fact or information, mot involving extensive research. Write your question clearly, sign name and address, inclose a three-cent postage stamp. Medical or legal advice cannot he given, Address The Times Washington Service Bureau, 1013 Thirteenth St., Washington, D. 0.)

@—What is the difference between retreading and recapping a tire? A—When a tire is retreaded, the old tread, “breake er strip,” and “cushion” are removed entirely, leaving the cord carcass exposed. A new cushion and breaker strip are cemented on, followed by a rubber strip (called camelback) that is cemented and rolled into place. The width of the camelback is such that it covers the tread, and ite thin edges =xtend down along the sidewalls to join up with the old sidewalls, The tire is then placed in a mold and subjected to pressure and heat for several hours. Recapping is used for tires that are worn smooth, but on which the cords are not exposed. The tire is placed on a machine which buffs the original tread to remove uneven wear. Then vulcanizing cement and camelback are applied. From then on the procedure is essentially the same as for retreading.

Q—What color eyes predominate in the U. S. army? A—According to a recent survey, 45 per cent have blue eyes, 35 per cent brown and 20 per cent hazel.

Q-—-Was President Roosevelt's pet Scottie, “Fala,” *

with him when he met Prime Minister Winston

NER BIRR EHO iens Fy