Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 August 1942 — Page 9

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SATURDAY, AUGUST I, 1942

The

Indianapolis Times

SECOND SECTION

Hoosier Vagabond

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland, Aug. 1.— There is a place called Rising Sun a few miles out-

v side of Derry. Mother O'Conner wouldn't change

the name of the place even if it occurred to her. She probably figures that Rising Sun was her idea long before the Japs thought of it. Rising Sun is a public house, a long, low, white building with a thick thatched roof, the kind you so often see in pictures of Ireland. It sits off the road a little, more like a farmhouse than a public house. There is a small bar when you go in, but if -you like you can go right on back to the kitchen. There Mother O'Conner sits beside the kitchen stove. She is an immense woman, in a black dress. You have the feeling that she hasn't risen from her chair in many years. Her face is motherly,

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-and full of quiet good nature.

A couple of naval officers are already there when I arrive. The snappiness of the naval uniforms seems queer, out on this Irish farm where you can almost feel the “little people.” The officers are Yeeply fond of Mother O'Conner. They like to kid er. Susan O'Conner is the barmaid. She brings the drinks to the kitchen, and guests use the dining table and sewing machine to set them on You sit on an old-fashioned sofa tilted at one end. The rain is coming down outside.

Finding the Goodness of Life

THE NAVAL OFFICERS are telling Mother O’Conner about their recent trip to London. She laughs at some of their experiences that are strange to her. The officers play a matching game to see who pays. The two have a well-framed trick so they never have to pay. Mother O'Conner laughs at her

By Ernie Pyle|

recently found boys from so far away. She drinks lemonade with us. “Now sing, Susan,” she says. Looking down on us from the kitchen wall is an old picture of Christ. Susan sits on the kitchen table and, timidly at first, like a child, sings that grand song, “Bless 'Em All” Then she goes off into Irish songs we have never known. Her voice is good. “Now sing ‘Mother Machree, ” her mother asks. Susan doesn’t wantto, but her mother says, “Yes, sing it, Susan,” so she does, and we all help her.

The International Mood

A GAY PARTY is in progress in a Derry apatrtment. The young people are having a good time. It’s just like parties at home except that it’s full of British and Irish accents. There dre officers and civilians and WRENS and WAAFS and American army nurses. They're grand people. All international dislikes have broken down because everybody is having fun. The military girls are in civilian dresses. They changed in a bedroom. They're glad to get out of their strict uniforms for a brief evening. A phonograph starts up, and people take off their shoes and dance in their stocking feet—all except me, of course, who couldn't dance if Arthur Murray was propping me up. But I take off my shoes anyhow. Me in my white socks! : Then there are songs and shouts of gaiety. The place js thick with cigaret smoke. There is a bedlam of British and American and Irish, an international chaos of sound.

As a climax, a door bursts open and a man whom I could name but shan’t comes riding into the living room on a bicycle, fully dressed in a WREN’S uniform—skirt, coat and three-cornered hat. t J tJ 2

There you have, not what our American officers |

over here do during the day when work is being done, but what they can do, and do do, when work is over and a strange country holds out its arms.

| Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

PROFILE OF THE WEEK: Dorothy Ford Buschmann, director and prime mover of .the Indianapolis Service Men's Centers, Inc, who has everybody in town staring popeyed at the efficient way she has

things moving along for the soldier and sailor boys. «She has been running these service centers ever since September of last year, still puts in a 10 to 15-hour day, keeps her fellow workers going until their tongues hang out while she shows not a trace of wear, and still Gs talking about that week's vacation she has been planning since long before Dec. 17. Dorothy Buschmann is somewhere in her early forties, a 5 foot, 4 inch, slightly heavyish woman with almost jet black hair, sparkling eyes, a low vibrant voice and a contagious laugh. Frank and outspoken, she’s an animated conversationalist, a quick thinker whose mind sometimes runs so far ahead of her tongue that her words tumble over one another, and who has a genuine fondness for civic and social service work.

Started Premedic Course SHE IS A DEVOTED mother to her three children

* and it is nothing for a visitor to find her in the

affairs and social and civic work naturally.

middle of the floor wrestling with son George (Por-

gie), a student at Park school, and their Dachshund.

—Maxl. Joan, her daughter, is a cadette at the service center will be a junior at Bryn Mawr this fall. The oldest son, Severin Jr. is at I. U. Mrs. Buschmann comes by her interest in civic Her aunt was an active assistant of Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago. After deciding to be a doctor and actually starting a premedic course at I. U., Mrs. Buschmann switched to nurse training during World War I. For several years she was a medical social worker in New Haven, Conn. Here, she has been active in the Girl Scouts, League of

Women Voters, Indianapolis Council of Social Agencies, in public health nursing and as a member of the Mayor's committee on recreation. : >:

The Boys Call Eer “Mom”

DOROTHY BUSCHMANN would stand out in any crowd of women. She has a dynamic personality, and the appearance of capability. At the service centers, she’s jolly and motherly with the boys. They call her “Mom,” and many take their problems to her. Sometimes they write her after they're transferred elsewhere. She has a flair for remembering names and faces, as ‘well as little details about a person’s family. Food is one of her favorite subjects. She's fond of smorgasbord and hot potato salad, often takes home ice cream or doughnuts. In fact, she once said she likes “food, period.” She's always threatening to start dieting, but she never gets any farther than collecting diet lists. She's a gond cook, but doesn’t have to worry about the kitchen at her home—5102 Washington blvd. It’s in the capable hands of Leona, who has been her maid for many years.

Likes Two-Bit W hodonits

MRS. BUSCHMANN doesn’t have time for golf, the movies, bridge or any of the usual amusements. But she does enjoy reading for relaxation. Her favorites are those 25-cent mystery novels, of which she has stacks around the house. She reads herself to sleep with them. : She - wears good looking hats, most all of them big ones, and often has three or four in her office at a time, because she forgets to wear them home. She'd be lost without earrings. Her desk at the office usually is piled high with papers, but she can dig right down and find what she wants without trouble. It’s seldom that she arrives anywhere on time. She undertakes too many things for that. But she gets there eventually, and when she does, she soon has things humming. That’s Dorothy Buschmann.

Raymond Clapper is on vacation. He will return next week.

It’s Not True!

MOSCOW, Aug. 1.—In words freighted with grave meaning, Pravda, organ of the Russian Communist party, warns: “There is nothing more armtul than to think that since the territory of the Soviet Union is vast, it is possible to retreat farther and farther.” For many years Americans and Britishers alike have talked about the Soviet Union’s “inexhaustible manpower.” We have thought— and probably most of us still think—of Russia as a nation of 170,000,000 and of Germany as a nation of only 70.000,000, 80,000,000, 90,000,000. So far as the task ~ of fighting this war from now on is concerned, both of these conceptions are the most serious distortions of truth. It can be demonstrated that, as of midsummer of 1942, Hitler is fighting a Russia which ‘has a population of something less than 130,000,000. In other words, Russia today, in unmobilized manpower and in skilled industrial workers, as well as industrial plants, railroads and automotive equipment, is actually smaller than the United States. Unless the American and British leaders and people begin to think of the Soviet Union in these reduced terms, they are virtually certain to expect of Russia, throughout the coming most difficult months, much more than there is any justifiable reason to expect.

Here Are the Facts

BUT THERE IS more to the story than the unhappy fact that Russia today is a nation of slightly less than 130,000,000. There is the further demonstrable fact that for the duration of this war Nazi Germany has become an anti-democratic, anti-Rus-sian force with total population assets of at least 170,000,000.

My Day

WASHINGTON, Friday.—Again in my mail the perennial question has cropped up regarding the method by which we induct aliens into citizenship. This particular letter deals with a subject which

covers the situation for the alien before he is finally

accepted: : “I thought I would write you about the painful ordeal that so many worthwhile aliens have to go through before they may become American citizens. I never realized it thoroughly until I began to apply for papers myself. “It is not for people like myself that I plead, but for elderly people who never had much education, and for people who suffer from extreme nervousness. Peo- ; ply cannot retain any- ] life they have

By Leland Stowe

This means that the relative population strengths of Russia and Germany have been reversed to a serious degree. These facts are easily established. According to the 1939 census, the Soviet Union’s population totaled 171,000,000. But the Germans now control nearly half of European Russia and more than half of its most populous regions. In occupied territories the Soviet Union lost approximately 40,000,000 of its population. As this month begins Russia's war casualties approach another 5,000,000. These ‘45,000,000 represent slightly more than 25 per cent of Russia’s pre-war population—as if the United States had lost about 32,000,00C of its citizens. Substract 45,000,000 and Russia's present population must be in the neighborhood of 125,000,000.

In Its True Perspective

AS COMPARED TO this reduced Russian manpower, consider the populations which the Nazis have actively aiding their war against Russia. The populations of greater Germany, Hungary, Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria and Finland total 170,000,000. If Franco's Spain is included as an ally of Hitler that brings the fascist population strength above 192,000,000. It is certain that the Nazis have several million of Frenchmen, Belgians, Danes, Norwegians, Dutchmen, Czechs and Poles working in Nazi war factories. In all probability, this conscripted foreign labor has released some 2,000,000 Germans for mobilization against Russia this year. These facts are not stated in any sense belittling to Russia's remarkable army or to the Russian people’s magnificent determination to fight on. They are simply presented to put the picture in its true proportions. Neither Americans nor British can find any logical excuse for remaining complacent about what they

always regarded as Russia's limitless reservoir of manpower. Such a thing no longer exists.

By Eleanor Roosevelt

should require everyone to take 20 lessons in Amer-

ican history and government, and then take and

pass a written examination. “Many hundreds of people fail, because they go all to pieces when they have to answer questions in court in public. They never know what may be asked at random by the judge. “Why should citizenship in a free country depend on a good memory? Why should more stress be put on the ability to assimilate the laws and history of a big country, than on the past record of an applicant? “Only yesterday, I talked to a good, kindly woman who has a son serving in the British ambulance corps in Egypt, and has another son in the American navy. She has been in this country 20 years, yet after attending school at great inconvenience last winter, she was unable to specify to the clerk at the immigration station the 10 points in the bill of rights. She was told to go back to school again.”

Perhape with a little more thought, we can find|te;

LINE IN EGYPT HARDENED’ BY FIGHTING LULL

Put, the Stronger His

Position Grows.

By RICHARD MOWRER

EL ALAMEIN, Egypt, July 30.— (Delayed)—Since Gen. Sir Claude J. E. Auchinleck, Great Britain's

middle eastern commander-in-chief, attacked on the night of July 26 and since the subsequent German counter-attacks and thé resultant fierce combats, the stillness of exhaustion has descended upon the desert front. This lull may continue for some time—which does not mean that nothing is happening. What is happening is that this shortest front of the desert war, extending from the coast at Alamein to the edge of the Qattara depression in the south (a distance of 35 miles) is hardening.

Front Is “Hardening”

This hardening process already shows signs of resembling the last war's fixed front, with trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, pillboxes and dug-in artillery, plus extensive minefields laid by both the British and the enemy to deny certain areas to the other and to hinder tank attacks. A month ago the axis forces seemed to be on the verge of invading the Nile delta and taking Alexandria. Then, on the Alamein line, they were stopped—partly by the remainder of the British 8th army and fresh reinforcements rushed up from Syria, partly because the highspeed of Nazi Tommander Gen. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s advance into Egypt had ‘proved too much for his forces and they had to halt to breathe and snatch some sleep.

New Material Helps :

The Alamein line was strengthened and Gen. Auchinleck’s army increased, the arrival of new material helped. Having stopped Marshal Rommel, the next problem was—and remains —to push him back. On July 10, the first attempts by the British and imperial troops were made to do this. The Australians and South Africans. jabped strongly from the

| Alamein positions westward along

the coast. English armored divisions jabbed along the backbone of the ridge called Ruweisat. The New Zealanders attacked. Marshal Rommel’s forces counterattacked fiercely in all sectors and with particular violence in the coastal sector where the allied advance worried them.

Rommel Wants to Stay

But Rommel’s line remained dented and he had to pull back a bit to straighten his line and thus eliminate enemy salients which might have become dangerous. At the same time the axis forces worked hard to dig in. It is obvious that Rommel wishes to remain here, just as much as it is obvious that the British want to force him back. The object of British local attacks was, and remains, primarily to ‘prevent the front from hardening. The longer the line remains where it is, the more it will harden and the more difficult it will be to shove the enemy back.

Main Front at Alamein

Hence the enemy’s tenacity to hold on—despite the serious losses inflicted upon them, and despite the fact that the Italians at present are no good for counter-attacks, and it is practically always the Germans that have to be used. The Italians these days are generally in secondary positions behind the Germans—except at night when they, apparently, are brought forward to do some digging. What is mainly responsible for the freezing of this front is its short distance. From the seacoast to the “impassable” Qattara depression, it is only 35 miles. The enemy, of course, now occupies Siwa, south of the depression on the borders of the great sand sea, and might try to stage something from there toward the Nile valley. The main front, however, remains the Alamein line.

GERMANS CONSERVE ELECTRICAL CURRENT

- BERN, Aug. 1—-A nation-wide campaign to economize on electrical current is being launched in Germany, according to the latest number of the official economic weekly, Deutscher Volkswirt. Special Nazi officials will be appointed in most of the big factories in Germany to control the use of coal and electricity. These officials are designated “energy engineers.” A fixed percentage of last year’s consumption will be allotted to electrically operated factories. The reich’s authorities are contemplating banning the use of electricity cn one or several days of a week in industries not essential to war production.

BANNER PLANS CARD PARTY

“tor, “has come

* jobs; administrator of lend-lease

Harry Hopkins—White House Junior Pariner, 'Hot-Eyed’ Reformer Turned World Diplomat

By ROBERT RUARK Times Special | [Writer WASHINGTON, ‘fug,, 1.—“If it hadn’t been for the war,” one of Harry Hopkins’ was saying, “Harty wouldn't have married Louie Mszcy yesterday. He wouldn't have married anybody. He'd be dead “A bum stomgch and being secretary of commerce nearly killed Harry—and th 1at- commerce job would have heen the heaviest contributing factor. A few pills and the war kept him out of the grave. Getting out of commerce, a ho:rible hole for

closest cronies ‘J

a man like Hopkins, and focusing

all his attention on war work gave him enough impetus to get well. None of us knows hat kept him

‘alive from 1939 fo '40, but we do

know that lend-le:se gave Hopkins a new lease or his own life.”

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He’s Happy Again

HARRY HOPKINS, 51, now married a third tine, is healthier and happier than most of his friends can rememijer seeing him. But if his job as President Roosevelt’s closest advizer and most trusted assistant inn war administration has helped him physically, it has destroyed nu ch of the man who set up the “WPA back in the country’s depression years. Hopkins, the hot-eyed reformer, has tossed all his theories of so-

cial and economic betterment of .

the United States into the crucible of war. That he has abandoned all his feverish thought of internal welfare is the unanimous criticism of the ren who know him best. In a way it is an explanation of one of) the most paradoxical figures of ‘hese times. Here'is the man in the eyes of his friends: A wi Fd lazy fellow who loafs through routine jobs, but who scourges himself into a fury of sel{-punishing activity in the proseq ation of a new, challenging assignment; a complete pragmatist | whose passion is taking a difficult chore and making it work; 5 man who can never hold perm:nently to -one line, but who must forever feed his psyche on Tresh food of endeavor. . ” #8

Study in Coniradictions

A COUNTRY HOY whose personal tastes are completely sophisticated; grandly careless of his own money, hut conservative, despite the billigis of other people’s coin he hes blown for the New Deal; a man of such magnetism and zeal that he can work smoothly with anone, even rabid anti-Roosevelt bi business which abhorred him as a boondoggler; a homely, shamibling, slovenlydressed man ivhose personal charm is so enormous that women find him fascinating and employees are enslaved by him. A social worker who prefers the Stork club to secitlement houses, poker to parchessi and the racetrack to lectures; a foremost figure in the administration of the allied war effort whose qualifications were founded in Grinnell college, 1Ia.; fostered in New York’s slums and matured in New Deal Washingtor. “Harry,” says friend Howard Hunter, former WPA administra2 hell of a long way from the d27s when we werk both social workers. And if anybody had told ug, even five years ago, that Hopkins would be running back and forth for conferences with Churchill and Stalin we wouldn't have believed it.

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President's ‘Right Arm’

“HE HASN'T the accepted qualifications of a rian in high world diplomacy—yeét I'm convinced that . only his bad health prevented him from bein: Mr. Roosevelt's choice for pres; dent in the last elections.” At present, El opkins is President’s right arn, his closest confidant, his most trusted adviser. He is the first man to see the President in the morning and the last to see him | at night. He lives anc works in two rooms of the "White House, and next to the president, is probably harder to .sece shan anybody in the nation. He has two defined

and the chairmanship of the munitions assignment board. For the

rest, he is Mr. Roosevelt's extra

FUNNY L BUTS:

SETI oy 5 iz; 0, IH

take care of himself . . . advice he consistently ignores. “I'm & ‘healthy man,” one of the White House staff says, “but I've seen Hopkins gobble food on trains that would put me in bed for a

- week.”

Harry Hopkins, photographed just before he boarded a trans-Atlantic _plane on one of his trips to London.

eyes, ears and hands. If you ask a member of the White House staff what Hopkins does, the answer is that he spends half his time listening to the president’s wishes, and the other half carrying them out. What are the orders, and what is the conversation? Hopkins knows, and so does the president. It ends there.

Sets Off Dynamite

“HOPKINS,” says an associate, “is the catalytic agent between Mr. Roosevelt and the bureaucrats. He is the boy who raises the blisters and sets off the dynamite under the bureaucrats when the Big Man wants action. He enjoys it, too. “Roosevelt likes him because they see eye to eye on almost everything. He is trusted implicitly. He is an absolutely acute gauger of the president’s moods. He knows just how far to take an argument. He is a good trialhorse for ideas. If Mr. Roosevelt had another self, it would probably be Harry Hopkins.” The Iowa harness-maker’s son has definite qualities which make him valuable. He has a photographic memory for figures, and a startling grasp of the meat of confused situations He can wade to the bottom of masses of data in a few minutes’ time.

He is a lightning administrator when the course of action suits him or when the subject at hand _ is important. He is inclined to be lax on stuff he considers of minor importance. Generally he’s easy to get along with, and is a great believer in the delegation of important tasks lo the people he trusts. Lois Berney. the Nevada woman who is his secretary, sifts all his mail, and handles many important matters more persnickety bosses would insist on supervising. Hopkin’s tricky stomach, which doesn’t secrete the required number of juices, is a stern regulator of his life. He is supposed to rest frequently, and to consume an alarming amount of tablet potions to make up the deficiencies.

” ” ”

‘Hes Good at Poker

AS A RESULT, he works often

from his bed, and punctuates his -

conversation with pills. But, caught up by some new idea or assignment, Hopkins is likely to forget about his bed, medicine and diet. He fatigued himself so greatly in England and Russia that he slept most of the way back on the plane. His doctors have repeatedly told him that he could live to his normal expectancy if he'd

All-India Party

Hints at

Wish for New Negotiations

By A. T. STEELE

NEW DELHI, Aug. 1.—Rebuffed and sobered by critical world opinion, the all-India national congress waits hopefully and expectantiy for Great Britain or the United States to reopen the door to negotiations on - the question of the Indian freedom. That the congress wants to negotiate is plain from the pleadingly conciliatory statements of the congress president, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. The majority of Mr. Steele the congress has little enthusiasm for embarking upon a mass civil discbedience movement now with the risks it involves of dislocating not only their country but their lives. However, despite its qualms and despite the unexpectedly sour re-

I A AT Hn HHH IH 1H i 7 PIN a 9) 77

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action from the United States which made a deep Impression here, the congress will do what Mohandas K. Gandhi advocates. And Gandhi has said nothing yet to indicate that his attitude fundamentally has changed.

Ask Gandhi to Yield

With the meeting of the all-In-dian national congress committee only seven days off, several of Gandhi's friendly critics are visiting him this week in an attempt to induce him to. modify his stubborn stand. One of Gandhi's callers is C. R. Rajagopalacharia, the canny Madras liberal politician who was high-pressured out of his congress post because he advocated a united front of Indian parties at any price. . It is perfectly apparent-that the British government cannot and will not yield to the radical demands of the congress working committee as set forth in the Wardha resolution. Nor does there seem to be the slightest possibility that the con-gress—or-the Muslim league either— would reconsider its rejection of the best terms that Sir Stafford Cripps was able to offer.

Compromise Is Sought

The only real prospect of agreement lies in compromise. There is no way of proving it, but your correspondent feels sure from remarks of congress officials and from comments that the great majority of congress members and sympathizers are compromise-minded. There is scope for an understanding if Gandhi can be persuaded to moderate his views and if the British can be persuaded to grant the Indians greater political power for the duration of the war than the Cripps plan envisaged, along with guarantees of independence afterward.

LEGION TO PRESENT

U. S. FLAG TO CHURCH

A unit from Hugh Copsey post 361, American Legion, will present an American flag to the Center church. Bluff and Eppler aves. at 11 a, m. tomorrow. The Christian flag of the church will be dedicated

at the same time. : Mrs. Fern Norris, Americaniza-

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Harry’s diversions can be split, roughly, into three categories; books, both detective and solid; gambling, an equal division of bridge, poker and bangtails; people, especially pretty girls, and his daughter, Diana, child of his second marriage. Hopkins is good at poker, poor at bridge. He fancies himself an expert horse-picker, is a rigid believer in form sheets, and invariably talks himself off his own selections. ‘He is as careful about making a $5 bet as he was in the old days when he used to rip another billion bucks off the public bank roll. He loves parties and people. He spends a lot of time in the Stork club, “21” and other nightspots. He knows debutantes and diplomats, socialites and social workers, captains of industry and captains of waiters. Although his clothes look like they were blown on him by a careless wind, his figure is thin and shambling and his face no model for the movies, he goes: great with the gals. For awhile: he and Paulette Goddard of the: films were running such a tem- 1. perature that chums were betting J *she’d be the next Mrs. H.

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Sips Scotch, Too

“I' GUESS the sloppy clothes are a help with the ladies,” says one of his friends. “Harry always looks like he needs somebody to take care of him.” His close friends are nearly all relics of [the good old New Deal days; Hunter of WPA and OPA, Dave Niles, now WPB; Aubrey Williams of NYA; Jesse Jones, Steve Early, and Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago. In New York his closest tie is John Hertz, the millionaire horse-fancier who bred the Yellow Cab outfit back in Chicago. These are the cronies with whom he likes to sip Scotch and play stud poker. His Achilles’ heel is Diana, the slim youngster who has spent

most of her life in the White ,

House since her mother died in 1937. Hopkins will drop’ anything to pay attention to his daughter, although he isn’t comparably close with his sons. In Washington there is much conjecture on how his marriage with attractive Mrs. Macy will affect his perch at the president’s right. Some say that Hopkins, the benedict, can’t be as close to Mr. Roosevelt as Hopkins the bachelor. But Harry's friends say that it will take more than a woman to weaken the bond between Hopkins and The Boss. After a honeymoon, the newlyweds will live at the White House, and Hopkins doubtless. will con= tinue to appear with the president’s breakfast coffee, and to serve himself with the nightcaps when FDR prepares for bed. It is probably true that, after so many years of intimate association, the president would find it almost impossible to do without his thin, cavernous-eyed Pythias. Mr. Hopkins, down through his Washington years, has paid precious little attention to the gossip that perennially surrounds him, the barbs that are forever aimed at his stooped shoulders, the jealousy that is the inevitable outcome of his juxtaposition to the presidential ear.

Doesn’t Give a Hoot

HE HAS BEEN punished by press and public in nearly every phase of the Roosevelt administration, for his strict adherence to New Deal policy and unswerving loyalty | to its first citizen. He never seemed to give a hoot, and the following story is typical. During the WPA heyday, when dollars were tumbling after each other for relief, Hopkins and a select batch of cronies were having dinner in a Washington restaurant. While they were waiting for the meal, Hopkins suggested a game of pitch-quarter, which was progressing right merrily when one of his chums had a horrified thought. “My Gosh, Henry,” he said. “Suppose a congressman should walk in and see us pitching quarters in public.” “Hell with em,” said carefully aiming his two-bit Piece. at the crack.

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HOLD EVERYTHING