Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 September 1942 — Page 17

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| oosier Vagabond

. LONDON, Sept. 18.—During the time I have been iting columns from London I have also been

traveling ‘around England quite a bit, looking at

some of the American camps. So maybe in the 4 next few columns I can tell you some off the things you'd like to know . about our troops over here. I'll make up my own questions, and answer them myself. Such as, “Are the Iroops well fed?” A lot of them would like to kill me for saying this, but I would say the answer is yes. ‘They are not as well fed as the troops in Northern Ireland, for up there they are on American rations and eat just as they ate back in the states. In Eng“and, only the air forces and a few other camps are American rations. The’ rest use British rations, «cooked by American Cooks. : British rations are ‘duller and skimpier than ours, but they are sufficient. Many American soldiers lose weight in their first few weeks here. The reason is that they're. finicky abeut their food and don’t eat as much as they did at home. But after a while they get accustomed .to it and begin cleaning their plates again, and regain their weight. -

heir Health Is Better, Too.

THE MAIN COMPLAINT is the sameness of British food. Their vegetables are potatoes, cabbage and carrots, and they have the same thing over and over till the sight of it makes them see réd. At one camp I was shocked at the amount of stuff the soldiers dumped into garbage cans after eath meal, But that will straighfen out, in two

ways—the boys will get used to this different type.

of food, and“also the army plans eventually to get everybody back ‘onto American rations. ?

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

OUR AIR RAID wardens had better hurry up and get their training done and finish contacting the “people in their districts. The chances are that between now and Oct. 1 this whole area will- be “alerted.” That mess that we'll be given orders to be ready ¢t for a dimout, or maybe even a blackout. We don't know when it’s coming and we’ll have to be standing by for the orders to come at any moment during the alert, which. might last a couple of weeks. It's considered ‘likely that the alert will include all of central Imdiana—not just Indianapolis. Get ready, boys... . . Which reminds us ‘that there was a 5--minute total blackout at Methodist hospital at 9:15 p. m. Tuesday. It was quite successful except for a few instances where nurses used their flashlights. As the lights all ‘went out, the effect proved startling to motorists passing the building. Two cars pulled up to the curb and the occupants (probably civilian defense people) started over to see if help was needed.

Around the Town

! THERE'S A STORY making the rounds about an applicant for an officer's commission who wrote the army procurement office that he had had two years

A

- of ROTC trathing “at Indiana, or Purdue—we forget

,which—and ‘that he had had “18 years of military training.” It looked like he nfight be a valuable man, so they called him in. When they asked about #he 18 years of military service, he explained-it had been with the Sahara Grotto drill team. . . . Capt. T. G. Fleming, who has been abroad, is back on leave. He was having lunch with friends yesterday at the I. A, C. Also Junching there was Don Hogate, former Indianapolis newspaperman- and now with the General Motors public relations staff. He and Tom Hendricks were reminiscing. . . . Lieut. John Rickles, the lawyer, now in the air corps, was back in town this week for a few hours’ leave. . . . His brother-in-law and office partner, Fred Shick,

‘Washington

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18.—For the sake of prompt #ction on rubber it is to be hoped that the recomimendations of the Baruch committee will be followed more closely from here on than they were in the seection ot the rubber administrator. That is said without any intention of reflecting on the ability of the new rubber administrator, William M. Jeffers, who evidently has plenty of it, certainly in railroading. He has been railroading for 52 years. He has never done anything else. Undoubtedly he is an exceptionally good executive, quick to master detail and tough as railroad men usually are. Donald Nelson, chairman of WPB, had served as a director of the Union Pacific railroad while Mr. Jeffers was president, so they came to know each other very well. Mr. Jeffers was first choice for the post of rubber administrator and was approved by the president. ey must have had good reason for sefecting Mr. Jeffers, particularly since he does not en-

tirely fit the qualifications suggested in the Baruch

report. He Doesn't Know the Industry!

THE BARUCH REPORT said that the most important part of the whole rubber program was obviously the choice of the right man as administrator. He should be; said the report, a thoroughly competent operating and manufacturing executive, preferably with experience in the rubber industry. + The Baruch report went on to say this: “The ‘demand for speed and the vital need for this man to start with experience and knowledge of the problem make it important that the man chosen be of proven integrity. and enjoy the public's confidence and that of the rubber industry as well. We cannot stress too much the importance of choosing the right man for

: | WASHINGTON, Thursday. —It was a pretty cereyesterday at the navy yard as the American : on came down and the Norwegian flag went up on

‘the ship which the Crown Princess of Norway had

Just accepted from the president. The sailors on the ship looked so young and the

.captain, who came to shake hands"

: with the president, elicted the re- © mark frgm him that he looked ~ young to take charge of a ship. Today I have been to Annapo- - lis, Md., to the Navy Wives club. # I have been to the officers’ wives club on a number of occasions, but this club is a new one and repre-

~ sents ‘the wives of the enlisted .

men. We had a very pleasant Am small lunch at Carvel hall, and then went to the new USO buildfor or a mating 10s is a delightful building of brick

the general colonial atmosphere

“accounts for it I don’t know, bu: that's what, the

aveniif fb

Another question: “How is their health?” It is fine. It is actually better than it was at home, despite the ‘change in climate and food. What

medicals corps reports. This fine health may go down a little when Eng-

land's damp winter sets in, but 50, far it is above

average. 5 Also it is above average on venereal diseases. Among the English, venereal disease has increased alarmingly during three years of war, yet such cases amqgng our troops here are only: two-thirds of what the rate was back home.

Not a Single Major Gripe

QUESTION: “HOW DO our troops like England ‘compared with Northern Ireland?” With the one exception of food. they like it.much better here. They feel more at horne with the people. ‘The climate is less deadly. And they find the girls ‘prettier. In Ireland there is no place to go for a big time when they get leave. In England and Scotland there are London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and other big cities. Furthermore, camp conditions on the whole are betier here than in Ireland. Question: “Where are our troops, and how are they living?” Naturally I can’t tell you specifically where they are. They are scattered, but they don’t fill England up as our troops fill Northern Ireland. You can ride for hours and hours on a train without ever being

near an American camp. They are what you might|

call sectionalized, rather than infiltrated into every British village and crossroads. Question: “Do our troops have any one outstanding thing they gripe about?” No. In all honesty, they haven't a single major gripe.

has been promoted to a captaincy. He's at Sioux City, Ia.

Just Calling Fido

TONER OVERLEY, head of the Better Business Bureau, has been playing recently with one of those dog whistles—the kind the dogs can hear but humans can’t. During a conversation, he’ll get the whistle out of his pocket and adjust it, asking his friends to tell him whether they can hear it. Sounds sorta insulting to us. . . . Those new type air raid siréns the civilian defense "people were trying out yesterday certainly raised havoc with the downtown pigeon brigade. Everytime one of the sirens went ow0000000, the pigeons took it on the lam, flying like mad and finally disappearing into the distance. Personally, we don’t know which is worse—the pigeons or all the racket. . .. Charles H. Sanders, first member of the Optimist club to be inducted into the armed forces, is located at Ft. Benning, Ga., and has just been promoted to major. . . . Irving Lemaux Jr., now a corporal, is in -England, getting ready for the second front.

Wrong Kind of Salvage

THE FIREMEN assigned to the ' Indianapolis Salvage Corps sent us an S. O. S. today. “For Pete's sake,” they said, “tell the public that we're firemen and haven't got anything to do with collecting old rubber, or scrap iron, or keys, or tin cans.” It seems the boys have been kept pretty busy on the phone answering calls from people wanting information or raising cain and asking why the corps doesn’t “come out and pick up’'my tin cans.” Says the Corps: Call the City Hall, LI, 3311, or the Marion county salvage committee—RI. 2541. . . . Dudley Smith, the state salvage director, was under the weather yesterday (and probably today) with a high fever.... A woman who asked that her name not be divuiged got in touch with the women’s section of the salvage committee yesterday and contributed to the campaign something that was very dear to her. She’d been cleaning out the attic and found some old-fashioned lead soldiers that her son had played with as a boy.

| By Ernie Pyle

He's in the service now, and she decided to put the metal “in service,” too. She shed a few tears as she handed them over. We don’t blame her a bit.

By Raymond Clapper

this work, for no plan of organization can bolster up a weak man sufficiently to meet the difficult problems he must face.” The first thing Mr. Jeffers said on arriving in Washington was that he didn’t’ know a thing about rubber but intended to learn as quickly as he could. The new administrator has full authority in manufacture of synthetic rubber, including research, development, construction and operation of plants. This single administrator, says the Baruch report, must be a man of unusual capacity and power and must have full charge of all matters connected with rubber within the WPB. :

It's a Thankless Job

NO JOB IN THE civilian side of the government!

is as closely involved with technical decisions as this. In addition Mr. Jeffers steps into the most tangled, most manhandled of all war production tasks and one now heavily burdened with an accumulation of feuds. No man could be given a more thankless task nor a more essential one. One can think of good reasons why it might not have been possible to find a man in the rubber industry who was sufficiently free from recent entanglement to be available as an administrator. If it was impossible to find a rubber man, then perhaps it did not matter much whether a manufacturer was selected or a railroad operating executive. The latitude that President Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson ought to have in selecting their administrator should not extend so fully to the rubber production program itself. After months of failure, under the appalling conditions described in the Baruch report, a group of experts has pointed what it considers to be the quickest way out of the hole and into the production’so urgently needed. Everybody else has kicked the rubber program around and only failure has resulted. Now the recommendations of this impartial Baruch board are entitled to faithful application, i

By Eleanor Roosevelt

twice torpedoed in 26 hours and, somewhere along the line, had also spent four days as a prisoner of war on a German submarine. He was a Texan and had just Rr home on leave. I wished I could have heard him tell of his adventures, instead of having just two minutes with him when my own talk before the club was over. One of the questions asked was interesting, and I think must be in the minds of a great many women|l today. Should children be made aware of the war, or should it be kept away from them as much as possible? Children vary so much that it is hard to give an answer which would cover all situations. - For instance, one of my daughters-in-law told me that her little boy wakes up af; night whenever he has heard anything terrifying. She cannot even read him “The Three Bears” or “Little Black Sambo.” Other|c children take things with great calm and, I sometimes think, are decidedly cold-blooded, or, perhaps, we had better say are unimaginative. Of one thing ‘I am very sure; every child should be made aware of the fact that his country is in a

life and death struggle and that he has a part in it, |b

only giving up cheWing gum, or an is)

INSTALLMENT V

AIR POWER VERSUS . SEA POWER : THE BATTLE of Britain was the turning point of the war. Had the luftwaffe prevailed, Hitler could have destroyed the cities, factories, and communications of Great Britain at his leisure. Obtaining a bridgehead and occupying England and its sister island, Eire, would: have been only a matter of

weeks. The exultant Nazi would have stood like a great bird of prey, completely triumphant on the Continent, with only {wo obstacles between him and domination of the earth. One of these, the great Soviet Bear, would “have waited in ‘the fullness of time until the Nazi appetite was ready for him. The other was the huge, rich, «and indolent

America, immersed in internal bickering and dissension, incurably pacifist, and from the Nazi view a great, fat cow ripe for the slaughter: Had Hitler William B. Ziff {ym phed in

Britain, his strategy would have passed into a new phase--that of the long-awaited war of continents. All that would have stood between us and a hungry Nazi Europe would have heen our AtlJantic fleet. The Nazis were prepared to build a huge invading air force to serve as a cover for an enormous sea armada. With all Europe and Britain under their. control, the Germans would have possessed shipbuilding facilities which would have enabled them to outbuild us on the ocean by at least five to one. It takes very- little imagination to visualize the debt every American owes to the few thousand British youngsters who stopped : the invading barbarian in the great amphitheaters of air over southern England and Wales. The’ beautiful homage paid them by Mr, Churchill will live as long as bravery and freedom and gallantry are known: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” ” FJ os

Proved Air Power’s Role THE BATTLE of Britain proved

conclusively that air power alone :

can be a decisive factor in the affairs of nations. It gave rise to a situation which may be accepted as doctrinal—that vast armies equipped with great quantities of armored machines operating with strong air units as an invincible team, are only valuable where they face an opponent on a contiguous land surface, where his industries, cities, air fields, and railroad centers may be occupied. Wherever an unbridgeable body of water separates such a”’con-’ queror from his prey, the opponent is impregnable to attack if he possesses a fighter force cap-

4 CENTS MORE T0 6M WORKERS

WLB Award Retroactive to

April 28; Chevrolet

Here Included.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (U. P.). —The war labor board, applying its | “little steel” wage stablization formula, tonight ordered a four cents an hour pay increase for more than 225,000 employees.of 103 General Motors plants. (The ruling includes the Cheyrolet commercial body plant in Indi-

anspolis but. not that of the GM/| ’

Allison division.) The increase, which will cost G-M approximately $375,000 a week, will be | retroactive to April 28, the expiration date of the previous contract between the corporation and the C. I. O. United Automobile Workers, representing 200,000 employees, and the C. I. O. Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, representing 25,000 electrical workers. The board ruled that the fourSolis an-hous increase—8%2 cents than demanded by the two ns—was sufficient to raise G-M

wi in proportion to the 15 per cet jump in the cost of living

Jan. 1; 1941. e board also ruled: t the new contracts include a | maintenance of membership use ‘providing that employees have 15 days in which they may

esign from the union in order not}

0 be bound to remain members for he duration of the contracts. i hat men and women employees paid in accordance with the of equal pay for equal

DIINCID]

4

5% German

William B. 2iff

APRIL 9, 1940. - THE LIGHTNING L/KE THRUST IN 70 NORWAY THROUGH OSLO.

ALL ALLIED

FORCES SOUTH OF TRONDHEIM ¢ EVACUATED,

+

DARKEST SHADING REPRESENTS GERMAN INVASION OF NORWAY, /940.

THE AR.

THE ANSWER 9 WAS LAND AIR BASES.

How German air power swallowed Norway.

able of coping with such enemy aircraft as may be thrown against him. The struggle then becomes one of air power alone, which without the intervention of surface arms, is quite capable of deciding the conflict. This historic battle also gives rise to another inferential conclusion: That air power is used most economically not as a self-limited adjunct to some surface body, but as a completely self-contained appartus possessing its own individuality of tactics, strategy and structure. The great organic changes in the composition of armed bodiés, induced by the advent of the aerial age, haye affected equally the struggle for control over the no-man’s waste of sea. Navies are now in the throes of the greatest revolutionary ferment in their history, a radical revision of function which is keeping pace in ratio to the emergence of the new ruling form, air power. *

# ” 2

Wings Needed Over Sea

THE HISTORY of great empires has been a history of sea power, of enduring control over the broad highways of ocean

which link the mighty cities of the world. The authority which these expanses have always e€xercised over the affairs of men

was described by the brilliant,

American admiral, Mahan, in his classic work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Nothing. inferred by the rise of air power alters the validity of

, Mahan’s doctrines. It is still true

that whoever controls the sea lanes will control the world— though there is a notable differ.ence in technique. Previously this had been done by dominating the little fringes of land which bordered the oceans. Today it is only possible by controlling the air over the oceans themselves. The day of the surface vessels as possessing the sole initiative of action on the seas is finished. This initiative is passing in rapid transition stages to patrolling and raiding aircraft. Thus we see a picture of surface sea power tapidly transmut-

ing itself into the air, like a caterpillar emerging into another stage of its existence. The first nation to accelerate this process by devoting its resources to solving the question of air power will automatically resolve the question of sea power. Even today no vessel in existence can remain afloat against the threat of uncontested air mastery. Surface vessels, no matter how brilliantly handled, may no longer approach a shore held by powerful land-based aircraft without risking the most disastrous consequences. ” ” ”

Carrier Dominates Today

THE TASK of fighting ships is now largely restricted to convoying in waters safely beyond the range of shore-based airplanes. As the latter’s radius of action develops, it is even conceivable that air power will drive sea power under water altogether, as a furtive and skulking adjunct to the aerial establishment.

If this should eventuate, as some aeronautical engineers are inclined to believe, ‘the aircraft carrier, so essential in global operations today, would cease to have a function. If military aviation is still evolving in a continuously lengthening radius of! action, the sea-based air field will inevitably disappear as having outlived its usefulness. However this may be in the future, the part played by the carrier at the moment is an important one. It completely commands its own areas of action. The situation may be mdre readily grasped in its real aspects when it is realized that the aircraft carrier has an artillery range of some 300 miles from its center. Thus it can shoot down surface opponents several hundred miles away, while these in turn can only attack what may be considered to be the carrier's expendable ammunition. Even before the events at Pearl Harbor and the South Pacific established the torpedo plane as

the foremost gnemy of floating

craft, airplanes had radically changed the nature of naval engagements, Previous to December 1941, aerial bombs had sunk 67 British naval vessels. Fifty-two were accounted for by mines and

24 by torpedoes, 10 of which were loosed from planes. Only eight were sent down as a result of naval gunfire, Since that time the arc of loss by aerial assault has sharply risen, accounting in a few months for the death of more fighting ships than all causes in world war I put together. ” ”

Norway the Test

THE FIRST clear-cut test of strength between dorhinant surface power and the blustering,

ships of the air, in which the

challenge wa. thrown and the issue settled once and for all, occurred in the Battle of Norway. The Germans struck’ with a lightning thrust on April 9, 1940. Troopships disguised as merchantmen lay in the Norwegian harbors. Under an awning of planes, still other troop carriers led by big battleships raced to the key ports on Norway's coast. At the same time great squadrons of

troop-carrying aircraft shuttled™

back and forth over the Skagerrack, landing picked troops to‘gether with their equipment. Working in perfect co-ordina-

tion, the Germans quickly im-.

provised air fields. Oslo and the cities tc the south fell into the. Nazi grasp almost at once. Within a few days the Germans, moving by sea, air, and land, had pushed on to Trondheim and beyond, and had occupied wirtually the entire coast. Never before in| history had an overseas expeditionary force departed from its bases, without complete naval control of the intervening sea routes. The British immediately parried this audacious move by bringing in their fleet and investing the waters of the North sea and the Skagerrak. In a correlating action an allied expeditionary force attempted a counter-invasion, striking in two great prongs, one south of the important port of Trondheim, and one to the north. The allied troop movements were protected by planes of the fleet air arm which had taken off from carriers parked some 200 miles off shore. Here was the first genuine test of power between carrier and shore-based aircraft. The answer came swiftly. Within a few days most of the British planes as-

signed to this mission were destroyed, leaving the strategic heights of sky henceforward in the possession of the enemy. Nazi warplanes swooped down in clouds on the unprotected French and English, bombing supplies and, ships, and machine-gunning troops almost at will. : ” ” ”

British Navy Failed

IT WAS SOON clear that the allied counter-attack had fizzled out completely due to lack of mastery in the air, and that a

further continuation of this unequal struggle would be suicidal. , By May 2, all allied forces south * of Trondheim had been evacuated. On June 10 the last remnants of the British armies in the north, a thoroughly beaten force, finally withdrew. At no time during this struggle was the British navy able to ful fill its. traditional mission by cutting the supply lines of the enemy and isolating his task forces. It could not prevent the hauling of materials and men across the sky-guarded waters of the Kattegat and Skagerrak. Neither was it able to protect the landing of its own troops despite the fact that the harbors were practically unfortified, the native population friendly, and the German invaders scattered in pockets over a wide area. Shortly after the first crash of the charging ‘German thunderbolt had given the luftwaffe pos-

session of northern bases, British

ships found all the coastal seas of Norway unsafe; the hunter had been tragically transformed into the game and had to flee the vicinity.

At Norway it was demonstrated

that battleships no longer could land men on a hostile shore unless they were able to achieve ahsolute control of the skies over the point of entry. It was shown, also, that sea-based aviation is not capable of competing with the heavier, faster, and more numerous craft of a competent landbased adversary. (Copyright, 1942,

liam B. zim; publia ed by Duell, and Pearce gist i by United Feature Syndicate,

TOMORROW: Milestones in

areial warfare.

Sugar? Who's Worried Abou Sugar Right Now?

It Looks Like It's Coffee to Melt It That Counts

By. ROSEMARY REDDING

The time may come when your waitress will ask you how much coffee you want on your sugar, instead of vice versa. It’s possible but not probable. But she may say “no” when you ask for a second cup of coffee. Sugar is relatively plentiful. The ration went up from 50 to 75 per cent in August (plus a bonus). At the same time, coffee was cut from 75 per cent to 65 per cent. (Indianapolis gets an extra 10 per cent added.)

More Drinkers, Too

And’ that means, friends, that where you had 10 cups of coffee every week last year, you are going to get only eight. This is the per: capita consumption for the nation as a whole. "drinkers will swell the allotment some for those of us who are the two and three-cuppers a day. But several wholesalers say coffee drinkers in Indianapolis are on the increase. The coffee quota is based on last year's normal supply and population, Since that time, Indianapolis has had a rise in population, mueh of it from the influx of defense workers. ‘They are, generally, in the two and three-cupper class. Grocers’ Supplies Limited

Some housewives already are

selling them 12 pounds—half as much.

A representative of another _ dealer in coffee calls the situation

“acute.” “There are so many sinkings we can't count on what will arrive in New Orleans and New York,” he lamented. He does see one bright spot. “We are now supplying Brazil

with some war ‘materials, you know,” he said. “We hope that the boats will bring coffee on the trip back home.” A representative of , a large chain store firm here says there is talk in Washington of coffee rationing directly to the consumer. Although there is no way yet to prevent hoarding; this same

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firm is trying its best to co-oper-ate with the government in its efforts to prevent that. Its clerks discourage the customer from buying up too much,

Coffee Best When Fresh

Coffee is at its best when it is fresh anyway. Canada already is rationing coffee. It also has included the next two popular beverages. Although the tea packers in this country have been limited to 50 per cent of their normal out-: put, one wholesaler feels the sup-. ply is building up. G: “frozen” today for government purchase with the exception of

quantities in the quarter pound

or less. Green tea comprises abot one-fifth of the U. S, tea sumption. This order does affect black tea. n

Do You Like ‘Chocolate? | { ‘Much of the cocoa supply comes from Africa. It can come from South America—if there are. the

ships to carry it. So far, the dealers in cocoa have only been

I tried to make up my mind about ice cream. What flavor? “Better take chocolate,” said

the waiter, Fe may. ok be Seve

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