Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 November 1942 — Page 11

EDNESDAY, NOV. 4, 1942

~ E r ’

oosier Vagabond

Rin DENHAM, England, Nov. 4.—Just for variety’s sake, we're switching from soldiers to movie stars for a day or two. The movie star is one you all know— Leslie Howard. A Howard has lived most of his adult life in America,

and he expects to live there again some day. But in 1939, less than

10 days before war started, he came back to England on a threemonth business trip. That three months has now stretched into more than three years, and Leslie Howard is still here in his homeland, as esteemed today by the British public as he ever was in America. He isn’t in uniform—he is still in the movie business—but he is contributing his share to the war effort. His son is in the navy and hasn’t been home for'a year; his daughter is married to an army officer; Howard himself works day and night on propaganda films, public appearances, broadcasts to America and to the troops. The BBC insists on paying him for his radio work. He insists on refusing. So his assistant just sends the checks on to charity, and he doesn’t even see them.

He's His Own Master Now

HOWARD STILL owns his home in Beverly Hills. But almost everything else he made and saved in 5 those two decades in America has gone by the boards * since he left—through taxes and confiscation of British assets abroad. A friend of mine from Washington named Martin Codel, publisher of the magazine Broadcasting, met Howard at a theater one night, got him into a corner, and invited himself and me out to the studios to spend a day. Howard surrendered graciously. We rode the suburban train out to the Denham

\ By Ernie Pyle

stop, and walked through mud and rain across short-

cut paths, through pastures, to the big studio buila-

ings.

many years. He turned out to be everything I thought he was. He is so kindly and quiet-voiced and attentive that you can’t help being at ease with him. He was working on a new film—his fifth since he returned to England thiee years ago. He is realizing an old ambition to produce and direct his own pictures. let him stop acting. Now he’s his own master. This newest picture is a story of the A. T. S.—the girls of the British army. It takes seven girls of different personalities and backgrounds, brings them together into the common brown uniform of the A. T. S., and carries them on from training camp to frontline manning of the great A. A. guns.

Now You Have Something to Say

THE SEVEN LEADING ladies are: professional actresses; all the others are real A. T. S. girls, detached long enough to do their various bits in the picture.

The picture is temporarily called “Were Not

Weeping,” but will likely be changed to “The Gentle] Sex” before it’s finished. It probably won’t appear in| | America for three or four months yet. Howard doesn’t] §

act in it himself. All of Howard’s pictures now have a war or propaganda character. He works closely with the military of information, but the government does not contribute financially. It isn’t easy to make pictures in wartime. short on help, short on studio space, short on money, short cn technical equipment. And yet, as Howard says, it’s actually easier than before, for now you definitely have something to say. Britain has said it well in its films since war began. Movie-making over here has made greater strides in the last three years than ever before, }

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

MIKES LOAN office, 461 W. Washington st., has had in the window (it may be gone by now) a brassy antique-appearing alarm clock. The sign on it read:

“$26.50—0I1d as hell.” . , . Charles A. Breece, tele-

phone company engineer, held open house all day yesterday in his office. The reason: His 40th anniversary with the firm. Employees gave him 40 American Beauty roses. . . . One cold morning recently, office employees of RCA heard the {ire drill signal. Grumblingly they trudged outside into the cold and waited for the signal to return. After shivering about 15 minutes, someone stuck his head in the door and asked a workman what was. going on. “Oh,” he smiled, “we were just working on the bell —should have notified you.” . . . Recent announcement that some defense industries no longer would require birth certificates from new employees—would _ accept affidavits, instead—hasn’t cut down much on the lineup of applicants for birth certificates at the courthouse.

Crippled by Sweet Potatoes

~ JUDGE NIBLACK has been hobbling around with a game leg. Said he got it over the week-end digging his sweet potato crop in his backyard garden. Nice - crop for such a short growing season, the judge remarked as he hobbled lamely to a taxi. , .. John K. Ruckelshaus, the lawyer, wasn’t built to stand on busses. Six feet, four inches tall, he towers above everyone else on the Central Broad Ripple bus, stands with his head bent forward to keep from pushing his hat out of shape on the bus ceiling. . .. A lot of people around town are trying out various and sundry — methods of getting around the coffee rationing situation. Some are trying to use smaller §uantities of coffee and boiling or perking it harder. Some others are trying the stunt of drying coffee after

y ~ Washington

WASHINGTON, Nov. ye For most of u§ the new controlled materials plan of the war production board is complicated and of interest with regard to its purposes rather than to its method of operation. An idea of its wide reach into industrial operations may be suggested by the fact that WPB is allowing eight months in which to put the plan into full operation. It is a long overdue move. The purpose of the controlled materials plan is to stop the flagrant overordering and scrambling for short materials that has thrown war production out of balance. We have airplanes without propellers, ships without engines, too much of some things and not enough of others. Some plants

must shut down while others’

catch up. Now WPB is putting up a bank. A bank loaded not with money but with steel, copper and aluminum. Those are for the present to be the three controlled materials. They are the real bottlenecks. i Other materials are short, but if war production is built around those three materials other shortages probably will be automatically taken care of. Rubber may come into the plan later.

Wild Grabbing Up to Now

WHEN THE CONTROLLED materials plan goes into effect, no one can get steel, copper or aluminum without clearing through the requirements board of WPB. That board, under control of Ferdinand Eberstadt, vice chairman of WPB and until recently the executive of the joint army-navy munitions board, will say where steel, copper and aluminum shall go. That board will say what is needed first, what is needed next, and who must wait or go without. Until now there has been wild, competitive grab.bing for these short materials. by ‘the army, navy,

~My Day

. LONDON, Tuesday—On Sunday Y saw a good many of our troops. We arrived at camp in time to go to 11 o'clock church service. The church was - filled. Directly afterward, we visited the kitchens, Where the men’s food was being prepared, saw their mess hall and visited some of ¥ - their barracks. After lunch with the com"manding general, who keeps to the nice custom of saying grace before’ meals, we visited a hospital.. There were very few se-

rious cases of illness, mainly motor

Vehicle accidents or accidental gunshot wounds. Many had colds, "but all of them seemed to be getting well. ; We went next to the American Red Cross canteen, run by Mrs. Roosevelt Jr. It was crowded, some army well

with a Sunday afternoon

using it once, then using it again on the theory that the first use doesn’t remove all the oils. And then quite a few are mixing chicory with their coffee— when they can get the chicory. Max Buell, the food broker, 233 W. Georgia, used to handle occasional small quantities of chicory. Now he can’t get enough from the mills. Too much demand.

Seeks Art Magazines

MARIAN GREEN, librarian at the Herron Art Museum, is seeking donations of art magazines (not the racy art models type) to send to John Herron graduates in the armed forces. Some of them report they never find technical art magazines in the camp libraries, and they'd like them to keep up with the art situation. Mrs. J. W. Fesler, president of the Art Association of Indianapolis, recently gave Miss Green a stack of the magazines. . . . Jessie Royce Landis, star of “Papa Is All,” at English’s, has a colored maid with the unusual name of Billy Polite. Whenever Billy forgets to do something, she blames it on the fact she’s traveling so much. Monday, in trying to excuse one of her lapses, she explained: “I guess ¥'m just gettin’ journey proud.”

Military News

LIEUT. WILLIAM B. FLOREA, Ayres’ controller, is down at New Orleans awaiting assignment to the gun crew of a merchant ship. He writes George Dickson that he’s been having a fine time, taking in the famous French quarter and seeing ‘the sights. Not too much work. Says he’s having a good time while he can in anticipation of plenty tough going when he finally gets to sea. . . . Lieut, Hugh McGowan, also of the navy, is down there with him. . . . Capt. Dick Evans left today to return to Mitchell Field, L. I, where he’s assistant inspector general for the First air corps. Nice job. He was home a couple of days to vote and visit. . Lieut. Francis Brosnan, the insurance man, is stationed at the U. S. naval training station at Farragut, Ida., handling insurance and family allotments for the enlisted men.

By Raymond Clapper

maritime commission, lend-lease administration and by some other agencies. Ordering was done sometimes out of all proportion to reasonable needs simply because in an uncontrolled production program you had to get in early with a big order or some other agency would get there first. I don’t mean that no effort has been made to balance requirements, but the situation has been almost uncontrollable. Often the only way out was to stop some contractor and divert materials from him td some more urgent program. Everybody had priorities and they didh’t mean much. Now, as Leon Hender: son says, there will be no more tickets sold than there are seats in the theater.

Yes, the Squeeze Is On

WAR NEEDS WILL be balanced, and materials in the WPB bank will be drawn on by order. You, running your steel mill, can. send your steel only to the

manufacturer whose allotment number has been forwarded to you by WPB. That means rigid control for war industry. It means control over most of the industry activity of the country. Probably 70 to 90 per cent of American industrial production will come under the controlled materials plan. It isn’t very different from what Germany has done. But this is war. There isn’t any escape from it. We have tried to avoid it too long as it is. Civilians are going to be shut down on drastically. Only about one and a half per cent of next year’s steel production will be reserved for civilian uses. Only three-fourths of 1 per cent of copper production will be left for civilian uses. , Most of that will be allowed to go only for repairs to refrigerators, and that sort of thing. Enough materials will be held out to keep trains running, to keep farm implements working, to maintain utilities and other such services so that the life of the country can go on. But the squeeze is on and it will be heavy. Make no mistake about that.

~

By Eleanor Roosevelt

to get the things they need to run it smoothly. There is no other place for the boys to go nearby, so the movies, dances and “eats” offered by the Red Cross are very much appreciated. We reached our final destination by 6:30 and Miss Thompson and I spent the night with Queen Mary in the country. It was a very pleasant visit. Monday morning, we left at 9:30, visited our paratroops, saw. a demonstration of their equipment, their marching and training, They are a grand adventurous group of boys. We then drove to a training center for officer candidates and for special services. These candidates are chosen after they have received considerable training

in the United States. They are specialists and are|

there to’ learn about the particular things which will be valuable in their branches of the service. I saw the colonel of the troops of this camp and, among ‘noncommissioned officer candidates, were a

I have admired Leslie Howard for I don’t kw how

He couldn’t do it in America, for they wouldn’t i

You're;

The Soviet army has leadership. with a capital S. The Russian army’s younger officers, like the one on the hillside above, play as vital a role in the Soviet resistance as do the more experienced senior officers,

e Indianapolis

-

It has forward thinking,

After 16 Months

FRONT—When you've spent

army must have.

tasks. It has artillerymen of exceptional merit who are inspired by long-estab-lished Russian tradition. It has tank corps and aviation technicians and officers who for nine years, burred by the menace of Hitler's wehrmacht and Hitler's luftwaffe, have concentrated upon developing and improving the military use of tanks and airplanes to the utmost.

No Strait Jackets

THIS SOVIET ARMY has leadership. It is forward thinking. It has the modern spirit. Where the French army left off in 1918 and was still sitting complacently in May, 1940, the army of the Soviet Union merely began. It had serious handicaps and its makers never had available that wealth of already perfected strategical brains which Hitler found waiting for him in Germany. Nevertheless, the Russian army was evolved by men unhampered by. orthodox strait jackets and thisalternates and adaptability is visible in the personalities of most officers you meet at the front. This Soviet army also has sol-

Alignment of holes in test tapping blocks and systematic use of those holes earned Fred West of Allison’s a share of the war bonds awarded for employee suggestions to increase production efficiency. The idea also has saved vital ma-

blocks three or four times. Blocks of aluminum or steel are used by operators to test taps to be

is done to save thousahds of dollars

worth of wear on parts which are nearly finished when they get to the tapping operation. Prior to Mr. West's suggestion, the testing holes were drilled on the block at random and, when all the ‘holes had been tapped, the blocks—with much wasted space—were scrapped. : . Today the holes are placed systematically in the block. They fit

as they are enlarged by wear, they are redrilled and sent on to the department using the next larger size.

REPORT YANKEES IN

LONDON, Nov. 4 (U. P.).—The Exchange Telegraph Agency reported today in a dispatch from

number of young colored trainees. We lunched with! | Istanbul that American troops had

the colonel in charge and then went to see snpiher arrived in Palestine and Syria tof reinforce ;

of our hospitals.

British ) garsigans.

of War and

Constant Hardships, Morale Of the Troops Is Still High

(This is the 20th of a series of articles.)

By LELAND | STOWE Copyright, 1942, by The Indianapolis Times and The Chicago Daily News, Inc.

WITH THE SOVIET ARMY ON THE RZHEV

even one week in front sec-

tors with the Soviet army, it becomes much clearer why Russia’s armed forces, after 16 months of ruthless and savage combat, are still holding, foiling and bleeding Germany’s mightiest war machine of modern times. This army has many things which any first-class It has a large cadre of professional officers who have had long rigid training in their military

It has soldiers—spelled

terials by increasing the life of the -

used on machine parts. The testing

PALESTINE, SYRIA

diers—spelled with a capital S. And it has a very great fighting spirit. After 16 months of incessant punishment the length and depth of the Rzhev front, the morale of the men of Russia's troops is still astonishingly high. In even widely separated theaters of war, from Norway to China, I have never seen soldiers of stronger physique or finer fighting spirit.

# i ”

He’s No Expert

MY REMARKS here will be con-

fined to certain impressions and certain facts with which these days which I have lived with the Soviet army, have provided me. There are in no sense the conclusions of a ‘military expert: simply the observations of one who perhaps has seen a fair share of the second world war in various places and therefore has some basis for comparison with Spanish, Finnish, Norwegian, French, British, Greek, Chinese and Indi-

an troops or armies.

Some of the truly most striking things about the Soviet army can easily be overlooked by people abroad. For instance, the Russian

And More Metal Is Saved

the small taps to start with and &

| imes p

3

ship.”

army today has good shoes and good clothes. You might think that a minor item but it is almost of inestimable importance in regard to the final outcome of the whole war. This, which is the largest army Russia has ever known, is also the first army in all Russian history which was adequately shod, adequately clothed and well fed.

2 t 4 z

Scandal of Petrograd

HISTORY BOOKS are now full of descriptions of the terrible plight of the brave Russian soldiers in the army of Czar Nicholas II and how legions of them froze to death for lack of ‘hoots and overcoats. Stories of whole Russian divisions, who didn’t have half enough rifles to go around, were the scandal of Petrograd as early as 1915. Under the czars, the Russian soldier was always miserably cared for and miserably armed—yef even so the Russians fought for three long, bitter winters. Neither in the rear nor anywhere along the front today do you see Russian soldiers who lack either proper clothing or equipment. Most of the troops already have their winter overcoats and they are of heavy, warm wool. All will soon be issued felt boots— and they have no worries about this. i But these are all things of which the Russian soldiers never before could feel assured. In the last war the Russian soldiers knew that they were getting the least and the worst of everything, or nothing at all much of the time.

” # »

No Middlemen

IF YOU WEIGH what these things mean to men of magnificent natural courage and of remarkable powers of endurance, you need not be surprised that the Soviet army man is still very far from being licked. He has 10,000 more reasons to hold on and fight on now than his father had in the winter of 1915—yet his father fought on through more than two winters after that and then

at Allison's

—California voters outlawed labor's

_|combination or agreement to cease

fern coast of South America early

SECOND SECTION

through a civil war in addition. For the first time in history too, the Russian soldier knows there are no graft, corruption and sticky fingered middlemen delaying and impeding the country’s production of machine guns, grenades, tanks and all other weapons. The whole governmentally controlled economy of the Soviet Union is geared solely to the army’s needs. All this explains why today’s Russian soldier is a new man. He looks, feels and fights like a new man and he is also commanded by a new officer.

” ” @

Generals Are Young

ON THE RECORD of this war to date, the Soviet army officer is a much more capable professional soldier than the world ever gave him credit for being. Certainly the scores of Russian officers I have met here at the front have impressed me highly, not merely as knowing their jobs bu also by the feeling they create that they know how to accept responsibility. It is rare to find a Soviet general who is much more than 50. Of the three I have met in the past few days two were under 45 and Lieut. Gen. Dmitri Lelishenko is under 40. It is probably true that the average age of the Russian : general is lower than in any army in the world today with the possible exception of the Chinese army. The comparative -early age of Red army generals undoubtedly accounts for the dynamic energy which so many of them have and also for the endurance which those in fighting zones show. One of the factors which explained: why the Greek army fought so amazingly well against greatly superior Italian forces was the fact that virtually all Greek officers from lieutenant colonels to their highest generals were fighting in their third or fourth war. This is also true of the majority of colonels and generals in the Soviet army.

. 2 8 2» THESE UPPER-RANKING Russian officers fought in the civil

CALIFORNIA VOTERS SLAP LABOR LAW

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4 (U. P.).

weapon on the secondary boycott on “hot cargo” for the war’s duration, nearly complete election returns indicated today. The = controversial. referendum was passed by the 1941 legislature over the veto of Gov. Culbert L. Olson. The “no” vote to block the act came chiefly from San Francisco, Oakland and other labor centers, while Los Angeles favored the law by“ a small margin. Outlawing rural areas cast a heavy vote to back up the legisuature. The act defined the practices as hot cargo—a combination or agreement resulting in employer’s or employee’s refusal to handle goods or perform services because of another employer's labor - dispute or contract; secondary boycott — a

performing services or cause any employer loss to induce him to refrain from business with another employer because of the latter's labor dispute.

UU. 8. SHIP TORPEDOED WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (U. P.)— A small United States merchant vessel was torpedoed and sunk by an enemy submarine off the north-

in_ October,

‘The Soviet Army Has Soldiers With a Capital §'

“These junior officers have a peculiar debt to their government, and they, by virtue : of their posts in the army, are called upon to provide the usual degree of fighting leader= They owe their rank to the opportunities offered all Soviet people.

war of 1917-1919 (some even fought in the czar’s army before that). Most of them later fought vin the Polish war of 1921. Some of them fought in a series of bate tles against the Japanese in Sie beria some years ago and a great many fought through the Finnish war. Thus the Russian army, for the most part, is commanded by veteran officers who have been compelled to modernize as they developed their army. By now, both in this front trip and on previous visits to Soviet army tank, aviation and cavalry units and training schools, I have met a pretty complete cross-section of ‘Russian officers. : My dominant impression is that they know their business and they = have not been advanced by fave . oritism or by politics but for proved personal merit. At the very least, I can honestly say that of those armies with which I have been associated, this seems especially true of only three—Fine nish, Greek and Russian officers alike. 2 2 2

Young Men Are Fighters

THERE ARE SCORES of thou sands of lieutenants, captains and majors in the Red army who owe both their rank and education to' the opportunities offered to all the common people under the Soe viet union. These junior officers therefore have a peculiar debt to their government and their country and they, by virtue of their posts in the army, are called upon to. provide the usual degree of fighting leadership. It is my observation that the Russian army’s younger officers play quite as vital a role in the Russian forces’ resistance as do the much more experienced sene ior officers and that the two come bined go far to explain the army’s fighting spirit and 'strength. There still remain the army commissars and they, too, are enormously important. It will be

_ necessary to discuss their persone

alities and new status in a sepa= rate article.

TIME BOMBS SPLIT VANCOUVER STATUE

VANCOUVER, B. C., Nov. 4 (U, P.).—City police today investigated two time-bomb explosions here last night which damaged the lion

| statue decorating the entrance to

the city courthouse. Police found lengths of fuse, wire and tape and expressed the view that the charges had been placed in a deliberate attempt to destroy the statue. Windows in the offices of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. offices facing the courthouse were shat= tered, and the statue of the lion was split by the blasts.

HOLD EVERYTHING