Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 May 1943 — Page 10
\ PAGE 10 The Indianapolis Times
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1943
INDIANAPOLIS FLOOD
NOT in many years, if ever, has this city been so well organized to cope with disaster as it is today, in the midst of war. This week that organization has proved :ts competence and its value.Serious as it is in loss of property and financial damage, the flood which poured into Indianapolis this week is not yet a major community disaster. But except for the swift and valiant work of war-born disaster agencies its effects might have been worse. : As it is, civilian defense workers, soldiers and sailors from nearby posts, state, county and city police and firemen, and Red Cross units, operating together like a well drilled team, have met the emergency quickly and capably. Hundreds of families have been removed safely from threatened areas, scores of individuals rescued from flooded homes. food and shelter and care provided for refugees, without a hitch. So great has been the confidence in these agencies that war workers in vital Indianapolis plants have remained at their posts, even when their own home neighborhoods were threatened and war plants generally have continued to turn out weapons without a pause. Through long hours of unremitting and unspectacular toil these men and women have fully justified their long months of preparation for emergency, and well earned the gratitude of their community.
LUDLOW ON RUML T is gratifying to learn that Congressman Louis Ludlow, !
on the final tax plan showdown, voted for the people back here in Indianapolis, and not for the treasury bureau-
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK, May 19.—~It will not be necessary for anyone to _ sit down here on the curb with me and hold my hands while I bawl about it, but no kidding, my fellow citizens, the treatment that the poor old English language or, more correctly, journalese, has been taking from the Time-style mimics of our great American press is one of these atrocities that call for a regional conference at least.
awfuller day by day. Now, me, I have no quarrel with Mr. Luce’s nervous weekly news review. The Time-style is original with Time and may be called an honest affectation although I should think any normal writer, joining the Time staff fresh from the outside world, would be driven nuts the first few weeks by the office rule which makes it necessary to back into sentences, telescope certain sets of words into such combinations as Gopsters and Opadministrator, throw in the correct proportion of tycoons and avoid use of the definite article. :
Gibberish Is Not English
IF TIME wants to gibber, that's Time's privilege in a free country. But, for gossakes, what has come over our city editors and our press-association desk men, particularly in Washington, that they accept this as correct American journalese and harass the unde-
Possibly it calls for a 2000-word directive | ‘from the commander-in-chief, for, friends, this gets
serving reafler with something that may be gullah and may be geechee but certainly ain't newspaper language. : Imitations aré never any good, anyway, and Time
eccentricity as their own and made such a mess of it. But is this gibberish actually intended to be a permanent substitute for regular suave, coherent wordage and sentence construction, and is the Society of Newspaper Editers just careless and too unobservant to know what goes on or does it figure that because Time originated something and made a lot of dough out of being queer, then that is what the public wants?
It's Spreading Over Country
1 AM telling you it isn't what tho public wants. A few days ago a guy I know punched his old lady right square on the nose because she had observed, sweetly, as she thought: “Overjoyed was I when I saw it was not raining this morning.” If by-liners in Washington who are supposed to be high-class journalists can get away with this business of shunning the article “the” as though it were a dirty and unprintable word and hiding the
has a right to feel flattered by the painful straining | of the mimics who have tried to adopt this strange |
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
“WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO CALL"? By Mrs. Ralph Rice, 4145 N. Tacoma st.
Our problem is this. Around four or five acres of ground on Keystone and Millersville road which are privately owned are being used for a filthy dump. If they use it for garbage and paper, then start a fire, whom are we supposed to call?
years or so. They have run us out
subject of a sentence 'way back toward the tail as the Germans do, what sort of Chinese double-talk | will the cubs of this generation inflict upon us all | when they get up there? ‘ ! What is the idea, anyway, of using the comma where grammar and civility plainly call for the word “and”? What is the idea of using a full colon in- | stead of a period? It can't be economy. A colon is
crats in Washington. There had been a little doubt about who Mr. Ludlow | was representing when he twice cast votes in the house against modified versions of the Ruml pay-as-you-go tax | plan. These votes Mr. Ludlow later explained, were not | against the basic idea of getting taxpayers out of perpetual debt but against certain details in earlier versions to which he objected. ® 2 = ’ = =" ” UT of all the demagogery and confusion which have piled up around this essentially clear and simple proposal, the issue now stands sharply defined. Against the version of the Rum! plan which the senate approved are the administration group who consider taxation a means of “reform” and of punishing political and other opponents. For it are most of the people of the United States and oldfashioned officials who still believe taxation is only a means of raising money which the government must have. The many friends of Mr. Ludlow are naturally pleased | to find him finally on the side his constituents back home | go overwhelmingly indorse—even though the measure they | want passed may be defeated.
= = = ” » = RESIDENT ROOSEVELT and his leaders on Capitol | hill, who held other Democratic congressmen’s feet to the fire, have succeeded in blocking the pay-as-you-go tax legislation which congress worked five months to perfect. It is now up to the president and those who take orders from him to produce a substitute measure. The responsibility for the delay is clear.
PRESS BAN AT HOT SPRINGS
HE united nations food conference vn the Rcosevelt plan for world freedom from want has opened under Mr. Roosevelt's orders to deny Americans freedom of information. The issue is whether the people’s business is the people’s business. Public, press and congressional reaction to the original ban on news coverage of the Hot Springs meeting was bitter and vigorous. But all that plus such presidential advisers as Secretary Hull, Elmer Davis of OWI, and Chairman Jones of the American food delegation, moved Mr. Roosevelt only a fraction of an inch. As a concession, correspondents now are allowed in an isolated press room on the hotel grounds, but on the wrong side of the line of soldiers who guard the 500 delegates and aids from the correspondents and other undesirables. Aside from the sop of press attendance at an occasional staged session, news will be of the official canned variety, with public interviews by delegates if and as the authorities permit. There will be no free coverage. a x 0 > & 3% HE press wants no special privileges. It does not want to attend executive and secret sessions. It demands only the same long recognized rights accorded it in Washington and at all non-military conferences everywhere—the rights to talk privately with any delegates willing, and otherwise to give the normal, legitimate news coverage of public affairs expected by the public in this democracy. The question of military information is not involved. Press co-operation with war censorship has been praised repeatedly by the administration. This is not a military conference. It concerns only post-war food planning. Since the press operates under censorship anyway, nothing could possibly be published of military benefit to the enemy. We do not know why the president wants to destroy a a free press in this case, or why he persists in such a dangeérous course in defiance of ancient American liberties against the warning of his highest advisers. But we do know he made this conference suspect by congress and the public before it even started, He is jeopardizing the success of future united nations eonfer- ; Lk Ra ent. his pu c-k A
ecre [ LEU
two specks and a period only one. Now this thing is spreading out over the country and in small town dailies you see some effects that would have caused an old-time city editor or copy reader to crown the offender with a graniteware gobboon amid the plaudits of the whole shop.
Syntax Gets a Mauling
THE BUSH LEAGUERS seem to think that anything that is dope in Washington or New York is the fashion and when they go to work on syntax they give it a real mauling. Sometimes they seem to be writing in code and at best, you can go down one column after another and never find a single sentence that starts with “the” then the subject followed by the predicate in the conventional order. I have been wondering, too, whether the schools of journalism have been infected by this thing because, as journalists, some of those instructors are not too hot, being ex-newspapermen who found the pitching too swift or employment too uncertain, and teachers. as we know, are suckers for fads. If they are teaching this stuff under official conditions we may be in for a terrible time because a kid is likely to be very opinionated about anything he learned in school and they might stand us down that the correct point at which to begin a sentence is the middle or anywhere to the right thereof. Whoever thought up this thing, anyway? Do you suppose it was Henry Luce, himself, and could it be a sort of pidgin that evolved in his thoughts when he was a kid in China, trying to speak Chino and think American? I never did hear.
We the People
By Ruth Millett
“I HAVEN'T had any privacy in public since I've been in uniform,” a young officer complained. “If I go into a restaurant for a meal, it is interrupted time after time by some civilian who stops to talk. “On ga train I don't even get a chance to read a magazine. “In a bar the chumminess of strangers is even worse. ; “A lot of civilians evidently think that because a man is in uniform, they have a right to approach him and make him listen while they talk about themselves and their relatives in uniform, “The conversation almost always goes like this: ‘Where are you stationed? Is it a large camp? How long have you been in the army? I know all about army life. I've got a& cousin stationed at camp so-and-so, 4 nephew in Africa, éte., etc, etc.’ ” The good-looking young officer said that when you've listened to that same conversation half a dozen times in one evening—the same except for a few minor details—you get kind of fed up with it.
Watch Soldier's Reaction
HE SAID he knew that service men often are lonely and would like to talk to a friendly civilian. But he thought it would be an easy matter for a civilian to find out whether or not hé was approaching a man who wanted to talk or one who wanted a little peace and quiet and a chance fo think. “It ought to be as simplé as this,” he said. “If the service man answers your first question or two courteously, but in as few words ds possible, and doesn’t add anything else—beat it and leave him alone. “If he wants to talk he’ll show it by the way he responds to your first remark.” *: The young officer added, as an after-thought, that if the civilian were young and looked anything like Lana Turner, she could distegard his advice,
id : To the Point— THE AVERAGE dsclor, says a lexicographer, knows about 25,000 words. Including “pleasé remit.”
* » *®
THE GOOSE that laid the goldén egg is being given an awful run by the lowly hen.
burning. We have called the sheriff, county board of health and fire department. Whom next would you suggest? . .. = = s “WOULD LIKE TO HELP BUT CAN'T GET WORK” By Mrs. M. Carter, 1422 E. Markel st. Since my son enlisted in the
service last October I have been
It has been going on around five
] land varied but the good old days] of our home several times with!
trying to obtain work in the defense plants but with no success. My re-| cent experience was at an east side plant. They ran an ad for unskilled] women to be trained on the job so I filled out an application and presented it in person, only to have it torn up in may face because I would not accept cafeteria work. We mothers don’t receive much consideration unless a son's life is given in the line of duty; then we get the praise, I'm proud of my boy that he went to do his bit to help men like the one I came in contact with {o keep their good jobs. I'm sure of one thing—that he would never treat a lady as I was treated. I would like to help in the war effort but as I can't get work, I can’t buy bonds so I guess all I can do is save waste fat and tin cans.
. 5 8 “REMEMBER HARD TIMES OF THE GOOD OLD DAYS” By Daily Reader, Indianapolis
In his efforts to discredit the administration, Westbrook Pegler would like to convince one and all that our country was a land of milk and honey without class differences and a model of politica] virtue prior to the advent of the New Deal. However, we who know better remember the hard times, Teapot Dome scandals, etc., of those good old days. Nor can we forget the burning of fiery crosses when people were torn from their homes 2t night and beaten and humiliated without being given a trial of any description. . We remember that hatred was firmly planted in the minds of many in those days based upon religious or racial grounds, It was a sort of preview of Hitlerism. The
(Times readers are invited to express their these columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 Letters must be
views in
words. signed.)
were not what they are cracked up to be either. In regard’ to Pegler, I am not one of the “take ’'im out” type of readers. He is an excellent writer and seems to be absolutely fearless. I admire a good fighter regardless of which side he is on. Congratulations to The Times and to Robert Talley on the Gordon C. Greene articles, I cannot remember when I have enjoyed reading a series of stories so much as I did these. Hope to see more of this type in the future.
n ” » “LET WAR WIVES PAY FOR CHILDREN'S CARE” By Marie Knight, 1314 W. Market st. A few nights ago I read in The Times where someone said that they thought the neighborhoods should organize a club of the neighbor women to help the war wives
with their children. For instance, |
if they wanted to get them a permanent wave or go to a dentist with one of the other children. This may be all right, but most of these war wives are working and making more money than some men . .. so I don't agree with the writer about having clubs for neighbor women to help care for the war wives’ children. In most neighborhoods there are mothers that have sons in the military service . their husbands making only a small weekly wage, but still . . . have their federal tax to pay. Besides this they have struggled all through the depression with scarcely enough to raise the children on, and I think they have enough worries without adding to them burdens of the war wives’ children while they go out for recreation.’ Let the war wives . . . pay someone to care for their children while they go gét permanent waves and things of that sort. In sickness, anyone will do their share.
a 8 8 “DON'T TRY TO BLAME THE LAW” By Ruth Taggart, 4149 S. Emerson ave.
It seems as though the few words I had in The Indianapolis Times a few. days ago about the behavior
faults of the New Deal are many
of the, I still say, “punks” in public
Side Glances—By Galbraith
—
SERVICE. RC. T. M. Rd. 0.
“I've met a lot of beautiful girls since Ive
ww OFF.
a £m
n a sailor—! suré when the war's over
| places—well I know it hit its mark from the answer that came back. | You know it is.the fault of the | ones that uphold young fojks in| such as late hours and the silly] | way they carry on everywhere they |go—no respect for anyone around them. I haven't forgotten that I was, as you say, young once. I am young |now—never intend to grow old as we all say, and I am proud to say I always held respect for old and young everywhere I went and always will. No, I haven't any children and I thank God I haven't if they should do as so many of the young folks do today. So you who uphold them when something goes wrong blame no one but yourself; don't try to blame the law for not protecting them. They are far beyond that and it is up to you parents to see to it that they act as a lady or as a young man should in the shows, in the drugstores and Ilunchrooms—
| well, T will say, in public. Anything more you wish to know?
» ” ” “PUT A STOP TO | SLASHING OF TIRES” By Dutch Rotheri, R. R. 20, Box 419 | I work for the Firestone Tire & | Rubber Co. during the day and the ‘government at night. I am a tire
linspector and appraiser at 21st st. land Cornell ave, Upon leaving work at 10 o'clock last Friday, May 14, | two of my tires and two of R. F. Callane’s, a co-worker’'s car, were slashed with a pocket knife. It isn't bad enough that the kids and grownups alike break whisky bottles on the street and in alleys. Now they seem to have started a knife-slashing campaign. This undoubtedly was the work of ruthless children in that neighborhood. A drive should be started by the proper authorities to put a stop to breaking of bottles and slashing of tires. The general public doesn’t realize the seriousness of the rubber shortage. But I do, workin it all day and half the night. . , . ” » ” “DON'T STOP PROGRESS WITH OUTWORN SLOGANS” By E. S. Barber, 1731 N. Capitol ave., No. 0. I must revert to the vernacular to express my feelings when I read of a leading man singing to 800 other leading men the old retrograde song—“You can't change human nature!” 1f he would open his eyes and his mind, he would see that human nature has been changed, not by reactionaries with their “You can't,” but by those like Voltaire, Lincoln, Jefferson, Thomas Mott Osborn, Thomas Mann, Dorothy Dix and s0 many others who havé shown convineingly that it can be doné.... When we séé men, womeéh and children opéning their hearts and purses to relieve people of other lands and races, even amofig former enemies, can Mr. Big Man say human nature does not change? If Jésué had held that idea, would we havé . . . Christianity? Do not, I beg of you, hold back progress with outworn slogans lest you own descendants suffer for it as humanity is now suffering, because blind, stubborn men refused to let co-operation replace competition. We have séen that ne one nation can have sufficient power to resist a combination of nations; the sacrifices we might make in unselfish co-operation will be infinitesimal compared with what we are now making in money glone, fo say nothing of human life.
DAILY THOUGHTS
And if a soul sin, ahd commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by thé commandments of the Lord; though hé wist it not, yét is he guilty, and shall bear iniquity.—Leviticus 5:17.
THE GODS grow angry with your patience, 'Tis their care, And must be yours, that guilty men
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Our Hoosiers By Daniel M. Kidney
So
WASHINGTON, May 19.—OWT (
Director Elfier Davis, who is the :
only Hoosier in Washington who could be mistaken for a dour New Englander, has a smiling assistant now who is well versed in the technique of the Indiana statehouse handshake, He is Tristram Coffin, who has won the imposing title of “Special Assistant to the Director of OWL" That really means that Tris must be ready to do about anything Elmer thinks up. Mr. Coffin always appears very, very busy digging up data for the 15-minute weekly radio report to the nation by Mr. Davis and briefing the hundred and one items which come to OWI from all corners of the globe as well as the U. S. A. Although he actually was born in Oregon of three generation Hoosier parents, Mr. Coffin hurried back to the state while still a baby and everyone rates him a 100 per cent Indiana man--which is ° somewhat comparable to being a 100 per cent Aryan - in Germany.
Learned the Handshake Business.
HAVING BEEN reared in Indianapolis, Mr. Coffini’ attended at times both Shortridge and Tech high schools and later graduated from DePauw university. Having helped edit the college paper, he took a reportorial job on The Indianapolis Times. . Assigned to follow Lieut. Gov. M. Clifford Town=send around in the 1936 campaign which made hima governor, Mr. Coffin soon became one of his secretaries. The other was Dick Heller, who now is here with the OPA. And Mr. Townsend also is in town, although his status at the moment is not quite clear
as will be explained in another “Our Hoosiers” column. At the statehouse the normally shy and thoughtful
| Mr. Coffin soon learned the handshake business. It
has stood him in good stead here. He first arrived in Washington with Mr. Townsend and both went to work in the agriculture department. “But I like to write and know nothing of farming,” Mr. Coffin explained. “So I finally. shifted over to the then office of facts and figures which was headed by Archibald MacLeish. ¢
In One of the Better Jobs
OFF SOON became a center of controversy and the story went around here that the librarians were claiming MacLeish is a poet and the poets that he is a librarian. The poets seem to have won for he has retired to his post as head of the Congressional Library and OFF has become OWI under the management of Mr. Davis, Mr. Coffin soon attracted the attention of his new boss and now has one of the better jobs in the outfit, He lives in the Piney Branch apartments in Silver Spring, Md.,, as do Mr. and Mrs. Townsend. Mrs. .
Coffin, who had been active in the League of Women Voters in Indiana, is busy being mother to a 4-year-old daughter, Lynne, who was -born in: Indianapolis, and Stephen, Lynne's 2-year-old brother, born here.
Mr. Coffin’'s brother, C. E. Jr, is an AnnapoligA:_
graduate and was an officer on the Marblehead when she limped 12,000 miles into New York from one of the first naval battles in the Indian Ocean. He is back at sea again. Although Tristram has the same first and last name as the noted American poet, they are not related, he says. But now and then our Tris does some sub-rosa verse writing and friends are urging
him to bring it out for them to see.
Army Advice
By Peter Edson
ww
FT. BLISS, Tex., May 19.—~The commanding officer of any unit in the army is supposed to be a father to his men, looking after their interests and giving them good adviee in every conceivable situation, The scene is a small patch of desert at this famous old Mexican border military post near El Paso, The big, bronzed captain of a : cavalry troop, dressed in tin hat and sage-brush green coveralls of the new, tough her-ring-bone twill, stands beside a peep. In his hands he holds a portable microphone attached to a loud speaker on the little green car. In a 50-foot circle about him stand his men, bare« headed, but also dressed in coveralls and looking very fit indeed. They are paired off, as though they were preparing to play some new version of three-deep or maybe double drop the handkerchief. The captain calls to a lieutenant to bring him a bayonet. And then, illustrating his remarks with gestuves used on the lieutenant, the captain proceeds to give his men fatherly advice something as follows Don’t use your fists against an enemy unless ou have brass knuckles on and can hit him hard enoug to kill him. You can't hurt a man with your bare fists, the way you play with each other around here.
Knife Better Than Fists
A MUCH BETTER attack against & Jap is with the knife. The knifé is silent. It makes no noise, and your enémy makes no noise if you hit him with’
right. You may have to wait two hours until you get your man in just the right position, moving up on him quietly so that he doesn't see you. But finally as he is walking past at night on sentry duty, perhaps, you can get up to him and attack him from the rear, when his back is turned to you. Don't stab him in the back. That is ineffective. Instead, carrying your knife in your upraised right hand, throw your left hand around his néck and push the knuckles of your thumb into his Adam's apple to shut off his wind and keep him from giving an alarm. That's what that bone in your thumb is for. Force him back against your body to throw him off balance. Now give him the knife. You can do it in three or four ways If he is smaller than you &ré, plunge the knifé right into his heart. Or, you can force it right behind his collar bone. There's a little hollow place there behind the bone that you can feel and it will’ just take the knife. Force it down, then give it a twist.
This Gets the Big Fellows: IF HE is bigger than you are, and you can't over his body, force the knifé right through his neck; through the windpipe, in the soft part of the Adam's apple. : “i Another way is to cut right through his arm muscle, and hold Him “till he bleeds to death, A bin)
will bleed to death in 10 seconds, if you cut the veils
and arteries of his arm: tisk Via brah If he gets away from you, or if you get him. down and he isn't dead yet, or if you lose your knife, jump on his face with both feét. Bend you little as you spring, then straighten out your. before you land, You Rit him double that
~ éscape not: Ks "crimes
the force of yout jump
A
Be y_-.a