Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 May 1943 — Page 15

THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1943

Hoosier Vagabond

ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, North Africa (By Wireless) .—Little items The constant boom and roll of heavy artillery are still to me the most saddening, sickening, doom-spelling sound of all the ghastly war noises I know. . . . One of the funniest sights of the war to me so far is to see an Arab, clad in nothing but American G. I. skin-tight winter underwear, running along behind a caravan of camels. . . . The most pathetic little sight I've seen in the war was just after a 500-pound bomb landed in the garden of a monastery (only 50 yards from my tent, incidentally). . We went over to look at the great crater it left, and lying there just outside the rim of the crater was a big frog, dead from concussion. His legs were still spread, in leaping position, his eyes still open, his mouth still agape as if just about to say in hurt wonderment: “Why did you want to do this to me?” Maj. Charles Miller of Detroit has a Rolleicord camera and 10 rolls of film that he bought from an English-speaking Italian prisoner. When he offered to buy it the prisoner was aghast. He said: “Why, I'm a prisoner. It's yours. You don’t buy it, you take it.” : But Maj. Miller told him we didn't do it that way over here, and he gave the Italian three times as much as the price the prisoner finally proposed. At home the same camera would cost $200.

Marksmanship Awes Germans

WE AREN'T the only ones who like to collect enemy gear. The Germans did the same. German prisoners showed up with American mess kits and

with Tommy guns, and even wearing pieces of Amerfcan uniforms. The Germans worked up a terrific respect for the Uncanny accuracy of our artillery. It was so perfect it had them agog. They tell of one German officer,

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

MRS. A. C. STEWART stepped into the kitchen of her home, 310 N. Arlington ave. yesterday, and prepared to light the gas stove. Just then there was a hissing noise from the direction of the wastebasket beside the stove. Mrs. Stewart screamed and ran. The hissing continued. Her husband came running, brandishing a shoe. They peeked in the wastebasket and there, believe it or not, were two young ‘possums. Mrs. Stewart phoned the state conservation department to come and get them. Meanwhiie, the whole neighborhood is mystified as to how they got in the basket. . . . A grocery at 2634 Rader st. has two signs on the window. One reads: “Closed for the duration.” The other, apparently an afterthought: “Closed for good.” .. . Seen on Monument circle Tuesday evening: A man leading a fox on a floash. Passersby were giving it a wide berth.

Around the Town

KENNETH COOKE, of the Eli Lilly & Co. shipping department, has quite a distinction. The Lilly Review reports that his plant badge number and his draft order numberare the same—1647. It's a real coincidence . One of our agents relays a varn about 2 mule traveling south on Madison ave, all by himself, Tuesday afternoon, and going right along with traffic. The traffic signal changed to red at Prospect, and the mule stopped. When the light changed to green, the mule started on. A filling station operator saw the animal and tied it up to await the owner. , .. One of Wasson’s mannikins—in the corner window— was in an embarrassing predicament yesterday morning. we're told. Her stocking had come loose and was dangling at her calf. . . . A certain organization which held a convention here the other day imported a high-powered-speaker all the way from New York. But they had to do without his talk. When he got here, the

Sweden

STOCKHOLM, May 27 (By Wireless) —Small nations like Sweden have long-standing fears of big powers, and on that psychology the axis is beginning to play in its desperation. Wide circulation is being given in neutral countries to the remarks of Italian Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs Bastinanini before the foreign affairs committee of the Italfan senate. This axis spokesman took the line that at the last meeting of Hitler and Mussolini the fundamental principle was adopted that smaller nations would never be forced to accept oppression by big powers and could retain their national individuality and have free development. 1 . The German press is giving much attention to that statement, peddling it among the neutrals as the key to the post-war political aims of the axis. The same newspapers which carry that also report the execution of 10 more Norwegians. next door to Sweden. People here cannot hear what the axis spokesmen say about freedom for small nations, because the groans of tortured victims in Norway drown out the smoothly tailored voice from Italy.

Axis Line Revolting to Norway

IT IS incredible that the axis should attempt so sudacious a line when the facts of its brutal oppresgion of small nations are so well known here. I have just had dinner with several Norwegians, one of whom had escaped from Oslo the previous week The others escaped during the last few months. No one in Norway is allowed to own a radio set, on penalty of death. One of the escaped Norwegians was an editor, who described how the Germans give instructions as to the size of headlines and the position in the paper of all news concerning the war. The atrocity stories these men told are too blood-

My Day

WASHINGTON, Wednesday.—Yesterday afternoon, I took a streetcar to get to the social security building. where I was to speak at a forum at 4 o'clock. I had barely seated myself in the car when a rather breathless voice behind me said: “You are Mrs. Roosevelt, aren't you?” ? Turning around, I saw a pretty young girl and, after I admitted that I was myself, she told me she was on her way to see her brother at a Southern camp and had stopped off for the day in Washington. She had wanted to see the White House, but unfortunatelv it was closed. She found many changes since her visit of a year ago. It was harder to get into government buildings and many Pe places were closed, she said. Nevertheless, she seemed to think that her stop over bad been hE while. Then

they pick me

By Ernie Pyle

taken prisoner before the collapse, who when broughs; into camp said: “I know you're going to kill me, but before you do; would you let me see that automatic artillery of | yours?” | We didn't kill him, of course, and neither did we show him our automatic artillery, because we haven't got any. We're just crack shots, that’s all.

A fighter pilot I know—a squadron leader—sent

close to 200 Germans to their doom. He was homeward bound from a mission and flying right on the dock—in other words just above the ground. He zoomed over a little rise in the ground, and there straight ahead, dead in his sights, was the evening chow line behind a German truck.

Report Hardly Mentions It

IT ALL happened in a second. There wasn't time for the Germans to duck. The pilot simply pressed the button, cannon shells streamed forth, and Germans and pieces of Germans flew in all directions. The squadron leader barely mentioned it in his| report when he got back, He says it almost made him sick. Killing is his business, but it is killing an opponent, in the air that he likes. I'm not even giving his name, because he feels so badly about it. I have run onto another dog that came all the way from America. He is a black-and-white springer spaniel, and he sprang from the dog pound at St. Petersburg, Fla. Two pilots originally had him— Lt. Richard East of East Orange, N. J., and Lt. Harold Taft of Jeffersonville, Ind. They named him Duck- | worth, after the third member of their original flying | school trio—Lt. John Stewart Duckworth of Boston. | Duckworth has checked out in seven different | kinds of airplanes. He has flown across the Atlantic. ! and twice across Africa, and once up and once down Africa. He loves to fly. The dog's namesake, Lt. Duckworth, is now at| Randolph Field, Tex. fretting because he isn't overseas In combat. The dog’s co-owner, Lt. Bast. is one of those who never came back from a Tunisian mission. So Duckworth now belongs only to Lt. Taft, who humors him and cusses him and is very proud of him,

reception committee found he had imbided too freely of the train's high-powered hospitality section, and! had to be put to bed in a hotel. A two-day round trip, and no speech. Tsk, tsk,

I's a Kinkajou

ALLYN WOOD, 2502 N. us to “go into Ward's pet shop and solve a problem. Ask the name of the soft-furred, prehensile-tailed, big-eyed animal with an extra long pink tongue. They'll tell you (she adds) that it's a honey bear and came from Africa. As a zoology student, I beg to differ. It is either a lemur or a kinkajou—the two look very similar, but the lemur belongs to the monkey | line and the kinkajou to the cat tribe.” We checked, Miss Wood, and A. W. Kennedy, who runs the shop, says it’s a honeybear, or kinkajou (the dictionary says! theyre one and the same), which his cousin ob- | tained in Australia and sent him from Africa. It's a dead ringer for the picture of a kinkajou in our dictionary. Cute little fellow, too; playful and likes human companionship. It likes to chew on Mr. Kennedy’s finger like a puppy.

Uicle Sam's Suit

WE WERE STUMPED when Mrs. Ernest T. Ramsev, 3420 E. 25th, asked us to list “the colors of Uncle Sam’s suit.” But we weren't stumped long. We just phoned Mrs. Dorothy Adams at the library's reference rooin and asked her. She looked up some colored posters used in world war I, and now we're ready to report: There doesn’t seem to be any standard color pattern for the suit. The design varies with the artist’s mood. The hat’s usually light gray with a blue band. Sometimes the band has one or two rows of white stars on it. . . . The brass buttoned coat sogetimes is plain blue with a white-starred vest. Sometimes the coat is dotted with white stars and the vest plain white. . . . The trousers usually are red and white striped, and the tie sometimes is red and some- | times black. Sometimes the trousers have straps under | the shoes, like jodhpurs.

Alabama, writes to ask!

Maj. Raymond Neal, husband of Mrs. Blanche Neal, 1421 N. Holmes st. . . . he helped build the chapel! on New Guinea and now serves as a deacon.

Two Officers

From Here in Congregation

AT AN ISOLATED airfield in the wild jungles of New Guinea, American army air force men, including two Indianapolis officers and several Hoosiers, have built with their own hands a chapel for prayer, recollection and respite from their gruelling Japanese combat. Dedicated in memory of the outfit's fallen heroes, the simple hut with its brown-thatched roof

| is for the use of all faiths and

is under the guidance of an upstate New York country pastor, Capt. Michael Lyons of Syracuse. Among the New Guinea outfit, made up of P-38 Lightning and P-39 Airacobra pilots, are Maj. Raymond Neal, husband of Mrs, Blanche Neal, 1421 N. Holmes st., and Lt. Edward Hess, husband of Mrs. Edward Hess, 1917 N. New Jersey st. Lt. Hess’ parents are Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Hess, 5934 Crittenden ave.

s ” =

Chapel Without Walls

THESE TWO MEN helped Father Lyons build the island chapel out of eucalyptus wood, fashion its 300 white, varnished benches and smooth out its floor of fresh beac: sand. This was revealed in a dispatch from “somewhere in New Guinea” by Correspondent George Weller of The Indianapolis Times and the Chicago Daily News. Topped at each end by whitewashed crosses, the chapel has no walls. The altar’'s background is white rayon, made from the towing target used by fighters in gunnery practice, Since June, 1942, the two local men have been a part of this air force outfit which has downed more planes—137—in New Guinea

{ than any other,

Mrs. Neal received a letter yesterday from her husband, Maj. Neal, in which he told of helping

{ build the chapel,

By Raymond Clapper

curdling to repeat. And whether they are all true or not, so many Swedes believe them to be true that the axis line about being good to small nations is too revolting to bring even a healthy horse-laugh here. | One of the surprises I have had in Sweden has’ been the ineffectiveness of the Nazi propaganda. The Swedes and other neutrals know the allied powers are not going to treat them with the brutality with | which the Nazis have treated Czechoslovakia, Holland, Poland and Norway. They"see that the Irish Free State, after pearly) four years of war, is still neutral although it is a part! of the British Isles and occupies some strategic loca- | tions that Britain badly needs. Would the Nazis ever have permitted that? That is the only answer needed to the new axis line of | buttering up small nations.

U. S. Sets World Example

YET I think we of the United States, and the] British and Russians as well, must recognize that we! have a problem with the small states. No one in any country of the Western Hemisphere can honestly say that the United States has thwarted its cultural development or political independence. On the contrary the United States has co-operated with and assisted financiaily all the nations of the hemisphere in developing toward greater freedom and security and higher standards of living. Yet at the same time the military strength of the United States has been applied to make the Western Hemiphere! secure. | Something of that same method is necessary in other areas. You cannot expect Russia to leave her-! self insecure, or to fail to develop strategic locations, | any more than the United States could be expected to! forego protection of the Panama Canal. But the small nations have a right to expect that the Russians and British and ourselves will permit them to have their own cultural development and self-government just as the Irish Free State and the small countries of the Western Hemisphere do. There is no reason why that cannot be.

i | |

By Eleanor Roosevelt

realized it was something to be proud of, but I could not recognize what it stood for and he finally had to explain that it was given to blood donors, and he added: “I would have gone long ago, but I thought it would be a very terrifying experience. I found it quite easy, however, and I won't be at all worried to go again. Besides, they give you a cup of coffee free and when you have been there three times, you get a silver pin.” I told him I had not had time to wait for the cup of coffee, but I was quite able to indorse the fact that it was quite an easy and painless way to do one’s, bit for the war, and an extra little bit which almost | anyone can do in addition to his regular job. After the forum, I started to take a streetcar back, ! ! but a taxi with three passengers already in it, hailed me and they asked me if I did not want to ride with them. I accepted gratefully and had a nice talk with my fellow passengers. One girl had been at the | forum, and so I suppose she had kindly wag, 3 at the Sreasury

” = 2 Named ‘The Manger’ “THE PADRE and I were out a

little while this afternoon looking for some palm trees to plant

The Indianapolis Times

Our Fighting Men Build a Chapel on a Hill in New Guinea

SECOND SECTION

In memory of their fallen comrades, American army air force men stationed in the New Guinea jungles built a chapel with their own hands. Shown here is Capt. Michael Lyons (center), former New York country pastor who directed the construction, and on the right is Maj. Neal of Indianapolis. In the background can be seen the rising skeleton of the chapel.

The airmen’s No. 1 laundry boy, E-sol-a, or just plain George,

around the chapel,” he wrote. “We didn't find any and will have to look again some other day. We have named the place the ‘Manger’ I don't know whether the padre will like it or not but that's about all he can do about it.” According to Mrs. Neal, her husband often writes of Father Lyons, always calling him “padre.” Although he helped build the chapel and is considered one of the deacons, Maj. Neal wrote that he “didn't show up on Sundays’ which was a source of concern to the “padre.” Lt. Hess has written his wife of building several grass huts there in the jungle, bartering with the natives, killing a 16-foot python, and clearing the wilds for the plane runways.

» 8 » Heat and Mosgitoes BOTH MEN report that New Guinea's sweltering weather and

swarms of mosquitoes are their chief complaints, and Lt. Hess was

Lt. Edward Hess, whose wife lives at 1917 N. New Jersey st. . . . is shown beside his “private swimming pool” in New Guinea.

High on a New Guinea hilltop, Maj. Neal calls this “home.” Both Maj. Neal and Lt. Hess have been stationed at the isolated New Guinea airfield since June, 1942.

stricken with the tropical dingue fever at one time, The black native Papuan boys helped Father Lyons collect and make the grass-bound ceiling which covers the new chapel. According to Lt. Hess, the natives are very good-natured and shrewd businessmen, After completing a bargain with the army men, he writes, they always put their prized “booty” in their bushy hair, no matter whether it's jewelry, chewing gum or bananas. The two Indianapolis officers sailed for Australia from San Francisco, Cal, in January, 1942. After five months there, they arrived in New Guinea in June, 1942, where they have tangled with the Japs in several minor skirmishes and in the Bismarck sea battle, ® ” »

Both Attended 1. U.

MAJ. NEAL has been on active duty with the army since he was graduated from Indiana univer-

sity in 1936. At that time he was selected from the university's R. O. T. C. unit for a year's training at Cheyenne, Wyo. His duties with the air corps have carried him to all parts of the country, Mrs. Neal frequently accompanying him. After seeing her husband sail from San Francisco, she returned here and has been employed at L. S. Ayres & Co. With a sister, whose husband is in the Seabees in the South Pacific, the two war widows keep house at the Holmes st. address. An engineering officer with the air corps armament division, Lt. Hess has been in the army since November, 1940. He was graduated from Technical high school, attended Indiana university and worked at the All-Steel Equipment Co. here. Mrs. Hess now lives with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Cunningham, at 1917 N. New Jersey st. She was married to Lt. Hess shortly before he sailed for overseas duty, returning here to take

a secretarial position at the Cur-tiss-Wright Corp. » =n " Honor Dead from Indiana AT THE DEDICATION of the New Guinea chapel, the men of Father Lyons’ flock sat with bowed heads in memory of those com=rades 'vho had fallen in defending Australia and New Guinea, And among the fliers who died in the line of duty were Java Veteran W, C. Stauter of Hammond, who was shot down fighting the Japs over Port Moresby, and H. C. Welker of Anderson, who fell fighting off another of Port Moresby’s daylight raids. However, there are many hands on the island taking over where the heroic dead left off, and these include Lt. Eugene DeBoer of Hammond, Capt. Paul Kelly of South Bend, Lt, Firhard Smitvof of Evansville who has the silver star air medal, and Lt. Cavros Dinacher of Anderson and Lt, Ronald Dake of South Bend.

Charges ‘Mission To

Following is the fourth and concluding article in a series by Eugene Lyons, former Moscow correspondent of the United Press, on the controversial film Mission to Moscow. In today’s article Mr. Lyons questions the validity of the picture in its treatment of the

“blood purges” in Soviet Russia.

By EUGENE LYONS

Editor of the American Mercury and author of ‘Assignment in Utopia and the Red Decade,

The most controversial of the subjects covered by

“Mission to Moscow”

is the great blood purge of the years

1935-38. And the most remarkable fact about the picture is that it ignores all but a fragment of the purge. That one fragment it confounds and distorts with a sort of perverse genius. What needs to be noted, to begin with,

is that the film goes far beyond the Davies book in its justification of the terror.

In his letters and dispatches Mr. Davies quoted some diplomats and newspapermen who thought the trials credible and others who thought them police frameups. Though he decided that the, weight of opinion was on the side of the credibility and himself tended to join that side, he did leave some margin of doubt. The margin has been wiped out in the film. It shows you the supposed conspirators in the act of conspiring, after which, of course, there is no room for skepticism. It shows Bukharin making an appointment with Ribbentrop —at a time when Bukharin was in prison and Ribbentrop in Berlin—but skip that. It shows Yagoda, the head of the GPU and the man who prepared some of the trials, in furtive contact with the very people whom he was preparing for the GPU slaughter chambers.

One Synthetic Trial

Having seen such suspicious goings-on with their own eyes, the audience naturally believes the “confessions” when they come. So does Mr. Davies in the picture, quite oblivious of the doubts that bothered him in the book. Trials that spanned several years are tondensed in the film

Mr. Davies is chiefly responsible for popularizing the theory that the purged men and women were a “fifth column” representing Germany, Italy and Japan. In the book he is honest enough to disclose that this theory came to him three years after the events, while “ruminating” somewhere near Chicago. In the Hollywood edition his great discovery is conveniently predated by three years. He recognizes immediately that poor Mr. Stalin is dealing with a “fifth column” and makes his knowledge known to all ‘and sundry. The greatest piece of historical chicanery in the picture, in my view, is that it has reduced the whole gigantic story of the purge to a minor episode. A set of events involving millions, a crisis in the career of the Soviet regime, is boiled down to just one trial involving a dozen or so men.

Secretly Liquidated

No indication is given to the audience that for every man brought into the klieg lights and before the microphones, hundreds were “liquidated” in secret. No indication is given that the purge killed off tens of thousands and imprisoned and exiled hundreds of thousands. Mr. Davies himself has told a little of the truth which is suppressed in the picture when he Tote in his book:

Moscow’ All but Ignores Purge

ing fact. There . . . is a fear that reaches down into and haunts all sections of the community. No household, however humble, apparently but lives in constant fear of a nocturnal raid by the secret police. . . . Once the person is taken away nothing of him or her is known for months— and many times never—thereafter.” No inkling of this terror is given in the picture, though it was the bloodiest carnage in modern times, even exceeding the French Terror. The purge decimated the ranks of Soviet leadership. It removed, by death or exile, tens of thousands of army or navy officers, including practically the entire high command. The executed included all of Litvinov’s assistants and most of his diplomats; the heads of all “autonomous Soviet republics”; the foremost leaders in industry, economy and the several five-year plans; outstanding scholars, writers, artists. The blood purges even took the chiefs of the GPU who had prepared and carried out the great slaughter.

Mystery Deepened

Assuming that the hundreds of thousands involved were in fact all spying and sabotaging for Hitler, Mr. Davies still has to explain why so many people were ready to sell out their own country if everything in that country was as blissful as he pretends. To present the bloody affair in a favorable light, as further proof of Stalin's genius, is to outrage the common sense of democratic Americans. In the book Mr. Davies avoided this insult to intelligence. He referred to “the horrors of the terror” and repeatedly attested that the trials were repugnant to an American observer. In dispatch No. 57 to the state department he reported that the purge “was horrible in the impression it made” on his mind. He enlarged on this as follows: “I wish a say. that she

is, however, a most powerful demonstration of the blessings which real constitutional protection of personal liberty affords.” The Warner Brothers have seen fit to ignore this phase of it. Fantastic Inventions How is the audience to know that the only items of alleged evidence in the purge trials that could be checked independently, because they occurred outside Russia, had all turned out to be fantastic inventions? A hotel in Copenhagen in which one of the defendants “confessed” to having met Trotsky, it turned out, had been razed many years before the supposed meeting. A supposed flight to Oslo in midwinter by defendant Piatakov was shown up as entirely imaginary by the aviation records of the Swedish authorities. At the time Trotsky is supposed to have met conspirator Romun in Paris he was in another part of France, hundreds of miles away, as proven by French secret service records. (Mr. Davies himself intervened with the Soviet authorities in Romm'’s behalf.) These alleged contacts with Trotsky were the foundation stones of the whole structure of accusations against the arrested leaders. The fact that these were all demonstrably false turns the trials into gibberish. Yet the picture ignores this phase of the matter; it merely has the defendants confess to contacting Trotsky, and makes ng suggestion that it might all be a tissue of lies. The movie Davies states as if

The whitewash of the tragic pact is puerile to the point of grotesqueness. One must go back to the book—which truly begins to look like a balanced account by contrast with its screen version. In the book Mr. Davies has any number of passages disclosing that the deal with Hitler was in the making as far back as 1937—long before Munich. In a communication to the state department in February, 1937, he wrote: “I wish to report that I have very carefully probed the opinion of some of the diplomats who have beer here longest as to their views as to whether or not an arrangement between Russia and Germany was within the realm of possibility despite their apparent bitter attitudes at the present time, and the opinion is general that both sides might compose any difficulty if there were advantage to be gained.”

Suspicions Justified

Subsequent revelations by es= caped Soviet officials like Gen. Krivitzky and Alexander Bar-

mine have confirmed that these diplomatic suspicions were justified. Whatever the curious reasoning behind this picture, whatever the motives and pressures, one thing is clear—the film “Mission to Moscow” is a hoax on the American public and a cynical affront to American common sense. The fortune being spent to promote this antidemocratic