Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 July 1943 — Page 10

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Times

RALPH BURKHOLDER Editor, in U. S. Service

WALTER LECKRONE Editor

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

The Indianapolis

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1943

BUT NOT TOMORROW

ITH precipitate gusto we Americans at home have already taken Sicily—in our minds—and swept on to

Fair Enough

‘By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK, July 13.—I have |

some rather simple ideas about the rules of conduct which public men should live up to, which, being mine, seem excellent to me. They are not originals but revivals, so to speak, although so long forgotten that they seem new.

I think public men should be |

honest and should regard public office as a trust, bearing in mind always that if they abuse their position to get rich themselves or enrich their relatives and political supporters at the public expense they make the people cynical and thus undermine popular faith in free government. In Chicago. for example, there is a large element of citizens calling themselves Chicagoans who simply will not live within the city limits, preferring the suburbs, because they have come to the conclusion that the city of Chicago is just one greaf® racket. Far from regarding the city hall and the county building as edifices sacred to believers in government

breathless debate of the next invasion spot. The Italian mainland; or Crete, the Dodecanese, Greece and the Bal-| kans; or southern France; or Norway; or across the English channel, through the lowlands and smack into Berlin; | or, as suggested, all of them at once. [sn’'t this a trifle premature? Wouldn't it be well! to concentrate a few more days, at least, on cleaning up | Sicily? Not that all this talk distracts the high command, but it does put public opinion out of perspective. Remember what happened in Tunisia? After the first | few days of rapid Algerian success we were sure we would take Tunisia in November or December at the latest. When | we didn’t, there was nasty public reaction, impatience, and unfair doubt of the ability of the allied forces. No good can come of discounting the major battle for Sicily, which has not yet begun.

= » = ” = FE course there will be other invasions, some larger than this. Of course plans are already made for them. Of course many of the forces for them already are in place. But progress of the Sicilian battle must determine | in part the timing, co-ordination and choice of other offensives. Until Sicily is secured and the Mediterranean supply line cleared, any Aegean-Balkan blow would have to be limited to a diversionary effort. Before a major invasion of southern France, Sardinia must be disposed of. And the big push across the English channel might require some of the 2000 ships still bridging the Sicilian narrows. Also the next move must depend in part on what happens in Russia, the major land front. If the Sicilian battle is not a sufficient “second front” to relieve Nazi pressure on Russia, and if the Red line is broken, the western allies in desperation may have to risk launching premature offensives. ness, not of strength.

If so, that will be a sign of weak-'

= = = THER still unknown factors which will influence the | next move are: Progress of the battle of the Atlantic, the speed with which allied bombers soften-up Germany, and Italian reaction to Sicilian defeat and more mainland bombing—whether Italy then fights or folds. If the western allies can finish in reasonable time what they already have started in Sicily and in the air over Germany, and if Russia continues to contain most of Hitler's forces, there will be excellent opportunity for | several Anglo-American invasions of Europe. But not tomorrow.

JUST ONE FRONT

of the people, by the people and for the people, they see these buildings as monuments to graft, dishonesty, ignorance and hypocrisy and, unfortunately, they are just about right, for, from the day the ground was broken for their foundations their history has been one of defiant exploitation, It is sad that people who should be in there fighting personally for honesty in elections, for appointments on the basis of ability and character and for a dollar's worth of paving for a dollar instead of 30 cents’ worth, have thrown in the sponge and

| retired to watch the ruin of free government on a

limited but important front from a distance which they consider to be safe.

Ickes Once Raised Row HAROLD ICKES used to raise a row for decent

| local government but he, too, moved into an aristo-

cratic suburb before he went to Washington, And

| my disappointment in him was not a matter of his | personality, which certainly is not overwhelmingly

endearing, as of civic resentment when he went into

| a huddle with Ed Kelly, the mayor, and with Frank |

Hague of Jersey City in 1940, to nominate President Roosevelt for a third term. I knew what he thought of Kelly and his political machine, because Ickes had told me a year or two before when he was monkeying with the idea of returning to Chicago to run for mayor against Kelly as the leader of a reform movement. He said some awful things about Kelly's political outfit, none of them exaggerations and, of course, everyone knew

what the New Deal party line on Hague had been, | especially at the time when Hague was running the |

Communist orators and organizers out of Jersey City. That makes me belicve that Ickes and the whole New Deal, for that matter, because he certainly could personify the New Deal's ethics and principles, were not on the level in their early protestations. don’t see how a man can have truck with and accept the supporting power of an element which he has denounced as bad, and expect the people to have

| faith in him,

Can't Retreat Forever

BUT I DON'T MEAN this to be an essay on Ickes. The people of Chicago who can afford to go to the suburbs to live can't eohtinue to retreat indefinitely. On a broader scale, the more intelligent and refined people of the whole United States might be

| looking about for some place to retire to, outside the

country, so to escape unpleasant personal contact with corruption. That being impractical because there is no such place, and for other reasons, they will have to stick it out but it seéms to me that in sticking it out they

have no living hope of electing a president, a congress | and a whole list of governors and mayors who will |

be completely dedicated to the simple idea of purity

| in government and implacable enmity toward graft

and privilege. Some politicians, taking what they call a practical view, say it just can't be done, that this ideal simply

| cannot be realized because a man needs a political

| orgnization to get anywhere in public life and political

WHILE the news to date from Sicily is good, it's no time to relax; no time to turn from the military battle of 1943 to the political battle of 1944. The latest Gallup poll shows overwhelming public approval of the way the Roosevelt administration is handling our foreign affairs, but a dangerous let down on the homefront appraisal. Whereas our operation abroad is loudly cheered, our domestic performance is criticized on these counts: Poor handling of the labor union sitdation, inefficient and slopny administration, failure to pick the right men to be bureau and department heads, insufficient delegation of domestic authority by the president, too much politics, too much | thinking about the next election. In emphasizing our necessity for getting our home front into step with our foreign front, we are all inclined to over-simplify. For, in last analysis, there is no home front and no foreign front. They can’t be separated. They are all one front. When, for example, we fall off 24,000 tons of steel weekly in just one coal and steel production area, that's not domestic. That reaches right to Sicily. Costly chickens are coming to roost at an extremely awkward time. For the boys in Sicily could use the tanks and guns and planes and ships those tons of steel could make. So there is call for action, quick, right here in the U. S. A, to make the war front one front; action to match what's happening over there.

TRUMAN GETS RESULTS {J NPERSECRETARY of War Patterson says that “vigor- | ous remedial action” followed the charges of Senator | Truman's committee that the Wright Aeronautical Co. | plant at Lockland, O., supplied defective aircraft engines to the army. Mr. Patterson says that two army inspectors have been fired, there have been changes in the company’s personnel and methods, and test runs for engines have been lengthened. Meanwhile the justice department has entered civil suit against the company to determine whether the government should collect damages, and announces that it is studying the charges to decide whether criminal action should also be taken. All of which are proper steps for the government to take. But why was action delayed until a senate committee pried the lid loose?

NOTE FOR HISTORY ONTEMPORARY writers often point out that people today are too close to the activities of President Roosevelt to make a good guess as to what place finally will be

assigned to him in history. But our office wag, who admits | is dizzy from following the multiplication, substitution | and reversal of New Deal policies and alphabetical agencies, says his guess is that Mr. Roosevelt will go down in history |

vas the man who made change menotonous.” ‘

| standing, Truman

organizations, as we know them, always have a carryover of crooks and other kinds of bad men who are necessary to turn out the pluralities.

Truman a Pretty Good Senator

SENATOR TRUMAN of Missouri has been cited. Certain background matters to the contrary notwithis a pretty good United States senator, and I am told that you have to judge him by his performances in the senate, but I keep on

remembering that Tom Pendergast sent him to the |

senate and can't reconcile myself to a man who knowingly played ball on such a team as the Kansas City machine under such a notorious rogue as Pendergast. But I believe the people should keep in their hearts a high standard and not be afraid of being

| called naive and adolescent in insisting that public

men attack rascality even in their own parties, If they do this, if they are not ashamed to insist on honesty as the first requirement in a candidate, the ideal will at least be kept alive and there will be hope for the future. But if we all come to acceptance of the depressing

| formula of the professional politician and the jaded

and tricky liberal who builds himself an edifice of right out of materials that are wrong, we are condemned to incurable, mass cynicism and hope is gone and free, popular government in this republic is doomed,

We the People

By Ruth Millett

DONT WORRY cause the girl down

“Mom” the

often as you do.

{ That doesn't mean that Johnny doesn’t care about his home or his | That is just

parents. Not at all. the way of young men. Or so says an army censor at one foreign base who has noticed

that the average soldier writes |

“ three letters a week. One of those letters goes to Mom, and the other two go to the girl friend. So don’t be jealous of little Susie down the street. Johnny has to write her more often than he does you. After all, he's courting her, And he knows he may have competition at home, so he had better keep his letters frequent and regular if he is to keep some boy still at home from crowding him out. But you, mom, will always be there. Johnny knows he will be tops with you whether he writes once a week or once a month.

Lesson for the Future

REMEMBER THAT if you ever start to feel hurt because Susie gets more and longer letters than It isn’t just your Johnny who spends more |

| you do. letter-writing time on his girl friend than on his parents. Johnny is just acting like an average young man—not like an unfeeling son.

And once you have learned to accept that with good |

grace you'll find the lesson will come in handy from then on. For when Johnny comes home and marries the girl who is getting the bulk of his mail now, you'll have to be satisfied with only a fraction of his time and interest. And that, too, won't be because Johnny has grown away from yoi‘or lost interest in his family,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

The Girl He Left Behind Him!

G'Bye!

WOODEN NICKEL

Al DON'T TAKE [N ANY

Fame er SIT TREN I SPAN EEN GL A SRR HE IE

TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1943

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I wholly defend to

The Hoosier Forum

disagree with what you say, but will the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

(“SATURDAY NOON ALARM » ‘A VERY FOOLISH THING” By W. H. Richards, 127 E. New York st, There is a very foolish thing being done in Indianapolis and other large cities in sounding the air raid

alarm at noon every Saturday. An enemy has only to time an attack to

I just [reach a city at that hour and the!

'signal would mean nothing as it {would only be considered a practice (as usual. To be effective in case of need the horns should be kept silent and |only break out when a raid was imminent. | Besides, the sirens here are very weak compared with those in some other cities. I was in Newark, N. J last Saturday and the noise they made was enough to wake up the dead. » “BYRD LIVING IN PREVIOUS CENTURY” By H. E., Indianapolis

I disagree with the view that {Senator Byrd's program of economy in government includes the elements of statesmanship. The (world is full of men and women whose lives are spent counting pennies, hoarding string and living in constant fear of some uncertain tomorrow. It is a necessary trait even in the pursuit of happiness. {But when pinching pennies becomes the end and aim of life itself. only bitterness remains.

2 s

One glance through the pages of | the newspapers should be enough!

to show that American business does not live by putting penny |pinchers in the front offices. The fellow who counts the postage stamps each night would, if he made the high decisions, run the business into the nearest cemetery. The front-office man will spend a million dollars for advertising alone. even though he knows that an ill wind could make of that in(vestment an unfortunate gamble. | America itself was discovered {founded and built by men and {women ready to risk their lives {and their fortunes to support their dreams. They left at home, or far | behind, the misers and and pessimists worrying about keeping every budget balanced and every window locked. The first great nation to collapse In this world war was the nation of bondholders where instinct of saving for outweighed the wisdom of keeping alive today.

(Times readers are invited families dwelling in the described limits of a county, a state and finally a nation. | There are two evils frequently mentioned in our modern time that influence the strength, grace and happiness of our American families. [It is my belief the worst of these evils is to shirk family responsi[bilities and blame the authorities of | local government, We ask for inter- | ference in our private home life and family affairs. Within my lifetime there has been | a great growth of social workers | ‘who are educated and paid by our government, local and national, to| do work that is not There are the two evils prevalent. the family who will not or cannot! do right by their children, asking

to express their views in |

ese columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 must be

words, Letters

signed.)

omy, and aplenty, in Washington as elsewhere, But I am not in favor of giving to Senator Byrd any direction whatever in its application. He is, like the politicians of similar viewpoints in France, living in a previous century; and his views, if carried out, would have the same disastrous

their own.

| government-owned houses | project located a very few miles away.

[effect here as in France. | In this nation it has always been {the human factor that counted most: Freedom, opportunity, work fand a decent wage. We have kept the cash register ringing by spending, even when we lacked the down-payment. Keeping Americans employed has been and will be a test of our statesmanship, toward which I for one have never heard a contributing peep from the dissenting Senator from Virginia. ” ” ” “THE HOME MUST RETURN TO ITS FORMER GLORY” | By T. McGuire, 1105 W. 28th st. Noting the cry of juvenile delinquency and the remedies advanced for its cure causes me for one to see clearly my guilt in the cause of this social disease, Those who, like me, can remember

their childhood of the 1890s and up our independence and self-reliance,

to 1910 can possibly see the slight difference between the parents then and now, The home at that time

was in most cases a shrine, a harbor |

of happiness and love. Mother would say, “The devil finds work for idle hands.” Kate and I washed the

[for aid which the state cannot give but is willing to experiment at giv-| ing. | Just as we hear so often today, the nation has usurped the rights! of the state. The state has in turn usurped the rights of the family. Superfluous institutions are sup- | ported by the state because the family has failed to fulfill its duty. The American home must return to its former glory as a respectful and | respected unit of society, faithfully | perform its duties that outsiders | cannot accomplish, thereby restor- |

ling good and happy families to their |

people, Just as surely as we lose |

this government of the family, by | the families and for the families | will perish from this earth, In my opinion, not only are the

Our Hoosiers

By Daniel M. Kidney

WASHINGTON, July 13.-—-How home - front hamstringing from Washington has resulted in Uncle Sam squandering $13,000,000 on a “ghost city” adjoining the Kingsbury ordnance plant was explained by Rep. Robert A. Grant, 3d dis= trict Republican. In a speech in the congression= al record calling attention to this waste, Mr. Grant expressed the hope that better management will prevail in the future. Congress authorized $300,000,000 more for war housing, but voted only $100,000,000 cash before recess. Here is how Mr. Grant described the Kingsbury project: “Adjoining the Kingsbury ordnance plant, in the district which I have the honor to represent, the government acquired some 775 acres of fertile farm lands and embarked upon a program of building 2974 dwellings at a cost of some $10,000,000, “The addition of utilities, site improvements, com= mercial and administrative buildings, including one school, brings the over-all cost up to some $12,000,000,

Confusion Is 'Typical'

“WE UNDERSTOOD that these buildings were to have been ready for occupancy some time last fall. [ am in receipt of a letter from A. J. Parkin, housing manager of Kingsford Heights, as this project “is known, under date of May 20, 1943, informing me that 134 units have been occupied, It looks like Kingsford Heights is destined to be a ghost city even before it is fully ready for occupancy. Not only was there a case of bad judgment in ordering construction of this large number of homes at Kingsford Heights, but there has also been unwarranted delay in their construction, . . “If our armies in the field were throttled by such delays, we shudder to think of the consequences: such, however, is typical of the confusion on the domestio scene, “In the nearby cities of Walkerton and Knox, the housing authorities had constructed hundreds of temporary buildings for the workers at the Kingsbury ordnance plant,

Move to Populate Town

THESE WERE occupied in the early days of work at the plant, and when it became apparent thas Kingsford Heights was destined to be a ghost, city, efforts were instituted—probably to save somebody's face—to compel the residents of the temporary dwell= ings in the little communities of Walkerton and Knox to move into the newly completed project at Kingsford Heights, “These people had lived in these communities for a year or more. Their children attended schools in those communities. They had made church, business and fraternal contacts, and had considered these communities as their home. Naturally they objected strenuously to the efforts to drive them from these to another government

“These objections were registered with authorities in Washington and with the regional office of FPHA in Chicago with the result that the effort was dropped,

| We hope that efforts will not be made to revive this | mass removal of our citizens.

“The $13,000,000 put into this project must be paid for by the taxes and the savings of our American It is one of those extravagances which bring the cost of the war far above what it necessarily need be.”

In Washington

people.

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, July 13—Political polls and prognostications one year ahead of the 1944 presi= dential nominating conventions may not be worth the paper they're written on, but politicians who make a business of keeping both " ears to the ground at the same 2 time are beginning to check in with reports of pretty general im= pending upsets. Some of them go so far as to indicate that the party of the New Deal may take one of its worst pastings in the coming election and is now totally unaware of what is going to hit it at that time. It is banking heavily on the fact that the American people will not want to change administra= tions in the middle of a war, apparently not giving

| juveniles in our land delinquent, we | much weight to the possibilities that the principal

| |

are all delinquent and have been | setting an example for delinquency

dishes every night before going tothe past 50 years.

bed. I also got in the kindling and the coal. We were taught to serve ‘one and another,

position in American life our gov- | ernment and our much vaunted

¥ 8 “TIME TO START

hoarders b It is an assured fact that if fami- THINKING IS NOW” only ly life does not return to its true | gp, C. A. S., Indianapolis

Raymond Clapper’s article July 9!

the tomorrow |

of these divisions of government |

| superiority will vanish from the On the waste of war should be face of the earth. |brought to the attention of every | All government good and bad is!soldier and civilian in the United | based first on a unit of family, then qi tec

a community, a town, a county—all| This enunciation by Mr Coie]

I believe there is room for econ-'have their being from a nymber of

he- | street | hears from your Johnny twice as

INC. T.

713"

"Drop a note to the proper authorities, Miss Winston—tell them I'm employed again and please discontinue those relief checks,"

ture course of America. It must of necessity be in the mind of every | right thinking American, To prepare the way for the effective restraint of future aggres- | sion must begin by having this| article read and reread. Therefore | I would suggest that it be printed | again and copies sent to every or-| ganization in the country, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, luncheon clubs, women's clubs and all other too numerous to mention. While Mr. Clapper is a columnist | writing for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, every publisher in the country should advocate such a] movement. We are all in the same boat. Each and every one of us knows the cost of this world war II. The time to start thinking how we are going to prevent another such conflict is NOW,

” “HOW ABOUT A THIRD MAYOR?” By J. 8. P., Indianapolis So Mayor Tyndall thinks Indianapolis needs two mayors — one to be mayor and another to make] speeches?

How about a third to pose for the photographers?

DAILY THOUGHTS

And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, verily I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me -—Mark 14:18,

To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.—~Vaughan,

” »

issues may not be the conduct of the fighting war overseas, but the much more domestic issues of confu=sion on the home front, and this matter of the fourth term, Among the professional listeners-in who claim to be attuned to the political seismograph rumblings, Emil Hurja, who was Jim Farley's principal prognosti« cator for a number of years, still ranks high. Hurja was one of the few prophets who called the 1942 midterm elections right and he based his predictions then on polls which he had taken for the Pathfinder maga-= zine, of which he is now editor and publisher,

Few for Fourth Term ONE OF Hurja's first polls covered the members

should leave no doubt as to the fu- | of all the state legislatures. What amazed even Hurja

was the large number of write-in comments he got back on his ballots—about one out of every four, Two-thirds of this entire group reported they were opposed to the fourth term and everything it stands for. Although over four-fifths of the ballots showed they believed the president would seek a fourth term,

less than a tenth expressed themselves as favoring »

the president's aspirations, These findings, representing a cross-section of opinion from local politicians supposedly in close touch with affairs in their own locality, led the Hurja surveyors to the conclusion “that there are more anti-New Deal Democrats now than there were four years ago, and that they are more intensely ‘anti.’ In short, it has been estimated that more than a third of the delegates to the Democratic convention will refuse to join in a fourth-term movement,

Dewey of New York Strong

HURJA'S NEWBEST poll, to sound out Republican sentiment on their candidate, was made of the dele gates to the 1940 G. O. P. convention in Philadelphia, which nominated Wendell Willkie. The question put to these delegates was, “Who would make the best candidate for the Republicans in 1944?" With a third of the delegates who elected Willkie replying, the return came out surprisingly with Gov, Thomas E. Dewey of New York overwhelmingly first, and Willkie second. Translating the poll returns into electorial votes by states and scoring the states as their delegations would vote in convention, the tally became: Dewey 283, Willkie 138, Bricker 95, Stassen 11, Bridges four, Eliminating the 10 states of the solid south, the tally was Dewey 241, Bricker 84, Willkie 76. One curious factor about this poll was that it checked with the earlier poll which Hur ja had made of the Republican members of the state legislatures which tallied Dewey 206, Bricker 129, Willkie 70, not counting the southern states. In terms of general popularity with the Republican state legislators, how= ever, it was Dewey first with 20 per cent, Willkie sec ond with 256 per cent, Bricker third with 18 per cent.