Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 14 July 1943 — Page 12
PAGE 12
The Indianapolis Times
ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER President Editor, in U. 8. Service MARK FERRER WALTER LECKRONE
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1943
THE FOURTEENTH MERICANS join with Frenchmen everywhere today in the prayer that this will be the last Bastille day of | Nazi slavery for the republic. We back that hope with arms. To the freedom of France we have pledged our vast material resources and our sons. Already they have helped to drive the common enemy from Tunisia. Now they are wrenching his Sicilian shield from the Italian dictator who stabbed France in the back while Hitler strangled her. For the aid we have given, and will give, we ask nothing in return—nothing except a free and strong France. In this we are moved by both sentiment and self-interest. | Our sentiment rests on historic association of the two republics, our self-interest requires a democratic and peaceful Europe, which cannot exist around a sick or servile France, Thus the true interests of the two democracies are one, | Friendship based on that bedrock is not fragile. Those false prophets who are accusing America of imperialistic designs in helping France do not deceive Frenchmen. | On this Bastille day, to the slavery of metropolitan |
France is added the affliction of partisan strife among her | exiled leaders. That weakness delays the day of French | liberation, as it will destroy the fruits of victory unless | it is overcome soon. Her friends can help free France from | the foreign invader, but they cannot save her from herself. + Only Frenchmen can create the inner unity without which | she was an easy victim of enemies, and may be again. With unity France again can lead Europe in liberty, | equality, fraternity.
| and ever homeward, if only in memory.
| an
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK, July 14 —Under the spreading trees in a blue grass meadow outside Lexington, Ky. some years ago, a lot of sport reporters who had rallied ‘round for the derby put in a happy afternoon covering the auction of the great Belmont stable of running horses. There were many beautiful steeds, which some of the horsemen referred to collectively by the crass word “stock,” including mares with little, leggedy foals at their sides and delicate fillies and rambunctious old stallions who had made their pile in the race and, by way of reward had been retired to a Mohammedan paradise. Some of the Kentuckians were acutely mournful over the disposal of this great family circle of handsome animals and a few got red-eyed. A few days later, over in Louisville, they ran the derby, the first I had ever seen. And I was so impressed by the tears of some of the Kentuckians, stimulated, perhaps, by the horrible hooch that juleps were made of in those days, as they stood and sang with the band, just before the big race, the anthem of their state and of their hearts, “My Old Kentucky Home,” that I tried to write something touching about it.
| The 'Love o' Homeland'
IT WAS a very bad job and I was ashamed of such
mawkishness as it went to the wire and the more so, | and envious, too when, next morning, I read what | Damon Runyon had written for the Hearst outfit.
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES No Time tor Stunt Flying!
I had seen him at his table in the stuffy little | firetrap coop, his scrawny jaws working on his wad | of gum and with smoke forking from his nostrils and |
| had wondered what he was up to as he scowled through his piece with the speed of a perfect work-
man in full command of his story. It happened that he, too, had chosen to sentimentalize over the Kentuckian's love of his country and, expanding, over the pull that draws people ever Through it ran the phrase "Love o' Homeland." It has come back many times and with special freshness and meaning in the last year in conversa-
| tions with men who have left their homes to fight in
the war, Now Louisville is not such a town as vou would sing sad songs about just on sight. It has an untidy river front, many of the noble old homes, along with
the old families that first occupied them, have fallen | | on melancholy days, it lies in the hot and muggy river | valley and, though it used to be known as the Paris of the South, a center of fashion and society, it is now |
industrial town, strictly, with some low-grade
| sporting life on the Indiana side.
| 'God's Own Country’
AT AN M. P. post in the southwestern desert a few
| months ago, however, I met a boy from Kentucky who
WARNING THE PRESIDENT NCE again senators have warned against by-passing | congress in making foreign commitments. Members | of the foreign relations committee have protested the state department's failure to submit for treaty ratification the proposed united nations relief and rehabilitation agreement. Pointing out that the preliminary text provides for establishment of a “complete machine, similar to the League of Nations “for post-war relief, Senator Vandenberg says: “If ever an agreement could rise to the dignity of a treaty, here igs Exhibit A.” There have been several similar senate warnings. The foreign relations committee in its report on extending the lend-lease act declared that the sweeping Article VII “is ot a commitment which binds either of the legislative | bodies of this government.” It added that “there is no | authority in the lend-lease act to warrant any general postwar commitments or post-war policies in agreements made under the terms of the lend-lease act.” » » » » » GAIN in debate on the trade agreements act and the Panama claims agreement there were protests against | the president's practice of ignoring the senate's constitu- | tional function in foreign affairs. It was charged that the administration plans to arrange peace terms, when the | time comes, without consulting congress. We are aware that the executive agreement device, | which requires no congressionab approval or majority vote! at most, is an old one. There have been more than 1000 such in our history, though almost three-quarters of them | since 1917. Thus time has worn away some of the clear-cut con- | stitutional injunction forcing the president to obtain the advice and consent of the senate. It has almost come to the point where the president in this field can do anything | he can get away with. But that is still a large qualification | —ha has to have the co-operation of congress to make his paper agreements effective, in the matter of money and otherwise. » HAT is why we think the president is making a serious mistake in ignoring congress in his foreign commitments. Congress cannot prevent him from writing such checks. But those checks are worthless until honored by congress. Isn't Mr. Roosevelt forgetting that? We doubt that there is any irreconcilable difference between the kinds of peace settlement desired by the president and by congress. Or in the kind of necessary compromise with other united nations which the president and congress would be willing to accept. But, by his failure to consult congress, the president is creating distrust and magnifying such honest differences as exist. By refusing to share with congressional leaders the practical task of maturing foreign policy, he is destroying the best and perhaps the only basis for congressional acceptance of his commitments, In doing this the president ig running a terrible risk— the risk of dividing this nation on an issue of bad faith, and the risk of America refusing to honor its international obligations so pledged. We still hope that Mr. Roosevelt is wise enough to profit by the tragic experience of Woodrow Wilson.
»
» n » » 5
“WHEN WILL THE WAR BE OVER?"
ROM Africa, Ernie Pyle writes that the question soldiers are always asking him is: When will the war be over? And that brings to mind an anecdote of the last war. Marshal Foch had a chauffeur named Henri. The poilus naturally thought that Foch might slip Henri a little inside dope and they besieged him with inquiries about the termination of. the war. Henri had a stock answer: “The marshal has not spoken.” Month after month Henri turned off questions with that reply. But one day, Henri, swelled with importance, announced that at long last the marshal had spoken. “Quick, Henri, what did he say?” “The marshal said to me this morning: ‘Henri; when
a’
| she and her husband, a Connecticut mill-town boy
| longed to see Louisville again and called it “God's
Home Town,” a variant of the Englishman's G. O. C., meaning “God's Own Country.” If he had said Lexington he would have had something, for there is the sweetest countryside on earth. but he said Louisville. That was where he wanted to be and nowhere else. Then I gave a lift to a young English fiying cadet,
a little on the cockney side, and when. of course, we | | fell to speaking of the desert he said that frankly it | was horrible beyond the worst that his imagination | | had been able to conjure.
That was easy to understand because that was my own first impression of the desert, but when he pined for home and said his home was in Islington, which certainly is no beauty
| spot on the Thames nor an island of wealth and luxury in London, I though of Runyon's essay and |
made no issue. He particularly missed the English beer beside which ours was weak and without character and. al-
| though he had a short pass to Los Angeles and a look | at Hollywood, he wanted to be nowhere but in Isling- |
ton, the capital, so to speak. the heart of G. O. CO. In fact, he had established a very low opinion of
| Los Angeles and Hollywood as I remembered later | | When I met two American flying cadets from Los Angeles who said almost at once that they were
from God's country.
Why ltvin Cobb Loves Paducah SOME SOUTHERN coal miners similarly had beau-
tiful memories of their native hills in which I had | | Seen poor settlements, and I have no doubt that even
a fellow from South Dakota would have sighed for his homeland as unreasonably as I, in my youth, thought of Chicago as the most satisfactory city on earth and of a particular apartment building on an undistinguished street, as home. There is a young woman in a New England war factory whose heart yearns for the Arizona desert, the strangest fascination of all but a strong one. She came East because in the desert there was no wav to earn more than the barest, poverty-level existence and landed jobs here. ’ But one night a couple of years ago I had given them a lift home when their car broke down and the
girl, who had had some university education, praised |
the desert beautifully. They had ben away a vear then and had come back to find that the desert rate had stolen their felees and the doors and windows and even some of the 'dobe bricks from the walle of their little house, but they had patched up somehow and were managing to live. "Some people don't like it at first.” she said. “but
it gets you. I love it and I hope I never have to leave it again.”
Love o' homeland. That explains why Irvin Cobb loves Paducah.
We the People
By Ruth Millett
A BROOKLYN, N. ¥, eouple, | wanting to adopt a child, recently | advertised for a “fullblooded In- |
diana baby.” The couple is from Indiana and it is important to them that the
child they take into their home |
be from the same place. What they probably have not thought about is the tact that by the time the war is over, none of us is going to be so state and secs tion minded as we are now. Our young men and young women in uniform are being shipped from one part of the country to another, many of them for the first time in their lives learning that there is more to the United States than the East coast or the deep South. And where the boys go—their families go. Bither through the boys’ letters, or on real visits to them.
Discovering the U. S. A.
AND THE young folks in uniform aren't the only ones who are picking up their belongings and finding out what life is like in a different part of the country. Look at the stenographers who head for Washington, and the small town craftsmen who head for war boom areas. And think how often today's hasty war marriages
are making a couple out of a boy from Brooklyn and |
a girl from Wyoming. We are really getting mixed up at last—we Ametcans who have for so long clung to our conviction
NY J '
WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1943 |
| | | |
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what yon say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—=Voltaire.
“ANOTHER INSPECTION OF FLAGS NEEDED" By Wm, A. Frise, Indianapolis
I think you should promote an- | other inspection of the flags on the | downtown buildings by the Boy | Scouts. | Some of the flags flying on top
(of some of the best buildings in
lof them in tatters and not properly | hung on the masts To have these young Scouts call jon them might shame the building managers into doing something about it. ” ” ” [IF THEY COULD SEE THE GRAVES OVER HERE"
By Pie. J. OO. MM. A. EF
lon strike I was prompted to send (you this letter. We over here feel
that the folks back home might like to know how we feel about the strike. We hear that they are asking for $2 a day increase in wages, which alone amounts to more than we are getting a month. to us that they are more interested in getting rich than in winning the war. If they could see the graves over here, where our buddies are buried,
country is at war, they would let us down like that
seas would lay down their arms would call such men cowards and traitors, but they would be no worse | than those coal miners. I know that the coal miners
| have a dangerous job, but it is no
| worse than ours. Most of the fellows]
{I have talked to would be glad to trade places with the miners, | I sincerely hope that things ar [straightened out back home be- | fore it is too late. We have got |to stick together now. If we didn't intend to fight, we should never have gotten into this thing.
can be, I am thankful that the
| the city are surely a disgrace, some |
Upon hearing of the coal miners
It seems |
maybe they would realize that their It seems hard to believe that | Suppose one-half million men over- |
and refuse to fight. I suppose you
(Times readers are invited
to express their views in
these columns, religious con: troversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 Letters be
words, must
signed.)
years of labor to build can be totally | demolished in less time than it takes to tell about it.
” ” ”
‘NO QUESTION OF PROFITS ON BATTLE FRONTS" By W. H. Edwards, R. R. 2, Spencer Some of the confusion that is now causing so much wrangling on the | home front might easily be corrected if the public press wasn't | more interested in promoting the | | interests of the big money boys than it is interested in promoting | victory on the battlefields and na- | tional safety and welfare. Take, for instance, subsidies to encourage greater food production. | I see that The Times and other | | metropolitan newspapers are Op-| | posing subsidies, principally on the | grounds that taxes will eventually | ‘have to pay for the subsidies.
Some people, among them members of congress, are insisting that | prices should be given a chance to | seek their own level in line with | supply and demand. In these times of all-out war, if the law of supply and demand waz | allowed to function we would see speculators force the price of food | to the stratosphere, regardless of human suffering. The onlv thing wrong with the | present subsidies is that it is the | packers and processors who get the subsidies, not the people who toil to produce the food. These times of war make many things desirable that in times of peace would be considered unreasonable. Tt is much | | better now to take every possible |
|
After seeing how destructive war| measure to control the cost of live | Christian, please give me his ad-
(ing than to pinch pennies as one |
fighting is over here and not back department of government did and | new. All the Socialists I have ever home. Things that have taken hard! thereby endanger final victory on |seen thought the church was a
Side Glances—By Galbraith
AA kL
oh
(
that the section we were born and reared in is the |
part of the country, When the war is over we ate going to be so much
more cosmopolitan a people that it isn't likely that a
they sid bo ce |
I. M
"They may be doing well against
do better if they would just follow the advice George
a \ i"
the submarine menace, but they'd
the battlefronts by uncontrolled inflation of prices. Another thing: People who don't | confine themselves to perusing the | sillies or the sporting pages of the | newspapers became aware, iong ago, | that RFC Administrator Jesse Jones | did fail to lay in great stockpiles | of rubber and quinine before it was too late, although congress had ap- | propriated the money for such purchases, Notice of that lack ap-| peared in the public press, inelud- | ing The Times, in a small news | item of more than a year ago. | So why should an investigation | the Wallace-Jones dispute be | Jones, throughout his | administration of the RFC, has | been interested chiefly in profits. | At this time when our valiant | fighters are placing their lives, their | all, on the altar of our homeland, | no agency of governmept should | put profits above natiobial safety and welfare. To our sons, brothers, husbands | and fathers no question of financial | profits is allowed to take precedence over the job they were sent to do and are doing. ” ” ” “A CHANCE TO EXHIBIT SUPERIOR WISDOM"
By An American, Indianapolis
Some of the readers of the Forum | are just tickled pink when somes | one sends in a letter that they dis agree with. It gives them a chance | to put on exhibition their superior wisdom, acting as critics. I have read the articles by Maddox, Pegler and Mrs. Roosevelt for no other reason, only the one that the children had who &tuck cherry | seeds up their noses because grand- | ma told them not to. I do not care for some writers, any more than I care for spaghetti, | but I do not make my family keep | spaghetti off the table just because | I don't like it. They relish it. I read all three Indianapolis papers, | but do not have to read everything in them to get my money's worth, Now if some of you wise ones know of a Socialist who is a devout
of necessary?
|
dress—I want to go see something
capitalistic organization, and was therefore something at which they should turn up their noses. If Christ and His disciples were Communists, then communism has taken a decided change for the worse since those days. I saw in a Moscow paper about five years ago that the Russians were singing,| “The Light of the World Is Stalin!” People who sail past the Statue of Liberty to enter our country,| where fools are yet permitted to] rattle if they so desire, have a lot of nerve to start turning up their noses at the God whom the founders of our country worshipped. ” ” ” “WYOTERS DID NOT
ELECT LANDON" By N. L., Indianapolis 1 heard a statement made by Mr. Alf Landon regarding the president's veto of the inflationary food bill. Inasmuch as the American voters did not elect him even one time to the presidency, it might be less revealing if said Landon would refrain from accusing Franklin D. Roosevelt of playing politics with this vital food issue. I believe that all honest Americans realize that F. D. R. is a real American and friend of the common people,
DAILY THOUGHTS
The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. —Zephaniah 1:14,
_ The ways of the
gods are long,
Labor and 1944
By Fred W. Perkins
WASHINGTON, July 14—~The first heat of the 1044 political races, so far as organized labor is \ concerned, will be run this fall. The scetle will be the halls of congress, and the outcome will depend on what success is regise tered by the unions—the Amerie can Federation of Labor, the ©, I. O, the railway brotherhoods and the United Mine Workers—in inducing the lawmakers to recede from a stand which the unions call anti-union. The union leaders take no stock in the Be that regulation was inevitable, sooner or later, fo the great power built up for them under the kindly auspices of the Roosevelt administrations: nor have they responded to advice that the way to stop anti« union legislation was to accept mildly restrictive measures willingly. First aim of the unionists will be to put force hehind a proposed repealer of the Connally-Smith anti-strike law, which both branches of congress enacted over the president's veto on June 25. Such an early repeal is doubtful,
May Settle for Less
80 THE UNION leaders may be willing to setth for less, for passage of compensatory legislation eu. would take out the sting of the anti-strike law or would give labor bodies advances in other directions. An imperfect example of that kind of legislation was a ‘rider’ to an appropriation law, which cone gress okayed in the heat and hurry of a recess tg Sept. 14. It blocked the national labor relations board from interfering in such jurisdictional disputes as those between the A, F. of L. metal trades departs ments and the C. I. O. in the Kaiser shipyards in the Pacific Northwest, It pleased the A. F. of L., ng the C. 1. O.
To be effective in soothing the hurt feelings of
| all union leaders, new legislative enactments would
have to steer clear of jurisdictional controversies-« something that is increasingly difficult. However, if the labor lobbyists can chalk up soma accomplishments between Sept. 14 and the end of the congressional session at Christmas, they will have a new sipply of ammunition to use in next year's battles over the nomination and election of a presi= dent, 435 congressmen and 32 senators. If the sese sion produces ns such results, organized labor's role will be greatly reduced from the position it has held
| since 1036,
To 'Educate’ Congressmen
THE C. I. O. is taking the leadership among ned union groups in trying to “educate” congressmen while they are home on their vacations. It is sende
| ing printed instructions to its members on how to | improve the congressman's days away from Washe
ington. It advises: “Invite yout congressman to a good old American« style town meeting, Have him get acquainted with the voters and with what's on the voter's mind. “Have your congressman meet the housewife and the auxiliary members when he comes home. They'll’ have plenty of questions to ask him on what's haps" pening to the family food basket, “Ask your congressman about absenteeism. Was he in his place when house and senate voted to overs ride the Smith-Connally veto, to kill subsidies for the rollback, to wreck price control, If not—why? “Discuss his record with the congressman when he comes home. If it's been bad, tell him so; if it's been good, tell him that and urge him on. The main issues are listed as repeal of the Cone fally-Smith bill, control of living costs through sube sidies, opposition to a sales tax and promotion of taxes on large incoraes, poll tax prohibition and new, social security legislation,
A
In Washington
By Peter Edson
WASHINGTON, July 14.-<Trve ing to get at the bottom of all the so-called confusion over the date on which fathers will be drafted uncovers some funny angles. The record however, is pretty straight: War manpower commission and selective service headquarters have consistently refused to set any date for calling up the first fathers. Furthermore, no date will be officially set or announced or even guessed at until WMC and SS definitely KNOW when the drafting of fathers can't be delayed another day and will be absolutely necessary. They don't know that now. They don't know when they will know because no fathers are going to be inducted until all other able-bodied men of military age have, been called up and nobody knows when all other® able-bodied men will have been called up and their supply exhausted. Nobody knows when all the available supply of “non-fathers" will be used up because: 1. Physical standards have been lowered a little, particularly as to eyesight, which means that a lot of men previously rejected may be reclassified and called up ahead of the first fathers.
Situation May Change
JUST HOW many “non-fathers” this will yield, . no one can tell, but for every such man called up, the day of induction for a father is delayed just that much longer. 2. Physical standards may be further lowered, pos« sibly delaying the induction of fathers by a month or more. Lowered physical standards are against the army tradition, which wants a flexible force in whic every man is able-bodied, but civilians in the man power commission are trying to persuade the military that men not physically perfect might be used for barrage balloon duty ar defense assignments in the U. 8S. or on desk jobs in the services. After all, there is specialization in the services today, not every ma being a cook, a radio operator or an adh mechanic, interchangeably. 3. There is further pressure on the services to take men of from 37 to 45 for limited service wheras short wind, fallen arches or incipient pot-bellies are no great handicap. Acceptance of more of these older men might delay the drafting of fathers by another month, more or less. 4. Every effort is being made to review odcupa= tional deferments, so as to release to the armed services all able-bodied men previously considered essential in war industry. 5. The military situation may change-~meaning that the army may want men faster than originaligh’ scheduled, or that training facilities may not be available to induct new cadres as rapidly as had been planned. And nobody seems able to tell what the military situation will be a month or six monthg % hence.
Nobody Knows — Honest
THE BEST advice to fathers, therefore, is to quit worrying and forget it till the time comes when the draft board sends them that notification. But they can’t. It isn't natural to ignore so im a question that means temporarily breaking up happy family and putting the love nest in hock. Out of this uncertainty and genuine person interest in trying to plan ahead as far as pos has sprung all the desire to know when the fatefy day is going to come. In the wake of this desire to know the worst there has been churned up | whole whirlpool of rumors, It’ hy To Jan. 1, or any and all 8
BLE