Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 July 1943 — Page 10

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ard corrupt leaders) that a reconstituted Italy can hope

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times

ROY W. HOWARD President Editor, in U. S. Service MARK FERREE WALTER LECKRCNE

Business Manager Editor (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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MONDAY, JULY 190, 1043

AMGOT

AUCH depends on the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory, whose first branch has started | to operate in southeastern Sicily. AMGOT, as it is called, | can advance or retard military victory. It can help create | conditions for a just and lasting peace, or it can multiply | the obstacles. Though its function is civil administration, | as the only allied agency in direct contact with the liberated populations its influence for good or ill is beyond measure. | Fortunately the London and Washington governments, foreseeing the importance of this delicate function, left | nothing to chance. Long ago they began training mature civil administrators of all kinds, with special emphasis on the area to which these officers were to be sent. So Maj. | Gen. Lord Rennel of Rodd, the widely experienced Briton heading AMGOT in Sicily, and his American deputy, Brig. | Gen. Frank J. McSherry, have an expert staff of civil af- | fairs officers to start with. Of course their number will be very small compared with the horde of native municipal and state officials used. The problem is to utilize existing local agencies and personnel of government to the largest extent possible, and at the same time to break completely Fascist control and in. fluence. That is hard because, under a dictatorship, vir- | tually all offices are held by party members. Though | AMGOT rules out “active” Fascists, “local officials will be kept in office on the basis of co-operation, performance and good behavior.” By protecting freedom of worship, and free press and free speech within the limits of military necessity, by abolishing race discrimination laws, by providing equal | justice, by serving as liberator rather than as conqueror, AMGOT may win the hearts and minds of the people as our armed forces won the military battles,

A REPORTER—AND THAT THIRD S00 LOCK YEAR and a half ago, shortly after we entered the was considering a Into this omnibus |

war, a congressional committee billion-dollar rivers and harbors bill. measure congressmen had dumped all their pet waterway projects which they wanted the treasury to finance. It was typical pork barrel. Dick Thornburg, of the Scripps-Howard Washington | staff, sliced into this smelly chunk of pork and found what he described at the time as “one streak of lean”—one project which would actually contribute to winning the war— | $8,000,000 to build a third lock at the Soo canal. Through the Soo passes 85 per cent of the country’s iron ore, freighted from the upper lakes ranges to the | steel mill centers in the East and Midwest. The two locks | then in operation were taxed to capacity. A single act of | sabotage, and the flow of the raw material from which guns and tanks and ships were made might have been | choked up in that bottleneck. = es ® = = » EPORTER THORNBURG started writing about this | one “lean” project, about how essential it was to the | war effort, about how the army and navy wanted the | Soo lock and wanted it quick, about how congressional | leaders refused to consider the project by itself on its | own merits, but insisted that it remain a part of the pork | barrel bill, so that if this one useful project were approved | all the hundreds of useless little river and inlet improve- | ments at a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars should | also be approved. | Donald Nelson asked congress for immediate action! on the Soo lock, and then two days later, under pressure

senting to the project being considered along with the general pork barrel bill.

Writing day after day on his favorite theme, Reporter |

Thornburg reported this and all subsequent “runarounds.” Other newspaper writers, and statesmen on Capitol Hill, joined in, and in two months the fight was won. Congressional “leaders” changed their minds. They lifted the Soo lock project out of the omnibus bill, permitted it to be considered separately. It was unanimously approved, and work was commenced. This week the bomb-proof “MacArthur lock” was completed and placed in service. There is no longer any fear | of a stoppage in the flow of iron ore to the furnaces. Meanwhile that pork barrel bill still reposes in a pigeon- | hole—and still stinks. : We hope when the war is over Dick Thornburg will | take a nice vacation on a Great Lakes’ steamer, and enjoy | being “locked through” that improvement which in early | 1942 he dramatized so effectively as the “one streak of | lean” in a pork measure.

WILL ITALY REVOLT?

THE Roosevelt-Churchill ultimatum to the Italian people will stir them. But whether those so long enslaved now have the will and strength to overthrow the Mussolini dietatorship, which is guarded by Nazi as well as Fascist troops and secret police, remains to be seen. In differentiating between the Italian people and their Fascist leaders, the ultimatum uses a powerful weapon in political warfare. The majority of Italians always have disliked the totalitarian state, particularly its regimentation. : Bet neither their temperamental dislike of fascism, nor their hatred of German qverlords, nor their war-weari-ness, nor their dread of defeat, absolves the Italian people for their part in this war. As the ultimatum says: “It is only by disavowing both (Nazi Germany and your own false

| | RALPH BURKHOLDER |

| one.

Youth Coddling

By Burton Rascoe

NEW YORK, July 19—Some 30 years ago, the French philosopher and literary critic, Emile Fauget, published two books who title, in English, would be “The Cult of Incompetence” and “The Dread of Responsibility.” A translation by Emily Putnam of the

| latter book was issued in 1914 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, | but its appearance was hardly noticed.

The ideas contained in the books are highly pertinent to us now as they were to France when Fauget penned them. Failure of France to take heed, even after the vietory of 1918, undoubtedly contributed much to her downfall. Fauget's warning, in brief, was that the growth of bureaucracy under the Third Republic was destroying the spirit of initiative and the incentives of progress, weakening the moral fiber of the nation and contributing to a dead level of mediocrity.

A Love of Security

ACCORDING TO Fauget, it had unhappily become the aim of every middle class family to have at least one son attached to the federal payroll in the capacity of a civil servant in a vast and growing bureaucracy, The boy’s education was directed toward that end. He was not encouraged to aspire to

| any other career.

The reason back of this family aspiration was obvious. Thrift and a love of security are deeply embedded in the character of the French. By attaching himself to the public payroll, a young man’s future was provided for. His salary would be low and rela-

| tively without change, but he would be secure in his | job for life, provided he was not brought to book and | convicted on criminal charges. After a certain num- | ber of years in public service, he would be retired on

a pension. This secure anchor was something the whole family could cling to. But, argued Fauget, this is a deadening project. He was discouraged to see that it was a prospect which thousands of French youths annually faced,

not merely with resignation but with actual expect- |

ancy.

Evading Life's Challenge

RESPONSIBILITY, he knew, is something which every youth dreads to assume. It is normal psychological phenomenon in the passage of a boy into the adult stage. But it is a dread that must be combatted and overcome if a child is ever actually to grow up

in this dread of responsibility, encouraging them to

evade the challenge and a strife of life, providing ' them with a multitude of soft berths, paid for out of |

taxation, into which they could fall for life.

They would never have to meet competition. They |

would never have to learn anything beyond the petty routine of their duties. They would never have to fail at something and try again. They would never lose a job and have to find another one. They would atrophy in mind, in imaginiation and in aspiration.

U. S. Developing Own Cult

IN THE GROWTH of bureaucracy and the public's attitude toward it, Fauget saw a nation ultimately ruled by petty-minded, unimaginative, mentally undevelopel little jobholders. Each one was full of that arrogance a job on the federal payroll tends to give one who holds it, because he identifies himself with

; the state and often mistakes himself, like Louis XIV,

for the state. Fauget foresaw a rule by bureaucratic mediocrities whose final triumph would be to hamper and stifie in

| every way possible the initiative, the genius, the en- | ergy of individuals who, in a free, competitive state,

might set examples of enterprise and achievement

| which would insure the spiritual health and cultural

progress of the nation. . We are developing our own cult of incompetence, as We can see on every hand in the muddle of bureaucratic regulaticns and disputes. We need to pay heed

| to Fauget, even if France neglected to.

‘We the People

By Ruth Millett

“I HAD TO GO through with it for the kids” Jack Dempsey said when he had won his divorce from Hannah Williams after a long and ugly court room battle that “the kids” will never be allowed to forget.

“For the kids’ sake” we ought |

to do something about our divorce laws. What is the use of making a big fuss over juvenile delinquency, if we can’t even work out a way in which parents can end their marriages and settle the question of custody of the children without ripping the reputation of at least one of the parents to shreds, and holding it up for the children and the world to see? We ought to do something to take the sensationalism out of divorce, and we ought to do it quickly.

: | For the psychologists and psychiatrists are predicting | from the politicians Mr. Nelson withdrew his request, con- |

that we will have a boom in post-war divorces.

| Children Lose

| 1 SHOULD CHILDREN have to see their mothers’ and fathers’ alleged misconduct dragged out for all the world to see and gossip about? Just because their | parents no longer choose to live together, should the | kids be deprived of every bit of respect for their | parents and of every speck of security they once | knew? If we continue to do that to kids, we are bound | to add to the problem of juvenile delinquency. If a i Kid goes through the shock of reading in minute detail every indiscretion of his parents, if he knows the whole world also knows each detail, it isn’t likely | he will care much what he does. Nobody wins in a divorce case like the Dempsey The real loser is the child or children involved.

To the Point—

DROPPING in on people usually 1s a friendly gesture—but Mussolini has reason to have another slant.

» - *

WHEN THE post-war autos come, why not have the steering wheel in the back seat just to avoid arguments? - - » IT'S TOO bad we can't put a few lumps of ice in the fireplace and keep cool.

* . .

LOTS OF our stamps bear photos of famous men who, like the stamps, arrive by sticking to things.

% 4 3

ANY SOLDIER will tell you that the best thing to induce chest expansion is a medal, 2 = - IN WARTIME, says our government, men should not do work that women can do. How about the dinner dishes? 8 = = AT LEAST the war has put an end in many families to the old question of who wears the pants.

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AN OKLAHOMA man recently saw his wife for the first time in eight years. Bet she's a_movie fan. - - - WOMEN ALWAYS have the last word—but some of them seldom get to it. ~ J a gpa 4

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Harvesting the Crop!

PW

MY, MY- THESE

3

VICTORY ARE

GARDENS

What Fauget saw was a nation coddling its youth |

The Hoosier Forum

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

“SOLDIER'S VIEWPOINT OF A HOOSIER EVENT” By Sgt. Tom, Ft, F. E. Warren, Wyoming.

This is the second time in recent weeks that the Indianapolis representation here has availed itseif of the much read Forum to relay a soldier's viewpoint of a Hoosier event. Consider this, please, as a mild but military tirade starring) Sherwood Blue , . « i

Being a Republican convert of some years’ standing, I watched with close interest the so-called political rise of this lack-of-tact lawyer. I laughed heartily at his| juvenile gestures during the previous administration. Also as civilian, I nurtured a peculiar dis-| taste for . . . his on-the-fence poli-| feies. In my opinion, Sherwood has always compared with a pilot who! ‘attempted to fly by instruments in| a very clear sky. Now, “Crybaby’ Blue is crying again, but this time, the shoulder of Chief Beeker won't! be a soft spot for a sob session. I have known the chief for many | years both as a top all-around cop-| per, as a clean-cut individual, and as a God-fearing father and hus- | bald. He has had the interest of| the I. P. D. at heart since the first] day he pinned on his badge over] 20 years ago. | He “suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” for his effective party work during the | previous Democratic sitdown strike on Alabama st. He paid the pen{alty by walking the worst beats . . . {by details not of the best, and by {doing his duty to the taxpayers without a whimper, but rather with {his usual infectious smile. He has! covered the department from every known job and he well knows the | future of a wrong guy. ‘ | When Mayor Tyndall rewarded {him via the unanimous opinion of {98 per cent of the police force with a chief's badge, Chief Beeker im- | mediately began to correct the| | faults which he had seen infecting the Indianapolis political sore for |

|

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 Letters be

words. must

signed.)

| ice don't care to read about coal strikes, walk-outs and political] squabbles. Absorbing the details of | such only makes our jobs all the) more difficult. “Crybaby” Blué is not only slowing the war effort by | his uncalled-for wailing, he is in-| stalling a permanent dark brown | taste in the mouths of the uniform-| wearing voters. Why doesn't the “no mean city”|

|

‘smarten up and either get rid of|

him or tell him there is a war going on. Grow up, Little Boy Blue, or] we'll be only too happy to blow out, your horn when we get back. Let's prosecute criminals, not persecute) the law. That's a little Hitlerish,| don’t you think? | The Forum is a swell place for

to let off steam and in quoting| |

us Winchell, the servicemen are proud of his deep-set warning, “When the |

| boys come back, the politicians will |,

be running fer cover instead of re-| election.” ¢ # 4 “OPPORTUNITY ISN'T

DEAD IN AMERICA” By Paul E. Remmetter, 3307 N. Capitol ave.

When I wrote the letter, “Try Being An All-Out American,” I| didn't think that subsequent letters from me in its defense would be necessary. Indeed, “senseless argu-| ing and quibbling” was a Hoosier | Forum characteristic I most energetically condemned. But I feel I| would be lacking in the patriotism | for which I pleaded if I fet the contentious letters of Messrs, Hetrich and Daacke go unanswered. Mr. Hetrich admits the phenom-

$0 many years. He started to erect enal growth of America under rea clean city for us to come home! publican form of government, but to. He didn't “bust” his ranking implies that opportunities for furofficers because of their politics. | ther equally phenomenal growth no He broke Elephants and Donkeys|longer exist. I would refer Mr. alike in constructing a crack polic- | Hetrich to the yet practically uning agency. Yes, there are Demo- | touched fields of electronics, diagcrats wearing gold badges, but the | nostistic medicine, synthetic chemrecords of these officers are just as) istry, color photography, acoustical gilt-edged. {engineering, and automotive and To be quite frank, we in the serv-!/ aircraft development, besides the

Side Glances—By Galbre th

| COPA. 194 BY NEA SERVICE, INC. T. M. REG. U. 8 PAT. OFF. ___ 2.19 "I'm afraid Susan has made up her mind to be a welder, but she

ever-present opportunities in law, music, journalism, and the entertainment field. These, of course, are but a few of the “exhausted opportunities” awaiting alert Americans. No, Mr. Hetrich, opportunity isn't dead in America, compared with part achievement, it is only now beginning to stir, Mr. Daacke says I am complacent because I want to retain the form

{ of government which has proved it-

self by its steady and rapid progress to the rank of a major power in so short a time. Complacent indeed. If a fervent love of my country with a willingness to make any and all sacrifices for its perpetuation is complacency, I'm guilty, And I'm not only guilty—I'm proud of it. Mr. Daacke doesn't agree that the enemy - instigated dissatisfaction and confusion so rampant throughout the country are cause for immediate alarm. I say they are. But even if they weren't, isn’t the time for action against them now? Haven't we learned a costly lesson by allowing Germany's fantastic rearmament program to go unchallenged? Or by tolerating Japan's arrogant offensive policy for so 2 Whether or not the disunity and unrest in America have reached the danger point which I claim they ave, they do exist; that cannot be denied. And their very existence constitutes the danger point to all loyal Americans who are genuinely interested in the preservation of their country. That is, unless lessons recently learned from Germany and Japan are to be forgotten so soon. Have you forgotten, Mr. Daacke? We need a stout fence ‘round the edge of the cliff—not an ambulance down in the valley. ” ” » “STREETCAR OPERATOR

SMOKING A PIPE” By A Times Reader, Indianapolis

I have just returned home from a trip to Broad Ripple, via the College streetcar. I would have liked very much to have seen Mr. Dunwoody, the policeman, get on the car as the operator , . . was smoking one of the strongest smelling pipes I have ever smelled. All the way from Broad Ripple to 56th st, the old smoke rolled back through the car. Is this the way the Indianapolis Railway trains its operators? Luck to Mr. Dunwoody. ” » . “NON-DRINKERS AFRAID TO EXPRESS OPINION" By Mrs. H. M. W,, Indianapolis To the Knightstcwn Reader: I'm afraid our country will never be clean enough for our boys or anyone but the alcoholic indulging kind unless the people who really care try to do something about it. If the people against it would stick together like the ones do who are for it, we could get results. But it seems that most of the peaceful non-drinking citizens ars afraid to express their opinion where it will do the most good. Bishop Hughes said, “Drinking and drunkenness in Washington, D. C. is fearful. The consumption of alcoholic beverages is even double of that of Nevada, which is supposed to head the booze parade; and,” he continues, “Nevada can't see Washington for dust, when it comes to imbibing.” Our nation is in a condition that is serious, and yet the people who could do good sit back placid, wishing. I say let's get up petitions and send to congress and try to stop the wrecking of this nation. Liquor is prolonging this war, and no one can truthfully deny that,

DAILY THOUGHTS

And he took all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house, and hostages, and Ty. IR Ry

Sant Cd

MONDAY, JULY 19, 1943 ]

Our Hoosiers By Daniel M. Kidney

sa | EE §

x

WASHINGTON, July 10.—Hawg ing received several letters saying that interned Japanese are or will | be placed at work in Hoosier war ) industries and on farms, Rep. Gerald W. Landis, Republican from Linton, issued a verbal broadside against them. “Our fighting forces have dise covered in the prison camps, on the battlefields, on the ground and in the air that there is no such thing as a trustworthy Jap,” Mr. Landis said. “When our fighting men returned to this counts from the fox holes they were amazed by the frees’ dom given the Japs here. Over there our boys cone tacted many Japanese prisoners who said they had been educated in our schools, some at the University of Southern California, Stanford and the University of California. These Japs have been brought up here and yet they fight against us as if they had never seen the United States.”

Suggests Treatment

MR. LANDIS then suggested this treatment: “The only safe way to treat them is to place them behind barbed wire 24 hours a day. They will be good so long as no opportunity is given them—but in th event they get on opportunity they would do as much sabotage and damage as possible. Our armed forces have ceased to regard them as human and they say there is no such thing as a good Jap. “It has been called to my attention by the citizens of the State of Arizona that the Japs located in the relocation centers are served better food and are fursy nished better commodities than our own citizens,’ or even that which our military forces can obtain, They are being accorded treatment by the war relocation administration fit for a King.” Citing a petition he received from Salinas valley in California, Mr, Landis pointed out that the signer wanted all Japs returned to Japan and not settled again on the West coast. “On this petition are 900 names representing 14,000 persons,” Mr. Landis said. Here are some of the answers given by Salinas valley residents to a questionnaire as reported by the Indiana congressman: ’

‘Japs Just Aren't Wanted'

“THERE ARE NO loyal Japanese. Japs are nok wanted on the West coast. I wouldn't hire a Jap te work on my land regardless of how badly I needed labor. Send them to Japan. I have had dealings with the so-called loyal Japs for 32 years and they proved jy otherwise as soon as war was declared. When the is over send word to Japan to come and get her Japs and keep them. Agriculture does not need them and industry will not have them. “I was looking at the high school graduation pice ture and it certainly was a pleasure to see no Japeanese faces among our children. Confiscate all of their property, sell it to the highest bidder, use the money received to help defray the cost of defeating them. We milk 200 cows, but not for the Japs. Remember Pearl Harbor! “We on the Pacific coast have learned first-han: of the treacherous design of all Japanese, We positively convinced that there is no place in the United States for the Japanese people. Therefore, at the conclusion of this war they should be deported and forever excluded. “The present war has demonstrated beyond a doubt that the Japanese government and the Japanese people are untrustworthy, treacherous, irresponsible" and faithless.” These West coast sentiments are shared and ine dorsed by Mr. Landis.

In Washington

By Peter Edson

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WASHINGTON, July 19.—How to force a labor union or an emse ployer to accept and abide by & finding of the national war i | board is now the hottest potata? which the administration has to juggle and fumble. If a means to enforce WLB findings cannot be found, the board is as good as dead. For at this writing the board is being defied by the United Mine Work« ers and by the management of the U. S. Gypsum Co, And a way must be found to save the honorable board's honorable face. There is nothing in the new Smith-Connally bill which compels a union or an employer to accept a WLB finding, Ana it is worth mentioning that the WLB finding on the United Mine Workers' case contains no pro= vision ordering that John L. Lewis “must” sign s contract incorporating the terms of board's rec mendations. Members of the board did pay an official call on War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes demanding that the miners be forced to sign. Bus since the board has no police powers to enforce its own decisions, that job had to be passed to the White House.

No Note to Lewis

SECRETARY of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, as head of the office of mine operations and governm boss of the seized coal mines, has challenged th statement that the government is powerless to force acceptance of the WLB findings by the miners. Yes Ickes has not specified how this can be done. In the face of the Byrnes and Ickes statements and the WLB recommendations, the president has stated that he has no intention of writing a note on pink paper asking John L. Lewis to sign a new agreement with the coal operators. He might say no®~ So where are we now? The mine operators would like to know. The president has refused to accept the Oct, 3% deadline which John L. Lewis placed on his willinge ness: to have the mines continue under governme operation. If that is any indication that the aam 3 istration hopes it can continue to drift along under the terms of the present armistice, that's bad. The only party to this dispute who has anything to gain by sitting tight and letting Father Time take his own sweet old way is John Lewis. Time can play into his hands beautifully. Congress has gone home till mid-September, so there's nothing more to fear from that quarter. Any increase in the ocst of living during the summer works to Lewis’ advantage in his demands for higher pay than that awarded his union under the WLB directive of June 18.

Another Strike? THE Smith-Connally bill provides that a must give 30 days’ advance notice of intent to strike in a war industry under government operation, so on Oct. 1 Lewis can announce intent to call anothetfy strike whether the government recognizes his Oct. 3 deadline or not. A coal strike at the beginning of winter would be a brutal thing, the worst sabotaging of the war effort to be imagined. Lewis has marched his miners up the hill on strike three times since May 1, and marched them down again without victory except Tomy the small gains handed him in the WLB decision, Agreement to continue to dig coal under t operations of the mines was a face-saver for Lew Maybe it's time to quit saving Lewis’ face. The one move in that direction on which the administration has shown its hand is the president's bid for a change in selective service regulations to permit the drafting of miners. That's real, and it's

AT