Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 August 1943 — Page 10

‘he In ianapolis Times |

RALPH BURKHOLDER Editor, in U. 8. Service bia MARK A i WALTER LEOKRONE * Business Manager Editor (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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Give ‘Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 1043

CLEAN FOOD

HE sensational report just issued by federal and state public health agencies on Indianapolis restaurants doesn’t completely make sense to the ordinary laymen whose restaurant experience has all been on the receiving end. "The United States public health service, in, b.ch-operation with the Indiana state board of health, has examined more than 1000 eating places, great and small, or virtually all that are running here, to see how clean they are. -According to their. report, only two were satisfactorily clean, one of them a neighborhood tavern, the other a service center open only to men in uniform. On the basis of sanitary conditions the investigators classified all restaurants in grades running from A, the highest, to C, the lowest. The two mentioned above were given A rating. All the others were given C rating—from the swankiest downtown hotel and club dining rooms to Sloppy Joe's Greasy Spoon, alike and without distinction. The question at once arises whether there isn’t more difference than that, whether some of these places, assuming they all are dirty, aren’t dirtier than others; whether there should not have been, here and there, a B rating or . maybe an H. 2 » » \ » * 8 UITE obviously these classes are so broad as to be . virtually meaningless. Except for the two rated perfect, they might all as well have been classed as A, or X, so far as any true indication of their Fespective sanitary condition is concerned. The further report that the general average of all the restaurants in town is only 41.6 per cent in cleanliness, whereas 75 per cent is the standard considered passable by the government, is more closely indicative of what the investigators apparently mean. At. least it offers. a standard for comparison.

‘But even there it leaves room for quBsLioRing of the standards followed. The figures would seem to indicate that, of some 600,000 meals a day served in Indianapolis | restaurants, more than 300,000 are dangerously unsanitary. Yet we have heard no recent reports of epidemics sweeping the community. Can it be that we are just a hardy race around here, and immune to such things—or could it mean that the standards sought by the health agencies are impossibly high? No doubt, to the men who are expert | in y such matters, this report is crystal clear, and its meanings are obvious. “ But vital to raising the standards that need to be raised is general public support of the program—and that will be hard to obtain without complete public understanding of it.

THE LITTLE MEN WHO WEREN'T THERE

N Kiska our soldiers are saying, “this is a hell of an invasion.” Their disappointment at not having to fight . is understandable, but their folks back home are thankful that the bloody battle of Attu, which forced the later Jap withdrawal from neighboring Kiska, did not have to be repeated at heavy loss of American lives.. '* Here at home a good deal is being made of the fact that the enemy ran without putting up a fight, the first time he has left a.major base in that way. If the inference is that the Jap has suddenly turned soft, it is deceptive. He held on a long time at Kiska against impossible odds, after his last-ditch stand at Attu had failed to prevent our cutting off ‘all his supply lines and communications. And when he pulled out of a base which our victory had made untenable’ he had enough skill and daring to give us the slip. : : This experience should make us more, rather than less, wary. Hitherto we have learned his cunning, but we have supposed that the w ess of his strength was a face-saving complex which revented him from retreating —that in the end he would sacrifice military strategy to a religious fanaticism of fighting hopeless battles which finally would destroy him. : * 8 = s = = \ NOW we should learn this was a myth—like the one that i he couldn't fly, that he couldn’t stand up against a ‘modern army and navy, that he was only an imitator who couldn’t show. initiative in war, and all the rest of the wishful thinking * ‘which cléver Jap’ propaganda planted in our minds to produce our Pearl Harbor overconfidence. Escape of the Kiska garrison is much more significant

of Jap military ability than if it-had remained to die in a |.

‘death trap without serving any purpose except a suicide mania; - Certainly there: will be plenty of Jap mass suicide : actions in the future as in the past, but: they probably will be for a’ ‘military purpose and not to satisfy a feudal oriental ritual: The point is that Japan is out to win this war at any sacrifice—even the. occasional sacrifice of face, the highest prise of all. pe

ered by carrier, 18 cents

| but one,

Fair Evoug

By Westbrook Pegler Ri

as Il swamp, allotted certain plots built houses and created a It was to be an early morning and sounded unappetizing but be a chance to see II Bum doing his paternal mood and he felt sorry for having a hard time rounding up talen

Duce, of town

land geta Ge

to have someone to sneer with. , We tied loose before dawn and arrived around, say, 9, and found there, among the foreign journalists, Sonia Tomara, a Russian with an almost unbelievable history of adventure in the Bolshevik revolution, who

tell of the time he scooped the town on a love-slayer’s diary or a kidnaper’s arrest and you would never know she had missed a meal or slept in a culvert in all her life.

Bozio Flunks Assignment

BOZIO HAD FLUNKED his assignment in quality for ‘we were all journeymen and not an editor or magnate in the crowd; but on numbers he had made a better-than-passing grade, so all was reasonably merry. First they took us to a sort of community center, still smelling of fresh plaster, with a Fourth of July platform out front, draped with the colors and symbols of fascism and tributes to II Bum, for a very solemn (and, by God, it was solemn and sadder than anyone could find words to say) demonstration of the degradation of people and the exaltation of the state. They were collecting gold wedding rings from wives and even puckered old widows in poor black dresses and big muddy shoes, and all sorts of poor little gold and gilt trinkets which these people had treasured, to be boiled down for gold to back up the lire which then was worth, I believe, about four cents in the black market and ‘about six cents in the regular exchange. There was a huge hamper on the platform and when the parade started up the steps, across the scaffold, past I1 Duce and down the steps on the other side, they came up with old world war helmets heaped with this pathetic trash which they handed to Mussolini, who took the offerings in his dainty, black-gloved hands and handed them to a flunky who dumped: them into the hamper.

| Get Iron Rings, Cash

SOME - OF the collections were brought up by little girls, others by little Ballill, the innocent baby blackshirts, others by very old women or hobbling cripples of the Isonzo. Several old, old women came up and personally, with their knobby fingers, placed in the Duce’s gloved palm gold medals for which their sons or husbands had died and he blinked and his soft eyes got wet as he said a few words. Each woman received an iron ring in exchange for her wedding ring, inscribed with some patriotic motto. All this was a fraud, of course, because the gold in the whole catch wasn’t enough to pay for the gas which brought our party down from Rome, and buy the lunch. Then a blackshirt brought out big stacks of new paper money and, following some band music, II Bum began awarding cash prizes to certain residents of the new community for raising the most potatoes, the most eggs, the most babies and pigs. As each winner's: name was read off that one would mount the platform to receive several hundred lire from Il Bum, himself, and throw him the Fascist salute, which he returned with g snap of the heels of his expensive black leather boots. .

People Were Loving It

SAY WHAT you will about the unwillingness of the Italians to live under fascism but I will say that these people were loving it. Some of them were hysterical in their cheers for the posturing little punk on the platform and I tell you there were kids of 16 or so in the local militia detail who put their hats on their bayonets, waved them on high, and shrieked “Duce! Duce! Duce!” with tears running down. All told, this development wasn’t a patch on Miami beach or any one of a hundred lesser projects of private enterprise in this country and yet, so great it was in the Fascist scale of achievement -that its dedication ‘was a boisterous national event. Sonia said a rusty, flat-heeled English number had fascism real bad and when, to cap the show for us, we were given a private glimpse of the great man in

reporter took off her own wedding ring and with drooping head, handed it over to the bum of bums.

We the People By Ruth Millett

A LITTLE CHILD'S cry of “daddy!” when Winston Churchill passed him, because the prime

kid's dad was in uniform, was funny enough to make a good newspaper story :

about the thousands of youngsters who won't know their fathers when the war is over—children too: young -to remember their fathers through months or years of separation, chil-

-dren born after their:fathers are out of the country,

children to whom “daddy” isn’t a person—just some

Children forgetting,

their fathers. Children who

n | koow again and learn to love athers who shc | Dave beetia part of thelr daily fives sivas, Withou :

had promised to go, himself, and would admire for |

the new office of the local boss blackshirt, the English

minister was in uniform and the.

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

“DEFENSE WORKERS HUMAN JUST AS YOU ARE” By L. E. Scott, Mooresville. Mr. L. G. Marshall, when I read

your few paragraphs in the Hoosier. Forum Saturday evening, I just

grinned to myself and said, ‘“There’s a man who hasn’t the slightest idea of what the score is,” and proceeded to forget it. But I have just spent two hours or more trying to sleep in spite of a million or two unnecessary noises and it brought your words back to me. So, Ill try to answer your question, the one you asked, “Who DO the Defense Workers Think They Are?” First, we are human beings just | « as you are, who work nights, not by choice. We do not complain about noises made by birds, cats, and dogs as you insist, but about unnecessary noises which we believe could be abolished or at least abated. Most of us have gardens which must be tended after we get home, and this cannot be done in taverns. The lawn must be mowed, the car washed and polished and other : small ‘ jobs usually keep us up.and about till noon, then with the thermometer registering between 85 and 90 degrees, we must try to sleép till time to go to work again, So, you see we are nothing out of the ordinary. - Now Mr. Marshall, I don’t know who you are, or what you. do,:but I'll try to draw you a word picture of my: impression of you, judged entirely by your column, You are a man who goes to bed at night (which is as nature intended it should be). and at the first yowl of a cat in the alley, or a dog barking across the street, you grab a shotgun and rush madly to the window and let fly, you rave if a fire truck or ambulance passes your house with siren screaming, and cuss at the milkman if he rattles the milk bottles in the early hours of the morning. / Upon rising, you grab a bite of breakfast, run out, jump in your car, the windshield of which is emblazoned with A, B and C rationing

standard of living,

(Times readers are invited to express their views in ‘these columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, let‘ters must be limited to 250 words. Letters must be signed.)

stickers, rush downtown with your foot in the carburetor and one hand holding the horn button down. You go upstairs to an office where you sit with your feet on a desk all day, the desk being littered with such slogans as “Quiet Please!” “Silence Is Golden,” etc. And then you ask, “Who Do the Defense Workers Think They Are?”

. ng 2 = = “BETTER A WAR EVERY 20 YEARS THAN SLAVERY”

{By James RB. Meitsler, Attica.

Those who would have the people of the United States play Santa Claus to the world as a means of preventing war claim the cause of war is solely economic. Like Pfc. E. R. Furber who says, “No nation will live at the point of starvation with a rich nation next door.” Italy attacked Ethiopia and Albania, yet of the three, Italy was the wealthiest, with the higher Japan invaded China, seized Manchuria, yet Japan was ‘rich in comparison with the Chinese. Germany, instead of making war on rich Holland, Belgium, France or England, first assaulted Austria, Ozechoslovakia and Poland—poor countries. India, with more poor than any other country, uses words instead of war, fasts| instead of fighting.

raw materials or manufactured products of any country. The huge supplies they piled up before making war proves they could buy anything

They did not want to buy. They wanted to take, to rob, to force nations to become their slaves. Those

who would have Americans buy

Side Glances~By Galbraith

And yet there is nothing funny |

peace by appeasing everyone, by paying tribute through a glorified world WPA are advocating not peace, not the four freedoms, but slavery for our country. Better war every 20 years than perpetual

slavery. » » s

“A WEEKLY TRANSIT PASS WOULD SPEED TRAFFIC” By C. J. Lenahan; 221 Parkview ave. So far as I can learn, Indianapolis Railway is operating on’ the streets of Indianapolis without a franchise. It should be of interest

to know that Akron, O., and its| suburb, Cuyahoga Falls, have a

weekly pass of $1. Cleveland, O., and most of its

major suburbs, has a $1.25 weekly |

pass; started by the Cleveland Railway and continued now by City Transit. Cars are two-man operated with one-man trailers on all lines, morning and evening rush hours and Saturday noon. This system handles more than 500,000 passengers daily. Dallas, Tex.—more: than 400,000 po ys 5 cents cash and a 2-cent transfer. Detroit, city owned—but a taxpayer—has two-man operated cars. The fare is 6 cents cash, a penny transfer and a free: transfer on any continuing or cross-town line. Milwaukee, over 800,000 population has a $1 weekly pass and a 2cent shoppers’ pass, good between 9 a. m. and 4 p. m. week days. Capital Transit, Washington, D. C., has a $1.25 weekly pass. A weekly pass locally would speed up traffic and reduce the overhead cost in office work.

» ” s “18 PERSONAL LIBERTY RIGHT TO BE BULL-HEADED?” By An American, Indianapolis. Some seem anxious to change our form of government to get better living conditions. This would do but

very little good, unless we improve |

our moral fiber. When a good form of govern - ment ,as I believe ours is, must be

A small man in stature, Mr, Bloch has some very big ideas about the benefits to democracy which can be derived by small businesses. In fact he and his father operated a bakery themselves .for years in Indiana. That was why after he passed civil service tests for an OPA: managerial position he was assigned to the bread section. He has been in there pitching for the little fellows for the last 22 months. . Now he thinks that with all the worthwhileness of his efforts here, he much rather would be with OPA in Indiaha.

Wartime Washington No Bargain he FOR WASHINGTON in wartime is no bargain, And living in a rooming house in the hottest summer in Washington history makes Ed long for his nice home in Mishawaka and his three children, But we is war and Mrs. Bloch is a registered nurse and ¥

{on cases. The baby of the family, Beverly Ann, i

1s a student at St. Mary’s Notre Dame and the twp boys, ‘Jay, 15, and Bob, 16, are attending Mogan, Park ‘Military academy in Chicago. With his family scattered and himself confined to working here, Mr. Bloch doesn’t feel that the a’ ge housewife suffered too greatly under the OPA nr slicing order. The order, originating in the agricul ture department and backed at first by He big baker~ ies, has been rescinded. It became one of the principal points of anti-ad ministration propaganda fostered by Rep. Forest A, Harness. (R. Ind.) in house speeches before sliced bread was restored. ; |

Not Hopeful for ‘Little Fellows’ AFTER HIS comparatively long OPA service hers,

‘Mr, Bloch feels that the wartime economic restrictions

may eventually wipe out the small retail bakeries and

other similar concerns, despite his efforts.

“There is a phrase one hears'when discussing little business and how it will be affected under various OPA rules and regulations,” he points out. “It ‘is one I do not like. ‘That is that these small operators are ‘not economically significant.’ That’ hurts me as much as a personal insult. For all one can do is to compare the alternatives. They are: “One, big business monopoly, and Two, complete socialization. “I do not care for either one. Both will wipe out the middle class and end democracy and freedom in America. : _. “All we home-front fighters can do is to hold the line against these: threats as much as possible un the soldiers come back home. Then they will dec what hey want and that will be what we will get,”

Whither Badoglio.

By Helen Kirkpatrick

\

23—Will .the Badoglio gover ment sue for peace in the co ‘weeks or will stronger measures —an increased scale of bombing or invasion—be required before Italy is drawn out of the war? This question is uppermost in everyone's mind here and some clues are offered as to the answer by a review of the Italian press angd radio during the 27 days since Mussolini's fall 4 First, it must be stated that while the Italians have undoubtedly put out feelers toward the allies none have been sufficient to give any indication that the Badoglio government intends: definitely to seek an armistice. . From study of all material available ‘here from Italy there were at least two currents of ‘thought in the country. The first was the reaction of the ofs ficials and the army to German demands upon Muse solini before his resignation. The second was the popular reaction which was interested only in etting out of the war.

People Expected Peace | - to

CLEARLY THE Italian people Interpreted the ‘Badoglio accession to power in the same way ‘as did some allied commentators—that it would mean the end of the war. : There is little doubt that if Badoglio’s govern ment, had been able to follow the people's desire ® would have asked ‘instantly for an armistice. But behind all the events on the Italian scene are” the Germans who must be considered responsible for Mussolini's fall and for the present continued varie attitude of the Italian government. On: Aug. 3 and 4, the Rome radio and press fold Hie Tiallans that there Wels Seven. provisions. 1oy; allied peace terms: hi Immediate cessation of all fighting in sicily Italy; immediate end of all assistance to os withdrawal of all Italians from Yugoslavia, Greece and France; material and supplies of a forces to be placed at the disposal of the. allies; recog. nition. of Anglo-American military government Italy until the end of hostilities; arrest of | mins. and vat. she cease ot a8 aos pgm ers (none of whom should be sent to Germany). “There were signs of stiffening Ttallan around Aug. 5. Then air raids began again in with heavy destruction in Milan, Turin and Naj and the second bombing of Rome. The people reaction was bad -and showed: clearly : spite ‘tightened up censorship. = = nT

Cleavage Develops

APPARENTIL UNABLE to give thie Italian peace—the one thing they wanted—the Bad government hastened the shalltion of all a