Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 October 1944 — Page 14

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CAMPAIGN OF 1944—=VIll AT HOME AND ABROAD (OF all the muddy arguments in this campaign, wé think

the phoniest is the line that although Mr. Roosevelt's

administration is inept, confused and bankrupt on the home front, nevertheless the President is touched by some kind of magic in the conduct of foreign affairs. An Ay Is Mr. Roosevelt a eifferent man when he deals with foreign governments? Is he any more adept in formulating and executing a foreign policy than in devising and carrying out domestic policy? If go, why, and how? He's the same fellow, whether butting into the business of the secretary of state or meddling with what should be in the domain of the secretary of labor. rs After all, doesn’t that line of “reasoning” stem from wish thinking? They really don’t ktiow what Mr. Roose-

velt is doing in the foreign field. They don't know what | ¥hich

+ commitments he made at Casablanca, Cairo, Tehran and : Quebec. They merely hope for the best and assume that ‘he's in control of the situation. # ~ . SO WE'RE glad that Governor Dewey has taken hold of that shaggy myth and nailed it to the barn door—as he .- did Monday night in St. Louis: “Let me ask you: Can an administration which is so disunited 4rd unsuccessful at home be any better abroad? Can an administration which is filled with quarreling and

back-biting where wé can sée it be any better abroad where

we cannot see it? Well, the answer to that séeps through even the thick wall of censorship.” Cis And he went on to relate how the cat-and-dog fight between Vice President Wallace and Commerce Secretary Jones was reflected by competing foreign agents of our

government mixing into the interdepartmental rows of the |

Brazilian government. eh How New Deal Senator Russell of Georgia, after an overseas inspection, reported: “Our civil agencies abroad are numerous, but too often they are working at cross | purposes, or, worsé to relate, in some cases have no ap- | parent purpose.” ofl : : . And how, all over the world, in addition to the state department, our government is represented by stitch agencjes as: “The FEA, RFC, WFA, OCIAA, OSS, OWI, WSA, WRB, OAPC, OC, OWM, PWRSB, OFAR, FRC, and the ACPSAHMWA.” ’

F 4 » ” MR. DEWEY has done well in pointing out that other |B

ples see our government through the same kind of alpha‘betical hazé that fogs up the domestic scene. It’s true that to handle a foreign policy, as well as home policy “Mr. Roosevelt gives two men the same powers and then turns them loose to fight about it.” it’s true over there as well as over here, that his is a ¢ivilian administration of “little men rattling around in big jobs.” : : In his sprawling bureaus abroad, as at home, he has “the most spectacular collection of incompetent people who ever held public office.” < Mr. Dewey's St. Louis speech is one of the best he has fade. o » » »

ANOTHER THING he talked about was—

The “Hershey incident”’—the rash statemént of the |

selective service director that it would be about as chéap to keep people in the army after peace comes as, to “create an agency for them when they are out”’—beco teresting.

Hershey's views, and the general himself publicly ate crow,

explaining that he is a Republican and anyway wis ex-|

pressing only his personal views—though why the director of selective service should select a press conferénce for an exposition of his purely private views is not apparent. In any event, Governor ‘Dewey revealed that the Hershey boner was practically copied from a report of a presidential committee headed by the President's own uncle, Frederick A. Delano. So, it appears, Gen. Hershey was not quite the bull-in-the-China-shop he had been made to appear. » » 2 = OF COURSE it can be pointed out that Mr, Roosevelt does not automatically become the sponser of every recom~mendation made to him by every committee he appoints. It may be that the President is completely out of sympathy ~~ with the callous proposal that veterans be kept in bar- \- racks because this would cost less. But there is something about this pat, glib proposition that is characteristic of .the New Deal as we have come in latter years to know it— the papa-knows-best stuff, the increasingly authoritarion . tone of the administration, the drift away from the Presi“dent's original preoccupation with human values. This is + Just the sort of thing toward which the tendencies of the

New Deal arrogantly paternalistic planners have been pointing for a long time.

TOO LATE 5 AN X-ray unit that will take pictures through a piece . of steel a foot thick has just been developed. If it had _ come along just a little earlier it might have beqn quite a help to the newspaper photographers in giving the public

4 squint at what was being done at those Dumbarton Oaks conferences.

‘MR. ROOSEVELT SAID— “J ACCUSE the present administration of being the great-

‘ history. It is an administration that has piled bureati on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to Anti-

est spending administration in’ peace ‘times. in all our th

cipate the dire needs and, the reduced earning power of the

‘people. Bureaus and crats, commissions and com- | d at the expense of the tax-

was aceusing the Hoover administration, in 1932. :

missioners have been r

“But if he's changed, 1 haven't bei His letters sound the same.” La Nev we think thé liéutenant knew what

hé was talking about. He ought to. War Is Life in the Rew

the lieutenants whining,

em agains the Bits. realities of wer ig - périminent to Section of

them. A A palé re : chr os without

Ciks soon 18, at best, life; war s ih thé raw. You doing some serious 1 in the moments when you cah think at all. In & foxhole, you get down to fundamentals fast. Those soldiers may be boys at hoe, but they are men in battle, i 4 And these youths, the college bdys of yesterday, are the leaders of tomorrow. If théy have. changed, as the lieutenant says, that change will Jeave its mark, A significant index of the cufrents in taste and

litions, Et fo i reed J eho es of their a8 & gift from the univérsity. The titles ranged from Shakespeare to detective stories. Men Overseas Prefer Shakéspearé THE FIVE books most frequéritly téquestéd by thé nearly 1000 men who have replied are “Fourteen Great Detectives Stories,” Hemingway's “Farewell to Arms”; Dostoyevsky's “Crime and Punishment”; Shakespeare and “Great Modern Short Stories” Men in this country and abroad agreed oh tHesé five choices. But whereas the men in domestic camps ranked the detective stories at the top, tliose ovefseas put Shakespeare first, . And that, we think, 1s & symptom 6f what our lieutenant had in mind. The closer mén get to battle, the greater becomes their dppieciation of the uniYofbal, hiv ayJ rend Setseifve storiés—who doesti’t — % A they er Shak le This trend is increasingly outer the — books, - The men in this country preferféd fiction dha mystery—Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”; Tolstoy's “War and Petce”; and “Anna Kirenina”; the collected short stores of Ring Lardnér, atid Wilkie Collins’ “The Moonstone.” But the oversens tastes turned toward philosophy, religion and verse-~"Anthology of Amerii Jorte's Dickens. “Pickwick Papers”; William ames’ “Va of Religious Experience,” “War Peace” and “The Philosophy of Plato” =

Something a Man Can Tie To

TWO BOOKS, grouped together in the alphabefical list, show the Aifference decidively. John Buchah's thriller, “Thirty-Nihé Steps,” wh$ picked by almost twice as many men in the United States as Bunyan'’s “Pilgrim's Progress.” But the men overseas asked fo

Bunyan almost. three times as oftér as they did for uchan. .

There you have a groping for something substafi: tial, something that will explain things, something that a man ohn tie to. The men whole desires dre

reflected in that list are thinking, and thinking hatd:

That's what the lieutenant meant, we beliéve. lads who have crossed the séas fo fight have beéh thinking. And whén you think, you grow up, and you see things more clearly, You put first things first, and you bégih to appreciate that some things are real and final, some mérely superficial, A change like that can mean & lot to this nation.

WORLD AFFAIRS— Twin Treaties By William Philip Simms

_ WABHINGTON, Oct. 18.—Eon-~ gress may either (1) delay final action on the usé-of-force featur of the Diimbarton Oaks proposal to preserve peace or. (2) limit the authority of the U, 8 represéntative on the security council to eeftain designated regions outside

1 Wisely, it is held, the two pivotal treaties—the final peace WR treaty dealing with cufrerit terris by © torial and elated problems, and the other with the post-wht Security orgafifsation— are to be dealt with separatély. 4 Yet in the long run the two aré as inseparable as Siamese twins. Unless the peace is reasonably just, it cannot endure. ‘Theréfore, until the United Statés knows what kind of peace it is pledging itself to maintain—&nd fight for if necessary—it will likely withhold its signature or writé in reservations. There is a small but loud minority which insists that congress announce its adherence forthwith. The argument is that the United States 1s-holding up the procession—that Russia’s and Britain's hands are tied by America’s indecision,

Factor Works Both Ways

BUT THIS “indecision” fictor works both ways, | America’s hands are also tied by the uncertainty of |

blindly ahead with promisés so ill- { informed ptiblic opinion later would refuse. to back them up. The national tretfige Would fare potter wé firmly refused to sign a prom note in blax than if we signed it with great flourish biit detanited on it when we discovered what wé had let ourselves in for, There is, however, an alternative. The proposed charter paves the way for regional understandings and responsibilities within the framework of the larger organiagtion. An excellent example is the organization of the 21 American republics now 1 successfully in the field of hemisphere defense, the peace settlement is too long delayed; cong might empower the American representative on the security counci] to act only in problems in the western hemisphere or the South Pacific. '

Might Be Helpful to Peace QUICK ACTION along these lines might, in

¥ ® x ad The Hoosier Forum : 1 wholly disagrée with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

“THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER FRANKLIN D.” By A Union Man, Indianapolis I wonder if this paper would print my views. I read this Voice of the People all the time and enjoy it,

publicans make statements that Roosevelt is. indispensable to Mrs. Perkins, and then inthe next breath sy Dewey is for labor. Then they cry Communist because Jaboring people Have thitigs now they never Had befOré. ‘1 really believe if the F.B. IL investigate the Re-

publican . fund, "they would find a| .

lot of the members of the old German Burid dénating, It looks to me like they are still trying to split America, Bgland and Russia. I Hope for thé wotking peoples’ good that Mr. &nd Mrs. Roosevelt stay Bécause there will never bé another Franklin D. for the working mah. ey “y AM GOING TO CHANGE OVER” By John RB. McNeal, Indianapolis. I have been reading the Hoosier Forum for the past six years. I must say your paper is very liberal to print all of the letters it does. Some of the opinions expressed havé been very définitély ih favor of Mr. Roosevelt; others have been jtist as definitely agfinst him. As long as you are desirous of opinions of your readers I would like to give you fine. I was born and raised & Demoerat; consequently, I cah appréciate the views of many of Mr. R ’s admirers. I believe many jective and liberal imptoveineénts for the welfare of the massés have been developed during his administration, especially during the first eight years of it. I think that during that period he was in His prifiié, with plenty of physical strength and a desiré to accomplish what he had set out to do. Then came the election of 1940, Béaring in mind I have the greatest respect for Mr. Roosevelt, I frankly do not feel that any man has the physical makeup to assume the tremendous responsibilities which go with the high office of

bit it suré gets me when these Re-|-

(Times readers are invited to express théir. views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters should be ‘limited to 250 words. Letters must be signed. Opinions set forth here are those of the writers, and publication in no way implies agreement with those opinions by The Times. The Times assumes no responsibility for the return of manuscripts and cannot énter core rrespondence regarding them.)

President and stand up tihder them

SsFEESFpaa

i i

for more than eight years. 1 do riot |0%8

believe anyone who is not entirely blind to national and international events can truthfully say that Mr. Roosevelt has been as keh and alert in the past four years as he was in

the first eight of his administration. | ®

Recent reports from thé war front indicate that wé can expect at léast two more years of fighting before the Japs are beatén. n_ there will be more years before wé have an international peace that will stand the test of time. Now, ih addition to that we hdvé buf owh house to get in order, reconversion of our war time activity into peace time activity, relocation of ns of otr people who aré at home as well as added millions Who are in the service of our country. 1 think we are being very near sighted and cruel to impose these

slew in his life” May'I apply this quota tion to Mr. Willkie? A féw millio people listeried to him and accepted his ideals while he lived, but now many more millions, whose eyes have been closed and Whose

feeling guilty, of party disloyalty, His death,.coming just a gnonth be-

tremendous: duties ‘on a man whois. ;

recently suffered an illness which compelled him to take a necessary rest under doctors’ orders, - Naturally, he will carry on to the last diteh if we insist that he do $0, Should we crucify him at an early date to satisfy our personal desires. - His counsel and advice will be of great value for many more years if he is allowed to retire as he wanted to do. 5 Undoubtedly, it was a great disappointment to him when certain

political bosses would not permit

Side Glances—By Galbraith

rter, “That web a thriller you just told, but give ma i» xhancs Roweyou in Sonne eg can't out-lie your grandpa’

Ren

and principles will hover over that peace table and pierce the thinking of the delegates as no physical personage could ever do. Yes, I think I'm right in saying he accomplished more in death than he could have by life, » »

= “YOU SHOULD HAVE NO TROUBLE DECIDING”

| By Poor Richard, Indianapolis;

. Sometime ago, in a letter to the

determination on the right presidential candidate to vote in the coming eléctioh. Throughout his

President. So to these young voters exercising the privilege for the first titre, I would like to recommend & little course of study whieh can be doné in oné evening of earnest reading. Go to the library atid sbleet 4 good encyclopedia, preferably a rea At mad on “Democracy.”

1|articles on “Republican Party” and

mirid

your no trouble in making up your on whom to vote fof, that you are a frue belle

DAILY THOUGHTS —

up int

g | su an te a

hn read he] field of

paign re-election

to come out for the Republicans are Tn Ahoutis “com ng . . re frightened about, it, and complaining among themWhy ’t that man quit making a show of him« a ar witch am, si HE Fox

g siete uF. Ee ®

IN WASHINGTON— World Pattern: By Peter Edson

forum, a young man who had po- of "the litically come of age, expressed in-| ;

school years hé Had only how ofié] 8

nomic co. \ sider all pir muha now at wo one Ar regulation. Since tHe 3taft of the War this have been the united nations iferénce on ;