Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 December 1944 — Page 12

The. Indianapolis Times

2 PAGE 12 Monday, December 11, 1944

OY W. HOWARD

WALTER LECKRONEB MARK FERRER Editor Business Manager

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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FOR LABOR PEACE HE labor situation in this country has drifted to the danger point. Strikes are increasing. Labor disputes are piling up faster than they can be settled. Workers are resentful. Employers are angry. Government policies are d confused. The public is puzzled and alarmed. All this 1 threatens our war effort at a critical time. Moreover . . . as the war draws toward an end . . . We shall have to face . g labor problems which will make our present labor: disputes

- seem simple by comparison.” That is $rom William M. Leiserson, one of this country’s foremost labor authorities, who has served the Roosevelt administration as chairman of the National (Railway) Mediation Board and as a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Mr. Leiserson, as a private citizen, now urges the President to call an immediate conference of labor, busi‘ness and public representatives to- formulate a co-opera-tive national labor policy for the rest of the war and the post-war period. Three years after Pearl Harbor, he writes in the current American magazine, we still have no definite policy toward labor during the war, or plan for labor after the war. “Haphazard and unprepared” attempts to.meet labor crises, he continues, and “confusions and complications which it would take a book to describe,” are producing a situation so explosive that it could “bring bitterness and division among us and economic loss to every. individual American.” » . » . » . Mr. Leiserson's article is a scathing indictment of the administration’s mismanagement of wartime labor affairs ~—of the improvised expedients that have made bad matters | worse, of the board after board created and left to flounder into failure without coherent policies to guide the members, of unfairnesses, inconsistencies and delays, of a “system which is impossible.” All that is history, and no writer has told it better. But Mr. Leiserson’s purpose in telling it is wholly eonstructive. He wants the drift to danger stopped. He wants real representatives of labor and management — who “should not be hand-picked by the government’’—brought together “to work hard and long, to negotiate patiently, to plan wisely and to compromise wherever possible in the public interest.” He believes that mutual agreement can be reached on peaceful methods of resolving differences between workers and employers, and, above all, that clear-cut policies can be developed, for the war and the post-war emergency period, on those issues which most frequently cause strikes, among. them wages and the union shop. He believes that such a conference as he urges Mr. Roosevelt to call “can perform: a historic service for our country”; that every issue settled would avoid a thousand disputes later; that the great power of public opinion and _ of the general welfare can be invoked to make the effort successful and to prevent a tragic internal conflict after

~the war. We hope Mr. Leiserson’s wise words will be heeded.

MEETING YOUR MATCH

ELL, you'd better go to the kitchen and learn how to strike ‘em on the sole of your shoe or the seat of your pants. A new social custom—or a revived one—depending on how old you are, and whether you wear pants, That’s the meaning of the war production board announcement that 100 per cent of the small strike-on-the-box matches, the kind you can carry in your pocket with only a slight bulge, will be requisitioned for war, and also 35 per cent of the paper book type, the ultra in convenience. So, : if everybody insists on those more modern styles, the ©, cigaret shortage may seem pale by comparison with the match shortage. | But if you will compromise on kitchen-type matches there will be plenty, unless everybody suddenly . gets panicky and starts hoarding. Then there'll be trouble even |} in that direction. i Should such happen, you'll have to get out your flint & or go to rubbing sticks together, as the Boy Scouts are A taught to do. . After all, worse hardships are going on in this world than having to use kitchen matches on the home front. . . . . » . IN FACT, this now plebeian instrument was the “last word” not so many years ago. Some will remember the sulphur match—and how it stunk. Grandmother remem- ¥ bers before that. Part of each day in her girlhood was E devoted to making spills (paper tapers) so papa could light ; his pipe from the stove or the fireplace. ig Or, if you want to delve further into what you may | © have to resort to before you become nonchalant with that cigaret, if you can get a cigaret, bear in mind that according to Greek legend there wasn't any fire on this planet until Prometheus touched a torch to the sun's chariot and proceeded earthward. . : There are a lot of ways by which you can keep the flame burning and the tobacco (if any) smoking, even if the kitchen match should eventually flicker out. So be of good cheer.

Way

SERVE EM RIGHT

~ that one reason for the cigaret shortage complained of by American soldiers in Europe is that smokes are being distributed liberally to ‘German prisoners, ~~ Well, maybe Ne shouldn’t favor cruel and unusual punishment, even for captured Nazis. But we_just hope there’ any truth in the Sunday Pictorial's story—that |

Mail rates in Indiana, |’

‘HE Sunday Pictorial, a London newspaper, suggests |

| REFLECTIONS — Collectors’ Item By Harry Hansen

EVERY TIME a bomb falls some things become rarer. Cathedrals, pewter mugs, pictures, books, cane-bottemed chairs— ruined because human beings cannot get along with one anpther on this ferlile earth. So the objects left over become rarities and command higher prices on the collector's market. People with money, hobbies and the desire to collect pewter mugs, pictures, chairs, possibly even a monastery in Spain, begin bidding for them. I have mixed feelings about collecting. I enjoy books—association coples—but have never collected them systematically. When I open “Lock, Stock and Barrel,” a book about collecting by Douglas and Elizabeth Rigby (Lippin-

jects that I cleaned out years ago. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry; one hates to throw away something of value, but the sentimental, rather than the monetary, side interests me. Once I discarded a lot of inherited furniture and kitchen utensils, including walnut settees, a coffe mill, wooden-handled knives and forks that had never been used. Now they are collectors’ items. Long before somebody cleared the attic in the house where I was born. I recall that it contained a carpet bag, a folding carpet chair, skates such as you see in old prints, powder horns and a handsome gun. Everything is gone but the gun. It stands around my house waiting for—I don't know what. Its usefulness passed when bullets were no longer cast by hand.

A Suggestion for Christmas

EVERY TIME the Nazis fire a library certain books get rarer. If you want to impress a bookish friend, give him a rare book for Christmas instead of crowding and shoving in the bookstore aisles for the best-seller everybody will have. Norman L. Dodge, editor of The Month at Goodspeed's, the Boston book house, suggests a first edition of “A Christmas Carol,” Inscribed by Dickens, only $1500, This was the Jerome Kern copy. He collected it when he had the fever and sold it when he cooled, Or, if you want something really rare, Mr. Dodge has a first edition of “The Imitation of Christ,” of 1473, for only $4500. Does collecting pay? Well, it pays Mr. Dodge if he sells it, and it pays the buyer if he gets $4500 worth of satisfaction out of this copy. According to the authors of “Lock, Stock and Barrel,” men have been collecting objects for centuries. The Greeks and Romans collected. Men have had personal museums and galleries, A. T. Stewarts gallery on Fifth avenue in New York must have looked like the lobby of the old Waldorf-Astoria across the street. The Folgers enjoyed collecting so much that they had their ashes buried in the wall of their great Shakespearean library in Washington. Franklin D. Roosevelt is such a major collector of stamps that he is chiefly responsible for a new U. 8. stamp every few hours. Henry Ford, turning to our domestic economy, bought the first washing machine, and some day, say these authors, it may bé the finest object in his Dearborn museum, And there was I throwing out the old coffee mill!

Does Collecting Pay?

DOES COLLECTING pay? The Rigbys say some people collect to get “physical security.” But in times of depression rare books are mo more secure than diamonds—if nobody wants to buy them, The late depression deflated rare books and pictures as well as stocks. Yet Dr. Albert.C. Barnes spent $1,000,000 a year on French paintings, say the authors, But if you can't afford that, you can collect the notes the milkman finds in milk bottles. Only those bitten by the. collecting bug will really appreciate the hard work that has gone into “Lock, Stock and Barrel,” but for them the book will be adventure, biography, mystery and the finest kind of escape reading. , Another valuable book for collectors is Primer of American Antiques, by Carl W. Dreppard. (Double day, Doran, $3.) Better look into it collectors.

WORLD AFFAIRS— | Mounting Tension By William Philip Simms

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11.—Despite Prime Minister Churchill's 2719-10-30 vote of confidence in commons upholding his policy in Greece and elsewhere, anxiety over the European situation continued to mount in united nations circles here. “In the opinion of one of the most experienced diplomats in Washington, the Big Three—Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill—now face a showdown: They must meet and reach a political understanding covering Europe, or most of that continent may soon be swept by revolution. '

Working Agreement Is Needed

THE REAL DANGER arises from the wide difference in’ ideological outlook, method and approach between the British and Americans on the one hand and the Russians on the other. They do not need to clash, but clash they will unless they get together and develop a working arrangement. This the Big Three so far have totally failed to do. At Tehran, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on certain overall plans, But most of these were military. The political side was left extremely vague. Agreement in that fleld they know would be difficult so. they preferred to cross the bridge when the came to it. Today they are getting: close. es Tehran, however, left Russia with a pretty free hand in Eastern- and Southeastern Europe. ‘She could change the Polish and certain other frontiers as she liked, The Balkans—save for Greece, which would come under British influence—seem to have been left within the Soviet sphere while Italy and Western Europe were directed towards Britain, But Russian influence is not troubling to stop at any particular frontier. Tt is spreading all over the continent. The Communists of Greece, Yugoslavia, Belgium, France and elsewhere still take their cue from Moscow. Everywhere on the heels of Eisenhower's advancing armies the Reds are taking advantage of the confusion to force their way into power. ‘

Might Easily Spell Defeat for Allies TO TAKE the hideoff the British because they

|. refuse to permit revolutoin in Greece, or, to criticize:

Eisenhower for taking steps to stop civil war astride his supply lines in Belgium, said the diplomat, is beside the point. If they should allow the situation to get out of hand, however, it might easily spell defeat for the allied armies. While “we deplore these events,” Foreign Minister Eden told commons yesterday, and while British policy the ‘Greek people to express their wish “we must and not by this policy was sald, stood committed

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~The Hoosier Forum

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

‘wouldn't let us down then.”

“THEY SHOULD OPEN THEIR EYES” By Sarge, Baitle Creek, Mich. In your very slanderous letter to the Forum of Dec. 5, Mr. C. 1. O. Member, you were pleading to the American peopfé to wake up. I wholeheartedly agree with you, they should be woke up. Yes they should open their eyes to you and the people like you. It is not the fault of our President nor the administration thal the fellows over there are rationing their bullets. It is the fault of the people right here on our home front. People that go on strike when we are about to attack.” ' I have been overseas and if you want to have a mess on your hands just try mentioning the unions or strikers. More than one bomber crew have said, “We would love to take a few of those people back there on one raid, maybe they I am sure the fellows in the infantry would-like to take some of the same people wtih them when they invade an island. I sincerely believe that if you would visit an army general hospital and take a poll of what the overseas veterans think of the unions, you would leave said hos pital with a very red face. We of the army look down and, very far down on you of the unions. Someone mentioned a recent Forum article that unfSns were fighting a battle for the vets, by demanding higher wages dnd various concessions from the employers. Why don’t you let us take care of that when we come home? Until then, perhaps it would be better if you went to work/and gave those fellows out there the supplies they

You did say that the blame lies on President. I agree partly. I think congress should pass a law providinp severe punishment to anyone that strikes. They have not passed this law. Instead they * have given you much benefit of the doubt and let the strikers go scot-free., The real criminals of this war include the union leaders of our own country. You can expect the enemy to break the rules but a fellow gets pretty discouraged when the people of his own country begin to cut his throat for their own personal benefit,

I'll agree with you further, Mr. C. IL. O. member, They should place | someone like Gen, Ike in full

(Times readers are invited to express their 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 responsi bility for the return of manuscripts and cannot enter correspondence regarding them.)

him take charge with an iron hand.

Then when a plant decided to strike!

it would be a idea to use some | of the fellows from overseas .to break it up.

The general sent some of our soldiers home to speak for those left behind. Their mission is to wake up the American people .and get them to work harder; he didn't send them home to see oy Presi: dent. I am sure these fellows can tell the people here what the men over there think of the unions and a good number of the union members, I do not wish to offend anyone who is doing his or her part. A lot of them do belong to unions, but against their will. They belong because they were told to join, not because they wish to. Those that are doing their job are doing a grand job, those who aren't might as well be firing the gun that kills our buddies, it is their fault that he can’t shoot back. ' - or » ” » “THEY WERE > EXPENDABLE” By Si Moore, Indianapolis

Ten thousand are expendable; they are sent out to die; they have no rights, as rulers have, nor hopes, as you and I. They just make up a mass of troops to move by land or air, whenever a pin upon a map is shifted here or there. Somebody moves the pins about, who will not have to die, someone who sits about at ease, the same as you and I. Nobody leads expendables; y use their own brain cells, when tifey are dumped in countless hordes in these dictator hells. "Tis sad how these expendables are

charge of the war effort and let'ordered out to die, when only dim-

Side Glances=By Galbraith

wits move the pins and live, as you and I. According to reports from Washington, by high officials, there were “errors of judgment” and “inadequacies” in the field and in the war department at the time of Pearl Harbor. Of course the fact that a recently naturalized German had the contract for putting in the detection system at Pearl Harbor and had not finished it, had nothing to do with the inadequacy of whoever ‘was responsible for seefjng that it was in. That guy was an army officer, according to radio accounts. Ome electrician told over the radio that he had seen mountains torn down in Hawaii and put into lakes and then Holes dug out to get dirt for new mountains. Sort of a super WPA project. Anyhow, the same firm did the work, according to reports, at Pearl Harbor. So it may have been slow. Of course, since the contracts were only for $125000,000, the big boys in Washington had probably forgotten about it. They act as though they want everyorre to forget that they were warned by Grew and others to get ready for an attack, years before. And the excuse made at the time was that it had been planned that

i trogps in that area were kept there

to fight a hopeless retreating action until help arrived. It never arrived. Another error in judgment. Most of the ships have been raised. The

boys will have to await a later

time. They were expendable. » . o “INSTRUMENT OF IMPERIALISM” By P. H. 8, Indianapolis

I read your editorial on com-| |

pulsory peacetime training, and noted your arguments for such legislation. The proponents of peacetime mil itary conscription are extremely anxious to rush such legislation through congress in time of war, while the people are preoccupied with the war. Yet a proposal so alien to the democratic standa¥ds for which America has long stood at the least deserves calm and serious consideration, Conscription has been the instrument of’ imperialism in Europe since Napoleon made major use of it as a means for his attempted conquests. It has been a tool, of reactionary forces, making easier political and economic control of labor and of the general public. It is, in fact, only a palliative hindering our getting down to work on the real problem of abolishing the war-breeding capitalist system, as advocated by the Socialist Labor Party. If military training would be such an excellent method of discovering physical defects and ime proving the country’s health, why not institute some sort of a ®%imilar program for the 18-year-old girls? But why wait until our youths reach 18? Why not institute some form of conscription at the age of 8 or even 18 months?

POLITICAL SCENE— |

This Is “Strategy” By Thomas L Stokes

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11.—Republican members of congress sit around the lobbies at the capijol, recounting ‘their doleful election post-mortems, wondering what they can do to make something of their party and go on from here. It recalls that once famous little tale—“Acres of Diamonds'— in which the man looked all over the world for diamonds and then found them in bis own backyard, a nice little moral that is eternal, and even good for Republicans. While they are staring off into space, dreaming, there's a little project right in their own backyard which might give them a foothold. They don’t even have to start this one themselves. It's already been started by a Democrat. All they have to do is to give i a little push. . The project is a resolution introduced in the house to investigate the charges made by Norman Littell, former assistant-attorney general. These charges in-

Justice department, and include the recurrent mat-

so powerful in the New Deal, who is busy pushing ‘open friendly doors in the interest of his clients.

An Opportunity for the Republicans

DEMOCRATS ARE doing nothing about it, except the earnest and courageous Rep. Jerry Voorhis (Cal), who sponsored the resolution. The Democratic house boss, Speaker 8am Rayburn, is doing his part to keep this affair bottled up. He has his obligations not only to the administration but also to Tommy Corcoran who, has been helpful in the speaker's career, as he has been in that of so many others, including Attorney General Biddle. This is an opportunity for Republicans to perform a public service, to help turn on the light and see what's what, for judging from the mail and telegrams that have come to Jerry Voorhis from all over the country there are lots of people who would like to see an investigation. . Yet it now develops, from the word that is passing among Republicans in the house, that the party is to adopt the higher strategy which has helped to keep them out of power so long. This is to keep hands off in order to’ reap some extra political capital out of the situation, The theory runs about this-wise. If they keep quiet and do nothing, they will gain doubly. Democrats, according to this theory, will not only suffer from the controversy within the administration, which can be touched up and pointed to from time to time, but they also will suffer from trying to suppress the investigation, from trying to keep the facts from the public. Only politicians think like this. It is hard for the public to understand. \

Waiting for 'The Breaks’

FEW REPUBLICANS seem to realize that it's strategy such as this, waiting for “the breaks,” refusing to take the responsibility and the initiative when there's a real chance for a public service, that may explain their failure to arouse sufficient public interest to put them into power. They shout and bark about this and that, but they sidestep the work required to dig up the facts, in such a situation as this, which would put it over to the public. So the House' Republican Leader Joe Martin must take responsibility along with Sam Rayburn. Representative Voorhis wrote a letter to every member of the rules committee, which is sitting on his resolution, asking for action. But no member of that high and powerful body, which decrees what bills and resolutions can go before the house for a vote, yet has even brought the matter before the eommittee, which has had a number of meetings meanwhile on other subjects. Republicans have sat just as silent as Democrats. 2 This is known as “strategy.”

IN WASHINGTON—

Freshman Senator By Daniel M. Kidney ¢

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 -— When the senate voted 37 to 27 to send four of President Roosevelt’s state department nominations back to the foreign relations committee for hearings, the two Indiana Republican senators were among those on the majority side. Senator Raymond E. Willis voted “aye” when the roll first was called and his junior colleague, Senator William E. Jenner, rushed ’ from his office to do likewise and just got under the wire on.the second time around. When he entered the senate chamber, somewhat breathless, he asked the nearest Republican, Senator Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia, what the vote was about. The senator told the 36-year-old short termer from Indiana and added that he himself had voted “no.” “How does the senator from Indiana vote?” the senate clerk asked and Senator Jenner shouted “aye#

Amazed at Press of Legislation

LATER WHEN asked why he had done 50, Senator Jgpner, the first serviceman from this war to serve in the upper chamber, offered two reasons.

are drawing to a close and we are very busy, I think we still have time to investigate these state department appointments. Certainly it is as important to investigate them as it is for a senate committee to be investigating the Indiana election, survey rivers and harbors of do a dozen and one things which are contemplated.

some interest which would found a peace on greed never could endure.”

here is the fact that during the closing days of this session the U. S. senate is as busy rushing things through as though it were the closing days of Indiana state senate,” Senator Jenner commented. {Ming stile] in 3 Mins dehae Stina, Sret 33 July ‘then majority leader, he is somewhat an Wy A, “I ‘coming down here for the term 1 would be able to put my feet on the of sit it out,” he continued. ~~ .

volve Attorney General Biddle’s administration of the ter of Thomas G. Corcoran, the lawyer-lobbyist once °

“Pirst,” he said, “although the days for this session

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