Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 August 1951 — Page 18

pe says the engineers made a practice of for huge appropriations with no more what they were doing. =~ = d known then what it knows now, says

5

and the advance estimates of the engineers were so

apart that the “economic justification” was dissipated. . THE HOUSE committee doesn't accuse the Army Engineers of any lack of professional talent. The point is this talent wasn't used. Actually, it is bad administration which is the basis for the committee's complaints. In our book, it's plain carelessness—an excess of “unforeseen” conditions which most good engineers would have foreseen as a matter of course — “inadequate” ‘planning, as the committee calls it. ~ When Congress authorized these 182 projects, the committee said, the engineers estimated the total cost at $2.6 billion. Now the cost is up to more than $6 billion. ~~ Much of that increase was caused by such unavoidable factors as increases in material and labor prices, but

reliability.” ‘| '

Ay THIS is the third time in recent’ years the Army Engineers have been charged with wasting the taxpayers’ money. The Hoover report said that was the case in 1949. The House Appropriations Committee did it again last year. Now comes this painstaking, documented report of the [lerr subcommittee. : All this would seem to call for something much more tangible than the “no comment” on the report offered by the office of Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, Chief of Army Lngineers.

‘Catastrophic Failure’ Fi"HE STATEMENT of views and conclusions by eight Republican Senators on the ouster of Gen. MacArthur went straight to the heart of the matter. It said that our Far Eastern policies under the

ah ANT, A " ng vO semassrophie §

oppeasement of Communists.

"suman for recalling the Allied commander were, in the Cenators’ view, “utterly inadequate to justify the act.” ’ The statement was signed by Sens. Bridges (N. H.), Knowland (Cal.), Wiley (Wis.), Smith (N. J.), Brewster (Me.), Flanders (Vt.), Cain (Wash.) and Hickenlooper (Towa). As members of the combined Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, they had sat in on the seven weeks of MacArthur hearings, listened to the two million words of testimony and often themselves developed the most pertinent lines of questioning of the many witnesses.

un » - THEY ARE, therefore, eminently qualified to interpret what was spread on the record of that exhaustive, dramatic and often confusing hearing. In the absence of a formal report by the committee majority, this statement will have a ring of authenticity insofar as the evidence appealed to ct least eight Senators. On one vital aspect of the whole issue, these Senators concluded that there was ‘‘no serious disagreement’ between Gen. MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff relative to Korean military strategy. Moreover, the Joint Chiefs “no more than concurred” in the President's decision to remove Gen. MacArthur, : The military men were on a hot spot during the inquiry. m—ve a man, they respected Gen. MacArthur's ability and 0 spoke of it. But as administration witnesses they were committed to a political policy and were in the position of having to defend it. Sometimes they lapsed into concurrence on purely military questions.

FOR EXAMPLE, Gen. Vandenberg on one occasion testified that the “proper way’ to use airpower against any enemy was “initially to stop the flow of supplies and ammunition, guns and equipment of all types at the source.” Which was, of course, exactly what Gen. MacArthur intended in his desire to bombard Communist bases in Manchuria, ° Similarly, the Joint Chiefs promptly agreed when Russia proposed the cease-fire negotiations by field commanders, which was exactly what Gen. MacArthur suggested last March. But political considerations obviously deterred them from acceding when Gen. MacArthur

proposed it.

_ concipded, since 1945 has been based on ‘expediency, | rather than the principles of liberty and justice.”

- LJ . ¢ ” ” rd > : THAT, too, is so evident as to become axiomatic.

stood when we were drawn into the Korean War— refused to fight hard enough to win. Which r present inept position of trying to arrange

dx

some 30 per cent of it was due to a “lack of engineering -

Roosevelt and Truman administrations had added up, to ; 10 Sunn, © DOORERL on; in ae amen, wy od Fe : Lr vo and mor

Gen. MacArthur was clearly a victim of this evil force - ee fapiysumstanees, andthe veaseng given. hue. Drasident

Our whole Asiatic policy, the Republican Senators

America’s political retreat by default and appeasement in the face of Communist expansion began at Yalta. It was.

tomorrow.

‘Ben. William J. Jenner (R. Ind.), author of = the amendment, got it approved by the Senate twice. Rep. Charles A. Halleck, Rensselaer Republican, has been pushing for House action. "He got a le from Chairman Robert L. Pougnien tb; NOS bo grant | hearings, when- : e Ways and Means Committee. y y Mr, Denton will tell the Indiana Democratic

-editors and the officials and party leaders from

15 states, who are meeting at French Lick, that such hearings are a long way off. The House

. expects to recess until Sept. 12 and adjourn in

October.

A Matter of Time

HE WILL point out that a lot of welfare people, labor unions, church groups and Townsend planners’ will want to be heard before any committee action is taken, Should a secrecy repeal bill, first one of which was introduced by Rep. Charles B. Brownson, Indianapolis Republcan, be reported, it still would have to pass both Houses and be approved by President Truman. Mr. Denton will point out that time is against its adoption by this session of Congress, ¢ Action of the Indiana legislature in requiring all payments to the aged, blind and dependent children to be made public in a book at each county auditor's office has aroused na-

_ tional imterest-in the fact that grants-in-aid

have increased during this period of high employment. Over 5500,000 persons still are carried on public assistance rolls and relief expenditures running more than $2 billion a year. The number of persons receiving old-age assistance has increased nearly one-third since 1040 and the number of dependent children receiving aid has more than doubled.

Résearch Reports

EDITORIAL. research reports assigned Roma K. McNickle to studv the cause of such increases and ‘came up with this: “One obvions reason is that the number of persons aged 65 and over in the population increased by 37 per cent during the last decade: The number of boys and girls under 18 by almost 20 per cent, and the number of children under 5 by no less than 55 per cent. From these fastest-growing groups come the bulk of public assistance recipient§—the needy aged and dependent children. “The present high demand for labor has little effect on these persons, for most of them cannot work ‘or would not be accepted for jobs. The effect of general prosperity. on them must at best be indirect, and coming principally from {ncreased ability of employed relatives to help with their support. .

found it impossible to” make ends meet and relef grants “have hen raised to cover the bare

essentials of living® While there may be "a

cofixtderable amount of chiseling. the-absvaarsvce

believed to be the chief reasons for increases in relief rolls and relief expenditures.” Mr. Denton is ready to quote this finding.

What Others Say—

ALTHOUGH dishonest politicians and officeholders are a small minority compared with the hundreds of thousands af devoted, honest public servants, political corruption in the United States seems to. have sunk to a new low.—Sen. Estes Kefauver (D. Tenn.), SS DIETS leave people hungry. Now, what I do is hypnotizé them so they don't want to eat fattening foods. They eat, instead, other things. And they don't get hungry.—Edwin L. Baron, stage performer, on starting school for dieting through hypnosis, ¢ © A RACE HORSE is just as much an instrument of gambling as a slot machine.—Sen. William Langer (R. N. D.), suggesting government tax on race horses. LS IF ANY gelf-respecting Frenchman in his own country were given some of the (hotel) meals we tolerate he would ring- for the manager, strangle him, pull the place apart and leave without paying his bill. In this country (England) all you do is suffer in silence and then say, “It was not too good, was {t?”"—Lord Mancroft, of British House of Lords.

SIDE GLANCES By

Mate cast Of Ping has.gone up, more JUol gy persons in low-iRcome groups. have. . <.

Galbraith

YUCATAN . . . By Frederick C. Othman

Windmills Take to the Air

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22—The big wind that blew through Yucatan must have played hob with the windmills. Sent them sailing like flying saucers across the jungles and scared the daylights out of the chewing gum magnates. I'd always planned to tell you about old Bob Sullivan of Chicago and the Mexican windmills. I'm only getting around to it now that they've been blown away. But as you know, it's / an {ll wind, ete There's a place to- “ day in Yucatan for a windmill salesman. That's what Mr. Sullivan was, back 1912. He'd sold indmills to every- ° body that wanted one in Kansas and other such windy places. He headed south of the border looking for likely customers. In Merida, the capital of Yucatan, he found them. Conditions were exactly right. A steady wind blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, while the town itself seeméd to hgve aen built on a limestone ledge over a subterioe lake of fine, fresh water. This was ov am on in PP AROIIRD LL ess soii he Evan “SoTa ET SARNINIT Yo pRmEtiTally - ‘every householder in Merida. He also sold 'em to barks, saleens, the.muricipal government, and anybody else who had any use for water. Then he moved into Campecho, where caviar, shrimps, chewing gum and mementoes of pirates are the principal industries, and saturated the town with windmills. In peace he was a multimillionaire and since big winds were not unusual in Yucatan he settled down to a steady replacement business. ;

No Grave Stone

WHEN he died in the 20's he was one of the richest men in this most-isolated Mexican state, which is reachable only by sea because the jungles have foiled every attempt of the railway and road builders. He wanted ng stone over his grave. There were thousands of windmills in Yucatan «and everyone was a graceful, whirling monument to him. I'll never forget my first sight of Yueatan's windmills—they made Holland's look sparse— and I hope this hurricane didn't do too much damage to the Yucatecs. They're nice people. The big blow did cut a tremendous swath through their chicle forests and this must have meant ruination for many of them. In the old days their chicle was the sole base for our chewing gum. They still sell considerable, but when I last was there the citizens were worrying about bubble gum. The dang stuff is made of a synthetic, they said, and when all North Americans are blowing bubbles with their gum it will be the end of Yucatan. I tried to assure them this wasn’t likely and they presented me a large basket of fruit, The whole business, basket and all, was

NEW BOOK . ..

OVER IN the Columbia Club the other day I ran across Hilton U. Brown and stopped for a little chat with him. We talked about newspaper friends, and the coming year at Butler and the prospects for a good football team out there this fall, and finally made a date to meet at Butler Bowl for the games, as we have on fall Saturdays for a good many years now, All about things in the future. Not a word about the

Hilton Brown, It always gives a sort of a

him, and I came away thinking how hard, it is to realize that the man has lived in this town for 93 years, and what a wonderful storehouse of memories he must have, even though he never seems to mention them. r ~ » s IT WAS a welcome surprise then, to find that he has put several of them into print, in his “Book of Memories" published today by Butler Univer-

made of peppermint-flavored chewing gum. Unfortunately, on the way home it got squashed.

A New Garage?

THERE'S only one man in Merida, who might have been pleased—in a perverse way— about having his garage blown in. That's Senor Alberto Diaz, who's in his eighties and who is a retired banker. In 1929 he simultaneously vought a Studebaker sedan and built a handsome new house with attached garage.

The car he considered the finest that possibly could be built. There never would be a better. So he built his garage to fit it, exactly. Built it, incidentally, of white marble. So you know what happened. Don Alberto still was driving his Studebaker more than two decades later. He couldn't get any other automobile into his stall and since he was the sort of fellow who never made mistakes, that was that. Maybe now he’ll be in the market for a fatter garage with automobile to match,

will not be available for four or five years, If there is a showdown with Russia it is likely to come long before that. The period of greatest danger is probably the next 12 months. Obviously no considerable military strength can be developed StH that times 1s the lack of A German ford encourages Stalin to ‘attack during the n year—and t6 attack successfully—then we als ready have lost our chance. :

Hopeful Beginning BUT THAT is an over-simplification and needlessly pessimistic, in the judgment of Allied experts. They believe that Gen. Eisenhower even now has made a hopeful beginning, and that by the turn of the year will be in position to prevent a successful enemy blitz, If that is accurate and Stalin is no longer able to get a quick, cheap victory than the fact of German divisions in training could be a major preventive of war or a decisive factor in winning one even though they were not ready for full use until late 1952, This means, however, that there cannot be much more delay in getting started on the project. The desired speed-up must come both in Bonn and in Paris. Serious obstacles still exist in each capital despite the progress made

"in negotiations at a technical level,

Arms Production IN PARIS the attitude is that German participation in joint defense is essential, but that his must be in the form and with the limitaions that will prevent Germany from again, becoming an aggressive menace. This applies to the number, size, types and command of combat units. Also it-concerns German capacity for armament production. Hence the two-pronged Paris policy of French-German economic and military unification under French leadership—the Schuman plan for West European coal and steel combine and the Pleven plan for a so-called Furopean army. The Schuman plan has been accepted by Bonn but awaits difficult ratification. The Pleven plan has been accepted in theory. In both cases, however, the issue is whether France shall have the edge as she desires, or whether there shall be “equality” as the Germans insist.

Satisfy Reasonable Demands ‘SINCE the United States has supported the French approach, and German -co-operation is Impossible unless it is sincere, the problem now is to satisfy any reasonable German demands. This breaks down to giving West Germany sovereign equality in a contractural agreement or quasi-treaty—a full treaty is impossible because of Russia's hold on East Germany— but reserving Allied emergency powers, - The Germans don’t like that, and they don't want to pay their share of defense in occupation costs or for their own troops. Moreover, they want larger troop units and higher commands under Gen. Eisenhower than the French plan permits. The American purpose is to achieve an overall compromise which will start limited West German rearmament promptly,

QnA nAnaassREnNel

MR: EDITOR: This fs a’ thank you to The Indianapolis Cree indegendeat “voter for giving

Fes Lat

me an -insight to.both sides of the political V

picture.} og I have reference to your forthright and candid expose of the faux pas made by Clark to get his name in the paper. He (a baseball fan?) goes to Chicago to honor Al Lopez and gets his own name mentioned oh® the front page ‘of the Star five times. It was hard to know if it was a Lopez day or a Clark day. If this was an effort to catch the baseball fan's vote, which it certainly was, then it should fail as only a feather brain would: condone such a cheap political guise. o ub IT IS known well by the people of Indianapolis, and has been for a long time, that the majority of papers are very biased for any Republican running for office, no matter how incompetent ne may be. But believe me, it is certainly resented, even by Republicans, who have a certain stnse of fair: play. Why does he (I should mention the name?) have to bring in the names of Truman and Lopez to drag himself into office? It is his qualifications that the voters are interested in at the time of the election, not where Lopez stands in the American League, when one steps into the voting booth, Independent Voter, City.

‘Quit Fooling Around’ . MR. EDITOR: : I, as a citizen, move that the murderers of Billie Thompson be indicted ‘by the grand jury and let the courts and due process of law take its course and quit fooling around with the so-called citizen committee. ~—James McGrath, City

U. Brown.

Hoosier Forum—‘Baseball Fan?’

“I do not agree with a word that you say, but | will defend to the death your right to say it."

a ERE EEE NEUEN RN ENRON RRO E REST N REINS P ORSON ORS R TNT RNrSS arene

‘You're All Wet’ MR. EDITOR;

wa Oeenolell arta ie soldier who: weate the letter concerning the shooting of Billie Thompson: If you don't know anymore about the Army than you do ahout the police shooting then you must sure be a poor soldier. Fin In the first place it didn’t happen downtown. It was on the Easi®Side, 2400 east. In the second place all four men didn’t chase Thompson. And while I'm at it, your statement about the hard pressed and gravy filled stomachs . . . this may apply to you one of these days, buddy. I think you will find some vets among the four police, too. Third, Mr. Expert, I think your percentage ls wrong because witnesses have said that some of the shots were fired overhead intentionally, so that proves your .333 wrong. > In conclusion, may I advise you to gripe about something you know a little about?

° —Ex-Infantryman, City

OUTLOOK

HOW happy we can he in life . . . depends upon-our view , .. of life and what it offers us + + » and what folks say and do ... we may be blessed with a wealth untold . . , to bring us through our strife . . . yet lack the health and strength to win . . . a duel with death's sharp knife . . . and then again we may not have . . . the worldly goods to show . . . but have a love to cheer us up... as on through life we go . . . but there is one thing above all . .. that counts above the rest . .. the man with a sunny outlook . . ..can stand life's cruelest test.

-By Ben Burroughs

fe

A Vivid Depiction of Early Indiana—

exactly like the voice of Hilton

its board of directors, for the Z past 48 years president of that board, and for all of those

past, which is pretty typical of

J“lft” to your day to talk with.

: Hilton U. Brown that grew into a great city, and of a struggling little school that grew into a great university. And there is the story, ‘which perhaps he did not mean

to tell, of the Indianapolis - youngster who grew into a

man Joved and respected .far

As a little boy playing on the lawn of his father's house he watched Union soldiers unloading Confederate prisoners of war from railroad cars across the street and marching them away to prison camp. He remembers vividly the prisoner they went away and left, too sick to run away, too weak to march, and how his father went over and gave him help— more vividly, perhabs, because of the dramatic way he met that soldier again, many years later, and many miles away. He went to Northwestern Christian University before it became Butler University, and before it was moved out to Irvington—a village four miles from Indianapolis in those days, which scholars reached mostly on foof, The picture of students as they walked, singing, home from the meetings of the “literary societies’-—now ‘country’s colleges—of t

he battles between fraternities.

regrettably vanished from the"

’

years Butler's most loyal alumnus. » s o OUT of college he quickly sought, and found, a job on the Indianapolis News — and he has been there, now, for 70 years, the dean of Indiana newspapermen, The News, too, grew into one of the nation’s great newspapers while he was

on -its staff in every capacity from cub reporter to general

manager, and the tale of its growth is told in anecdotes instead of dates and figures. Naturally he knew every important citizen of Indianapolis, and most of the leading figures of the nation who passed this way, but whit he has remembered i8 the interthey

‘esting, human, things

This is an intetestifig ook, and a revealing book, with plenty of chuckles, and not a

single barb. To me it seems e like an important

of In:

oo

"more than most, in his own. Je oe AI told 10 a Quist, pods. r

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