Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 March 1952 — Page 9

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Inside Indianapolis

By Ed Sovola

PERHAPS Gov. Schricker will be interested #n knowing Jt takes a 30-pound pull to rip the

front door of the Statehouse open. I wish he'd do something about that before he goes out of office, "The monster doors must have been designed

certainly 1sn’t the kind of door mM women and children and guys "i"\|!}\ like me care to pull open. I've measured the pound-pull ¥ on other doors around town

winner. Of course, people who know don't use the front entrance except in an emergency. The Governor uses the side door. He's not taking any chances of pulling a shoulder

muscle. > : “@. & ob

TWO WOMEN ‘struggled with the heavy glass-

and-timber door just as I approached with my’

measuring device. They were about to throw a

fit when I came to their aid. Yeh, and if the:

pain persists from pulling on the door twice, I may have to sue the sovereign State of Indiana. The two women, once they were in the open, wouldn't assist me and they didn't want to wait for the reading. That's gratitude for you. It doesn’t make sense. The doors are about standard width and a good 18 feet high. I've been around close to six years and-have spent considerable time watching heavy traffic during General Assembly time and never, with the peculjar things that wander in, was a need for such height observed.

* 5 »

THE DOOKS were fine for the band of Indians in full ceremonial garb who invaded the chambers two sessions -ago for the amusement and enlightenment of our lawmakers, but if they were installed to accommodate such foolishness, let's take them off the hinges and hang blankets in the openings. Mayor Alex Clark ought to know that it takes a 25-pound pull to open the smudgy metal doors to the City Hall. A-man hates to tarry long under the ledges

1t Happened Last Night

By Earl Wilson

NEW YORK, Mar. 24 Carlo is hurt. It's a pity and a shame, says she, that the Hollywood censors will let an actress who plays “lady” parts wear necklines down to goodness knows where. But they won't let her do it. “That's the way it is—an actress who plays ‘lady’ parts can get away with anything,” she pouted as we sat around in her suite up at the Hotel Delmonico. It was a rather strange interview, anyway. - To begin with, Miss De Carlo turned on the record-player first. So I asked her questions with musical accompaniment. It was the first time I had ever asked any girl, “How old did you say you are?” to the accompaniment of “Stone Cold Dead in De Market.” “you take Maureen O'Hara who's famous for her low necklines,” said Miss De Carlo, who was coming to a nice boil on the subject. : “In fact, low necklines are getting to be one of her trademarks. “Well, she’s a fine actress and I admire her very much. And one actress shouldn’t talk about another. But all I can say is, Ava Gardner and I couldn't get away with some of the necklines she wears!”

Miss Yvonne De

> © . THE RECORD PLAYER switched from “Stone Cold in De Market” to a calypso with a wild, weird rhythm. My pencil began to shake its. hips as it wrote. “It’s the same with Loretta Young and Irene Dunne,” Miss De Carlo said. “They're always playing ‘ladies’ and anything they wear, or don’t, is just fine with the censors. ‘In ‘Buccaneer’s Gal' Andrea King plays a haughty lady and her necklines are lower than mine!” The record-player now went into Johnnie Ray singing “Please Mr. Sun,” I think it was, and Miss De Carlo told me that in & picture called “San Francisco Story,” she solves the neckline nroblem by not having any neckline. “Goodness!” I said. “How do you do it?” : EE - IT SEEMS she’s in a negligee a lot and her neckline never reaches the neckline. It's just neck without the line. Although Miss De Carlo has quite a reputa-

Americana By Robert C. Ruark I.

NEW YORK, Mar. 24—I1 have been cuddle. up with Mr. Truman's confessions over the weekend, and I have checked the more intimate diary entries until my poor little eyes are all red and runny. But nowhere have I been able to bump into a passage which would tell me just what happened to turn Bill O'Dwyer into an ambassador overnight. One day he is a mayor of New York and then the good fairy waved the wand and whoosh! It does not seem right that President Truman, n telling all for the avid readers, should skip the details which sent Mr. O'Dwyer to Mexico, just as the scandals on graft and criminal collusion exploded im New York. Mr. O'Dwyer had pooh-poohed the hinted suspicion of graft and monkey business, and the fact that a pal or so took a fall a bit later means nothing. >. Bb IF I AM a President and I am writing a diary to myself, I would be interested enough in the governing processes to pen myself a short memo on how a guy can be mayor of our greatest city on one day and a short-order ambassador to our good neighbor, Mexico, the next. Especially if my

judgment were vindicated.

In the case of Mr. O'Dwyer there could have heen no better choice of emissary to the sunny land political refugees love. 1 was down in Bill's bailiwick recently, and the people adore him. The Mexicans love him and the Gringos who do business there love him. He speaks the language and leaves the embassy doors open to the locals and he goes to the bullfights. His charming missus is also a fine advertisement for the 1]. 8. A. unlike some of the State Department wives elsewhere who get loaded and hurl the cat at the rustomers. do Gb IF I WERE Mr. Truman and I were scribbling in the book before I say my now-I-lay-mes, I would have spent a lot of time explaining the logic behind Mr. O'Dwyer, and then I would have jotted a few more lines on Maj. Gen. Harry Vaughan, the toy Soldier. . As the President's best-beloved aide, Gen. Vaughan has comein for an awful lot of criticism, but we don't hear much about the deep-freezes and such. Somewhere, to lend authenticity to the presidential memoirs, should have been a few revealing lines like: “Caught H. Vaughan raiding the icebox again. Must warn him Gen. Graham keeps his grain futures in freeze-com partment, and apt spoil if subjected ‘fresh air.” . nS THERE DON'T seem to be many passage: describing how Harry felt when he came back from Key West that time, to find a couple dozen of his employees with their arms deep in the cookie jar, and with old Sweet Thing moaning and groaning about how he was misunderstood in the scandals. I bet you what Harry wrote in the diary that time was so hot it busted the penci’ point. It seems to me you defeat the whole purpose of diaries unless you Write down everything. the whole truth, in all its colors. A dairy is noi really a diary if you cull the purple paragraphs and delete the references to your pet hates and aversions. I can read this “woke early. Saw first tufted titmouse of spring season on wiiow tree” stuff until the cows come home, and find the cows more interesting. . -— ;

What Do They Think ~ We Are. Musclemen?

’ ’ . of the City Hall yanking on the door. We_ need vault doors on the building like we need: chuckholes in our streets. = ‘ ! . so THE INSIDE DOORS require a 15-pound puil which isn't tgo tough if you're feéling well, At ‘least the. Federal Building has doors which yieid to a gentle pull. No door goes over a 10-pound pull and two fly open with a 6-pound effort. . Hume-Mansur Building has the heavy glass side-slide doors that indicate (we are becoming more intelligént. With & pull of 5 pounds, one of the doors came open. All the doors average 7 pounds. : Revolving doors averaged 8 pounds pressure to get them in motion so you can go through. I'm one. of those people who get a charge out of going through a revolving door without pushing. > o~ < THIS PRACTICE isn't dependable. I stood for three minutes once when the lady in front of me made it to the sidewalk by pushing the revolving door just enough so she could get out. The glass doors on the side of the revolving doors at Strauss are almost as bad as the City Hall giants. ‘My. measuring device recorded a 26-pound pull. County Courthouse doors averaged 7 pounds. Working in that place gives me the creeps and creaks. One of these fine days someone is going to jerk open a door, pull it off its hinges and the door frame will come crashing down. ide de I THOUGHT of this while fooling around in that junk heap. It was easy to visualize the bricks and blocks falling on top of the door frame. Then in one big black cloud the joint will settle to the street level. I got out of there fast. Banks have easy entrances for the most part, Although ‘Union Federal has a door that requires 20-pounds pressure to open. The glass door is almost twice the size of the one at Strauss, s6 by comparison, it is a good piece of work. The only real gripe is over in the Statehouse and the City Hall. Somebody at least ought to put a dash of oil on the hinges. A man can pull his arm out of joint. Wonder if regular employees in the. two places have longer right arms? We'll look up their. sleeves:one of these days.

Censors Too Tough. Moans Yvonne

tion. for wearing sarongs, it seems she'll appear in one for the first time—except in a bit part— when she is seen in “Hurricane Smith.” “They told me ‘Yvonne De Carlo on the bill boards in a sarong is worth $1 million at the hox office.” Yvonne doesn't know about that. “Actually.” I said, “when you wear a sarong, you have ox as much as in a bathing suit, don’t you?”

“More,” she said, “but it looks like less!

- Don’t tell anybody.”

~% Who, me? “= dN THE MIDNIGHT EARL . .. A certain N. Y. political big shot should he scared, becausedespite denials—James Moran recently met District Attorney's aids in a midtown hotel -and promised to “tell all” wouldn’t be hurt. The politica! big shot is still around and still powerful—now. : Frank Sinatra now books himself after “walking” from Music Corp. of America following several differences . . Ted Briskin phoned wedding congratulations to Betty Hutton and Charlie O’Curran. Charlie's a former Atlantic City boy, a swell guy. Dick Rodgers’ daughter (Mrs. Julian Bonar Beaty Jr) is expecting . . . Grace Hartman and new hushand Norman Abbot bought a California walnut ranch. They gave up their cafe act . .. Busty Betty George was called to Hollywood by Producer Georgie Jessel to confer about a picture role . . . June Valli's already a Victor and Stop the Music star— just one year out of a 5th Ave, lingerie shop.

Miss Valli

EARL’S PEARLS . . . Corinne, of Corinne & Tito, says a wolf is a fellow who thinks the world owes him a loving. HARVEY STONE says his wife couldn't find her bathing suit one day in Florida, and finally discovered she was wearing it , . . That's Earl, brother.

Truman's Diary Has Holes In It

In all my newspaper life I never read more abject garbage than some of the prose the southpaw press uscd to describe the noble simplicity of the man Truman, as portrayed by private papers in which all but the politically harmless had been carefully excised. One chronic bleeder scored a ringer on Harry's head with a halo that was cast like a horseshoe, and you could hear it clank when it hit.

“If my sweetheart and my baby” are the mark of a man's capability in office, or the measure of

° his relentlessness in pursuing an enemy, or the

stamp of his allegiance to known and proven crooks, or his bullhead stubborness in the face of arror—then Mr. Truman’s diary as an index to the man was a success, and he is the simple American gothic that his sycophants say.

- . * oe oe D3

BEING slightly less susceptible to June and moon and croon, I would venture that Harry Truman, the canny politician, broke presidential precedent by releasing his memoirs only to reap the value of the publicity smash, and to portray himself as a simple, homespun people's person who loves his family and is surrounded by the wicked. ‘Apart from a few stale tidbits tnat everybody knew about, the rest is worthless claptrap in so far as an honest look at the “inside” “residefit i= concerned.

Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith

Q—What is the hest way tn plant grass seed. ‘all Creek Blvd. A—Loosen up the soil in bare spots with a rake if you haven't pep and time enough to do any better preparation. Loosening and enriching it to a depth of five inches is much better. The more plant food and soil conditioner you get down at the level of roots, the better your grass

Read Marquerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times

will be. Then sow seed sparingly. All hands now agree that too thick sowing does little but start a lot of weak grass seedlings. Then some must die to leave room for the stronger brethren. Various mechanical seeders are on the market—each with their convert. Or you can seed by hand. Use whichever method you think will give you complete but sparing distribution of seed. In any case choose a windless day and you'll get into Jess difficulty. You'll also get evener coverage if you work the lawn back and forth one way, then turn and go across again at right angles. When hand seeding vou are wise to mix seed with sand® nr.dry soil. Then you can get seed on less thick. Cover seed lightly with sand, compost, or good op go0il. Otherwise it's likely to hecome hird fees “efore it becomes grass. Rolling seed in to firm it against the ground used to he standard practice. But it's not necessary. For the first rain will firm it in on level ground. And on slopes you'll have to take special precautions anyway. You may, of cotrse, he able to save yourself time by combining the rolling and seeding process. But don't roll if ground is at all wet.

about graft if he -

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FIRST OF A SERIES , By ALLAN KELLER Times Special Writer

AMERICANS, who proudly think of themselves as heirs of undiluted freedom won in the War for Independence, today are finding a silken curtain of censorship drawn between them and their government.

At first the barrier was barely noticeable, but daily it is growing more and more impenetrable. As government grows more complex it becomes easier to etfect a conspiracy of silence by which the ordinary citizen is denied the information that is the foundation of democratic government.

In the belief that it is the public's right to know of this as well as to learn how to combat it, - the World-Telegram and Sun, a Scripps-Howard newspaper, has investigated for several months the functioning of government in Washington, Albany and New York City. It has searched the files of the Committee on Freedom of Information of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Louisville, Ky.

The long study has brought out a clear pattern. Members of Congress, editors and reporters, educators, and strangely enough, many military men, testify that news is being controlled and limited by the government which thinks it is the best judge of what the public should know. ” » = THIS control exists federal, state and city level. Like a creeping disease, the tendency to withhold information from those who pay for and support government is spreading across the face of the land. How is this done? ONE: By holding closed sessions of boards, committees and other government agencies. TWO: By withholding in - formation, records, tabulations of how officials voted and other vital material. THREE: By stalling until a story or situation loses its importance, FOUR: By issuing press releases with only part of the story, or a favorable version of a story, and by refusing permission for press or public to seek the other versions. FIVE: By bare-faced lies on the part of officials who can’t

the

A Vital Part Of Liberty

“It must never be forgotten that the right to see how public business is being conducted is inherently a right of the public to whom that government belongs. When a public official refuses to let you inspect his tax records, all you lose is a story; the state of Rhode Island and the United States of America lose a vital part of their liberties.” ~From a message to the Providence Journal from James

A. Pope, chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, committee on

freedom of information.

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be proved liars because they hold the records or the minutes of meetings in their own hands. SIX: By cloaking a situation with military or national security and classifying all material dealing with the situation.

” » LJ AND. just why should this bz

done?

ONE: Because officials don't want _to answer for what they do, if"they can avoid fit. TWO: Because silence and secret can hide graft, scandal, political intrigue, corruption and incompetence from the eyes of honest men. THREE: Because some officials have so little to do to justify big salaries they prefer not to have their few activities known. FOUR: Because many offiicals think everything they do is important and want to cloak it with the aura of mystery and secrecy.

» ” » THE State Department refuses to reveal, even today, most of the facts of the Yalta Conference. In a small city in the Middle West a school board closes its doors to public and press, doing its business in star chamber fashion. Except in degree there iz no

WISHFUL THINKING —

Are We Underestimating Red Strength?

By RAMSAY D. POTTS JR.

- Condensed from Air Force Magazine .

WASHINGTON, Mar. 24—We of the Western democracies seem to have a habit of thinking of Soviet Russia as a semibarbaric country full of louts in baggy pants who somehow manage to win military victories by

overwhelming an enemy with masses of troops.

This was sharply brought home to me by a man who had spent several years of the postWorld War 1I period in making analyses of military problems.

He said that even after he and his associates pieced together a picture of Soviet strength in certain fields of armament, he nevertheless tended subconsciously to reject his own conclusions.

“The picture that always comes to my mind when I think of Soviet Russia,” he said, “is of a woman plowing a field behind an animal-drawn plow, I am trying .to erase that mental image, and replace it with one of the MIG-15 pulling away from the F-86 at 40.000 feet.” The Russians have depressed their civilian standard of liv ing to a minimum subsistence level in. order tn concentrate upon investment in capital goods, machine tools and armaments, - ” - BY dint of this and hy horrowing and stealing designs from German, British, American, Swiss and other sources,

the Russians have been able, by concentrating on the armaments segment of the technological front, to achieve performance that matches the best in the U. 8. :

The most striking fillustration of this isthe quantity production of _the MIG-15, but other examples can be noted in the quality and quantity of Russian tanks, artillery pieces, rockets and radar.

In connection with the MIG, it should be pointed out that the Russians recently captured an American jet fighter equipped with our prized gunsight.

The sight is the one item of equipment on our fighters in Korea which is markedly sunerior to the Russian. It is one of the two main reasons why we have'heen able to hold thupper hand in air combat. Ed » ” AS A result of the plane capture more than gix months ago, we may expect to find hefore too long that Communist pilots will be shooting with far 1

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are we under-estimating Russia's military - scientific strength to our own detriment? The writer of this article, condensed from Air Force Magazine, believes we are. And he’s in a position to know what he’s talking about. Ramsay D. Potts Jr., Washington attorney and Air Force Reserve colonel, was director of Eighth Air Force bombing operations in World War II and later was chief of staff of the military analysis division, U. 8S. Strategic Bombing Survey. Following the war he was a top planner in our government’'s industrial dispersion‘program. greater accuracy than they have done sa far in, Korea. Finally, an area in which we badly underestimated the Russians was in the amount of

atomic information we credited ~ ¥

them with having at their disposal. :

When the Russians were told that the U, 8. had solved the problem. of making “atomic bombs, Stalin was able to receive the news with the utmost composure, For the great secret was no secret to him. The Russian espionage organization functioned throughout the war with remarkable success, especially in the field of atomic energy.Allen Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs are familiar to all of us.

» - »- a ® THROUGH these and other ipieg,” the Russians were ahle

by obtain the most complete in-

t formation about our vital pro-

and production techfor making atomi>

resges hiques weapons. . In addition Soviet Russia has

an atomic energy organization

The cases of ~

THE SILKEN CURTAIN—John Q. Public is never certain of

what goes on behind it.

difference between the two ac. tions. Both are deliberate examples of denial of legitimate information to the 155 million

men, women and children whose taxes pay for government and whose destinies are irrevocably wrapped up in the deeds—and misdeeds—of their officials. Because we do not know the full story of Yalta some of our sons may have to die in battle. » ” » BECAUSE we do not know

what is going on in the school

board our sons and daughters may have to use an inferior texthook or spend time in a firetrap. % Both examples are a negation of the democratic process. Both are infringements of freedom of information. Much is said about freedom of the press but

that is not the issue. The true issue is freedom for the people to know what their goverhs ments are doing. The press only carries this information. Last year President Truman set up regulations to censor news—ostensibly to guard our security, The President assured doubters that this was nothing but

an effort fo stop leaks of mil-

tary information. ~ . »

ON THE very day this writer received assurance in Washington by the official assigned to police the order that

it would not be an instrument’

to suppress news, word leaked out of the Agriculture Department that the secretary had been sitting on evidence of widespread scandals in grain storage. :

“#

HOW MOST AMERICANS think of Russia is in terms of an

"oxcart economy," typified by this scene in a rural Soviet area.

Soi

WHAT AMERICANS SEEM TO FORGET is the Russian MIG. I5 (above) "pulling away from the U. S. F-36 at 40,000 feet," or the uantity of Russian tanks liwe the T-34 (on parade below).

that compares favorably in zize and scope with our own.

Fortune Magazine gaid last

September that, “production of

engineering graduates United States)

(in the is tapering off

. from 25,000 in 1952 to a possible

low of 12,000 in 1954.” In the same connection, For-

A ‘

tune said, “Russia is estimated to be training voung scientis's and technicians at the rate of about 100,000 a year.” This recalls the statement made by Irving Langmuir in “One World or None,” following his return in 1945 from the USSR Academy of Science:

deductive of our mistakes.

ly Conspiracy Of Hush Creeps Up On Freedomin U.S.

And it was Secretary Charles F. Brannan himself who had told reporters not too long before: “It is traditional with us not to give the reasons” for firing a $10,000 official in the department.

The President and most govérnors and mayors withhold Information until they deem it advantageous to release it to get favorable reaction,

In its own way this is as evil as the blunt remark of Ambas-sador-at-Large Phillip Jessup after a secret diplomatic conference in Bangkok. » " -

“NOTHING will be forthe coming from this Southeast Asia conference,” Dr. Jessup told reporters, “either now or later.”

The words sound dangerously like something out of Dr, Goebbels’ ministry or the Polite buro. When information withheld involves true security, no one can quarrel with the decision, as when President Truman held up announcement that the Russians had the atom bomb. But when executives hold up information on appointments, on tax matters, or on reports of investigation of wrongdoing, the result hurts everyone.

~ . ~- THE political complexion of an administration has no apparent bearing on the growing cancer of executive censorship, .The Truman administration is Democratic. It fathered the executive censorship ‘order. The Republican administration of Gov. Thomas E. Dewey is one of the most tight-lipped in existence. Its public relations boss has admitted openly that his main purpose is to put the Dewey administration in the most favorable light possible, - ss.»

HE HAS sald that he often prevented reporters from ‘go« ing behind” releases of the state’s corps of press agents. In New York City the administration of Mayor Vincent R. Impelliteri has suppressed reports for months, done most of its business in secret and has turned press conferences into sham affairs where department heads are forbidden to talk

without clearing everythin with Vince. . .

‘NEXT: Thought Control in New York Oity.

“They (the Russians) have planned a far more extensive program of science than is cone templated by any other nation.” ~ » » THE many lessons we learned from experience in war against Germany should have furnished valuable guides to those of our national leaders who since 1946 have been trying to estimate Russian capabilities, Instead, there were men who interpreted the lessons so that as a country we rolled along, right up until Korea, on the premise that Russia was an “oxcart” economy, incapable of producing the complicated para phernalia of modern war. Of the estimates that have had to be made, the most ime. portant of all is the estimate of Russia's capability to manufacture atomic weapons and deliver them on targets in this country. And in this critical area were made some of the most grevious miscalculations. In a statement released to the press on October 30, 1947, Lt. Gen. Leslie R, Groves, head of the wartime Manhattan Proj ect, was reported as saying that the Russians would need 15-20 vears to develop the atomic homb if .they did it in secrecy and without aid from the United States, Britain, or Switzerland. ~ . . THIS low opinion of Russian gcience and industry has also been the view of Dr. Vannevar Bush who from 1946 to 1948 held the key advisory post in the Department of Defense as Chairman of the Research and Development Board. It can be said that the Bush view of Soviet Russian capabilie ties exercised virtually a con= trolling effect on national policy and military programs during the period from 1946 up to the end of 1949, The information that the U. 8. has been able to obtain about technical activity behind the Iron Curtain is extremely sketchy. Nevertheless, in make« ing our estimates of Soviet Rus« sia we have tried to draw from this scanty information. ” » » WHEN, however, there Is little information, it is dangerous to rely only upon proven facts. ‘td the exclusion of developing general theories on a basis, This was one

We seem to have reasoned

from meager information to a general premise that would fit a preconceived notion of Rus sig as industrially backward. .