St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 12

PAGE 2B ST. LOUIS, MONDAY, MARCH 26, 194? ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH A Milk-and-Water Bill Founded by JOSEPH PULITZER December 12, 1878 PubluKed hy The Pulitzer Publiihing Co. TelepHotie Addrtu MAin 1111 Olive St. (I) THE POST-DISPATCH PLATFORM I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles; that it will always fight for progress, and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the puMic welfare; never be satisfied with merely printing news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

JOSEPH FULITZER. April 10, 1907. LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE The name and address of the author must accompany every contribution but on request will not he published. Letters not exceeding 200 words will receive preference. may now choose between taxing everyone and no one is itself clearest evidence that no essential right is impaired.

Grudgingly or otherwise, however, the important thing is that the companies are supporting the equal-tax bill. If there was any slight residue of doubt before, it is now perfectly clear that the Legislature should enact the law with utmost promptness. Bad News for Bourbons A day of reckoning is ahead for the 17 Southern Bourbon Senators whose votes Friday enabled the Republicans to reject Aubrey Williams' nomination as REA head. And it may come sooner than they think, for at a press conference held jointly with Mr. Williams, James G.

Patton, president of the Farmers' Union, announced plans for the organization of a "Political Information Bureau," which will operate in rural America much as Sidney Hillman's Political Action Committee functioned in the metropolitan industrial areas in the last presidential campaign. We agree with Mr. Williams' statement that his defeat was the result principally of his belief "that the farmers and wage-earners should be a part of the power structure of American life the political and economic power of the country." But Bourbons never learn and never forget; they fear the people can grasp power whenever they make up their minds to do so but nevertheless act in such a way as to precipitate this very course of action on the people's part. Thus good may come out of the evil of the Senate reactionaries the good of thrusting them from public office and preventing their counterparts from slipping in. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the Patton-Williams group is strong enough and skillful enough to adapt PAC's amazingly effective urban technique to the farmer in the backward states.

In any event, it is likely to take a good deal more time than PAC found necessary. This much can be said, however: the new Political Information Bureau will not die for the lack of a large potential audience. The farm vote yes, including the Southern farm vote can be explosively anti-Bourbon, as has been demonstrated again and again. More often than not, the leaders who set them on fire have been daubed with the tarbrush of intolerance Ben Tillman, Tom Watson, Huey Long but each also had a program for some specific improvement of the status of the exploited and despairing. The sharecroppers know there's something wrong about their spending their lives slaving for kulaks or city slickers, and occasionally follow men who give some promise of taking them out of darkness.

There ought to be a chance for a change in the years immediately ahead. Senator McKellar, for example, comes up for re-nomination in 1946. It will be interesting to watch the development of the rural PAC in the states of Bank-head, Bilbo and their fellow-Bourbons. Jim Pat-ton knows the approach to the farmers in the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain area. Aubrey Williams comes from the old Southeast, the region that is still the nation's Economic Problem No.

1. It is to be hoped that tfieir teamplay will bring light to the little fellow on the farm in the states that have been Bourbon-ized much too long. If the Supreme Court reads the election returns, members of Congress read the war news. This Is the cynical interpretation that must be placed on the milk-and-water labor draft bill that has come out of Senate-House conference. It falls far short of the measure recommended by the President a year ago last January and again in January of this year.

It ignores in essence the pleas of the Secretaries of War and Navy for effective control of civilian man power. Under the compromise, War Mobilization Director Byrnes can prescribe employment ceilings by areas, activities or places of employment, fixing maximum number of workers. Since the bill does not cover all business, but must be applied selectively, we wonder how many battles from now its administrative problems can be solved. The bill also permits Byrnes to regulate the hiring of new workers and to prohibit individuals in particular cases from leaving their jobs. Surely the House bill was no Draconian measure, but at least it put teeth in man-power control by permitting local draft boards to tell registrants to take war jobs or go to jail.

It might be said of the compromise bill that it tells workers, "Boys, if we ever get around to you in the process of bureaucratic selection, we. hope you will keep your war job or else take a slap on the wrist." Congress has taken nearly three months to produce the mouse that now emerges; all the while it has been casting frightened glances over one shoulder at its constituents, then gazing hopefully over the other shoulder at the war news. It has been gambling on V-E day to take the pressure off the demand for man-power control though, after V-E day, we still have a major war to win in the Pacific. That's a bad gamble. If V-E day should come soon, and with it need for a less drastic law than Messrs.

Roosevelt, Forrestal and Stimson think we should have, there is nothing to prevent Congress from relaxing it in the future. If V-E day should not come soon Meantime, the inevitable comparison arises between conscription, which orders a man to put on a uniform and risk his life without any ifs, ands or buts, and a pusillanimous service law that home-front slackers can drive a wagon through. The country is going to be sorry for this wishy-washy congressional attitude when the boys come home and find out what tenderness has been shown to home-front workers while they were getting hell at the front. An Accurate Hitler Forecast fact that numerous Hitler prophecies had gone sour, and that disaster in various forms is rapidly overtaking the Reich, may have caused some Germans to have doubts about the Fuehrer's infallibility. They can quiet their fears now.

Hitler's intuition is in perfect order again, and his latest forecast can't be questioned. Here is what Hitler's journalistic mouthpiece, the Voelkischer Beobachter, has to say about the latest development in the war: Germans may expect the Allies to increase the scope of their airborne landings. The battle will expand in both violence and scope in the next few days. Hans can be sure that this time the Fuehrer knows what he is talking about. 3T Brickbat for Baseballers To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: "Baseball got another break today in a decision by the War Manpower Commission." This is the start of the latest bit of news regarding a ruling which allows a baseball player to leave any war plant and join his team In that very "essential war game of baseball." To me it is a cowardly and disgraceful betrayal of every American mother whose sons are in this war.

God created us alike, one human body being no better or more sacred than another, even if he Is some talented "prima donna" who is able to sock a ball out of the park or cut capers on the bases. Yet the Selective Service boards seem to think differently about a number of these gre American public idols. They judge them weak, puny, partly crippled by bad knees and unfit lor a real man's job of soldiering for Uncle Sam. They classify a lot of them 4-F, and then we should go out to the ball park and see our "hero" play ball. This, coupled with the aforementioned WMC ruling, is a deliberate showing of favoritism.

The so-called "widespread demand" for baseball by the men and boys overseas, as quoted in the news, I term a gross falsification. I charge the "demand" comes, first, from the big interests of baseball, and second, from our Government, which is well aware of the taxes forthcoming. EUGENE E. ENZINGER. kli ROME YESTERDAY THE WORLD What Are They Talking About? The Mirror cl Public Opinion Editor wonders whom the Senators could have in mind as they debate national-service legislation; surely they can't be thinking of the Marines on Iwo Jima, or the soldiers across the Rhine, who are fighting "slavery" too; let Senators pass a real bill, he urges.

John W. Owens in the Baltimore Sun The Negro Wac Affair To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: What is the United States fighting in this war? What are the principles that the Allies are fighting for? I am a Negro mother. One of my eons was killed in the South Pacific. Another son died of wounds in Italy. Another is now fighting in France and Germany.

Another son shot- down several Jap planes. But at Fort Devens, other mothers' daughters are sentenced to a year's hard labor and disgrace because they refused to be discriminated against as Negroes. MRS. MARGARET MOSELAT. Me, Too "We are for the proposed international bank, but we don't like the currency fund." So says the Finance Committee of the U.

S. Chamber of Commerce. In other words, the committee me-toos the report of the American Bankers' Association. Maybe it's just a coincidence that Chairman Hanes of the Finance Committee is a former president of the A. B.

A. Statehood for the Philippines To the Editor of the Thanks for your editorial, "The Bankrupt Islands." It is enlightening as to the economic condition of the Philippines now. I do hope that our American friends especially the daily newspapers the nation, as you have done could realize that such a condition really is the true fact. The glory and success to which Americans are fighting side by side with the Filipinos can be greatly enhanced by the economic rebuilding, and consequently the stabilizing factor, of our "model" democratic form of government which America can be proud of. It would be tragic now to let our early ambition for independence come true at the conclusion of this war, or say 10 years hence, with only a skeleton to begin with.

That makes me suggest, Why cannot the United States embark on a novel experiment by offering the islands membership in the family of states as It is constituted on the mainland? Kirkwood. U. D. ESPEJO. Booh Suppressed by Congress At Last Gets Into Circulation ''American Handbook," Prepared by the Office af War Information.

PubUe Affairs Tress, Wata-Incton. Rarely does it occur, if Indeed It has ever happened before, that a book Is barred from circulation In the United States by act of Congress. The forbidden volume, an OWI production, is now made accessible to American readers only because It Is issued by a commercial publisher. It wasn't that the book was suspected of being immoral or seditious. Its suprj-ea-sion resulted from the congressional storm against OWI two years ago, when its appropriation was finally passed after a prolonged fight, but with a restriction against issuance of any of the agency's literature in this country.

The handbook had a considerable circulation abroad, in OWI out--posts and among foreign officials, commentators and newspaper men, but it was strictly taboo at home. Curiously, wben a few copies turned up In Washington with the label, "Restricted not for distribution in the United States," more fury broke out in Congress. It waa charged that OWI was trying to put something over, and attempting to keep tha American public in ignorance about its work. Elmer Davis, head of OWI, neatly answered these charges by reminding the complaining Congressmen of the restrictions they themselves had Imposed on the agency. He doubtless took delight in showing that OWI was "scrupulously carrying out the mandate of Congress" by keeping the handbook out of American circulation.

No reply from the perturbed statesmen is in the record. As for the book itself. It Is certainly nothing for Congress to worry about. Its SOS pages are a blend of the World Almanac, the Congressional Directory, the Government Manual, the Cambridge History of American Literature and any standard American history. It isn't lively reading, but it carries out pretty well the purpose of enlightening all who want to know about the Government, people, history, resources, culture and war effort of the United States, with plenty of statistics, charts and official documents to point up the story.

Virtually all the material is available in other books, but the OWI's work in collecting it into one volume makes this a handy reference work. Its general circulation without official strings attached should be of service to the public. Furthermore, it should prove to some Congressmen that the harassing and hampering of a highly useful Government agency was a piece of pretty childish business. FERD GOTTLIEB. their own efforts to find a aubstitute for the May bill.

The question Is this: Shall the Congresi move in a straight line between two points or shall it twist and wobble? In the May-Bailey bill, passed by the House, a straight line is drawn between the crisis and the remedy. Shall we move in that straight line? Or shall we move in the twisting and wobbling line drawn by the Senate's Committee on Military Affairs? We hear talk of "slavery" of the workers if, this wobbling line is not followed. We can support the thought of "slavery," it seems, when our young men are ordered to move straight into the inferno of modern battle and no questions asked. But at home, suffering from shortages of cigarettes and sometimes whisky, for which we can still find room in our overstuffed pockets, we must shudder and squirm at the thought of the "slavery" that will be imposed on the workers if we give the Government authority to order them straight into war production. Squirming Under Pressure Some Senators may be squirming In sincere doubt.

Some may be squirming under pressure. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Grange and some other agricultural interests, are all fighting "slavery." Between them, they should bring quite a tide of humanitarian "logic" to bear against "slavery." But some people in this country are like the woman who had enough when the conversation passed from the agony of a mother to the agony of the rationing system. Listening to the squirming Senators, some people would like to straighten in their chairs and ask: "What in hell are you talking about?" Finland's Election Was Free Finland's general election, the first held In Europe since World War II began, is more important because of the way it was held than because the Leftist parties got a slight majority in the National Assembly. This means that victorious Russia did not crack the whip to get a subservient legislature. At the time Helsinki surrendered to Moscow, many conservatives in America expected Finland to be taken over completely by the Russians, after they had held a fake election to give color of consent to the change.

No heed was paid to Kremlin declarations that the U. S. S. R. had no interest in Finland's internal affairs other than to insure security against fifth columnists.

The announcement of new elections was regarded as the beginning of the end. The recent vote shows the groundlessness of these fears. On paper, the radical parties won the control of the Assembly; In fact, the Social Democrats, a light-pink party, won 52 seats while the deep-red Popular Democrats got only 51, the other 97 votes being split among the Agrarian, Conservative, Swedish People's and Liberal parties. Of total votes cast, conservative candidates received about 732,000 votes to the 711,000 cast for radical nominees. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the left-of-center parties haven't a death grip on the Finnish Government so far.

This must be kept in mind when we think about the free election the Big Three have promised for Poland. Many have waved aside as of no consequence the statement of Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin right after Yalta that they intended to see that a fair election was held in Poland. The professional Poles said we were saps and suckers to be fooled by Stalin that way. The same sort of thing had been said about "bleeding Finland." Yet Finland's election was obviously free.

One Month to the Front A small item in the news tells a very big story: hundreds of boats used by Patton's men in crossing the Rhine in the last few days were stacks of plywood in American factories less than a month before. Many of us have been disposed to assume that our small contributions to the war would never be missed, and that supplies flow to the front from so ample a reservoir that we can occasionally take a holiday from pumping in new ones. Those assumptions are dangerous. We never quite know, when we take a day off or join with others in a strike, that we are not having a direct effect on the war effort. In these circumstances, "guessing" that no harm may come of our individual slackness is a calloused and dangerous attitude indeed.

Old Hickory Repeats There's the best of precedent for the way the Thirtieth or Old Hickory Division crushed the Wehrmacht's defensive line east of the Rhine Sunday morning for one of the most brilliant infantry successes of the war. On Aug. 8, 1918 the "black day of the war" for Gen. Luden-dorff its World War I predecessor in title played the principal part in breaking the Hin-denburg Line. Some months ago the mother of a young man, handsome and gentle, trained and competent, received one of those telegrams from Washington which have taken heartbreak into thousands of homes in this land.

The mother found her loss hard to sustain. Two of her friends, women without children, talked of her condition. One said that she quite understood. The war was terrible. Indeed, what with all the troubles of this rationing, Hhe often felt thnt she did not know what to do.

The second woman, usually the soul of courtesy, straightened in her chair and asked: "What in hell are you talking about?" Unfortunately, in larger but similar circumstances, no way seems to be open to put that question directly to the Senate of the United States. But some people would like to know. What are the Senators talking about, nnrt whnt arc they thinking about in debatrng of national-service legislation? Whose "Rights" Concern Them? Are they thinking of those men on Iwo Jima who fave us a revelation, beyond the powers of a Dante or a Milton to describe, of the tortures which human spirit can command human flesh to suffer? Are they thinking of the 45,000 families et home who followed im anguished concentration every scrap of news that came from that small, far-off island where 45,000 Marines were put ashore in low land to overcome an enemy scientifically fortified In caves and dugouts in high ground? Are they thinking of the soldiers who fought their way, house to house, through burning Manila? Are they thinking of the soldiers who pushed their way, in the winter of Northern Europe, through the German defenses west of the Rhine? Or are the Senators thinking of the men and women at home, groaning under the hugest payrolls known on this earth and the hugest profits known on this earth? Are they thinking of the men and women who have crowded the provision stores and the dining rooms of great hotels, the neighborhood bars and the insanely expensive night clubs? Are they thinking of the men and women who have debated the procedure of closing down the race tracks and who have studied the prospects of the stock market? When the Senators talk of "rights," whose have they tn mind? Have they in mind only the rights of people like the woman whose mind passed instantly from contemplation of the agony of a mother to contemplation of her own agony in coping with this "terrible Little Heed of Realities- Little argument is heard as to the reality of the crisis. We must call to the colors this year hundreds of thousands of additional men. But exactly the same conditions which compel us to call up hundreds of thousands of additional men compel us to increase production for war.

This makes a large increase in war workers imperative. We have, therefore, the simultaneous necessities of taking men out of industry and putting more men into industry for war. The only way both necessities can be served is to get men out of secondary occupations and into war work. Next to nothing is heard In controversion of that conclusion. Senators do not deny the reality of the crisis.

They admit the crisis in Children's Code Commission To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: All citizens interested in the children ef our State will now turn their attention to House Bill No. 152, under which will be created a Children's Code Commission. It is imperative that the Governor appoint a committee which will be willing to take time to make a careful analysis of this broad field and bring In recommendations which, when adopted, will give us laws that, will be clear and comprehensive. J. A.

WOLF, Executive Director. Neighborhood Association. nOW RADIO DEFEATS ITSELF From the Clayton Watchman-Advocate. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Is waging a campaign for uninterrupted news programs that should be supported by the public and the radio alike.

There is another source of help, too the advertiser whose product is damaged by the mlddle-of-the-program plug. If a few people would address a postal card or letter to the manufacturer of Bogo's Little Burp Pills and tell him Just how offensive those burps are, the whole business of radio advertising might be cleaned up at the source of the trouble. Radio stations probably never thought up or liked middle-of-the-program interruptions. Sponsors who believe that tomorrow's sun cannot satisfactorily rise unless their product comes up with it are the basic evil. The whole business simmers down to the fact that radio is a commercial venture depending upon advertisers dollars, and that radio managers, even though they know better, allow sponsors who know very little about advertising to defeat their own purposes in the mad scramble to get their name mentioned as 'many times as possible in a 15-minute newscast.

Advertisers, their agents and radio managers should sit down together for a heart-to-heart talk. It should not require a newspaper clamor to correct a situation that is defeating the very purpose behind radio advertising. Doubts About the Legislature Practically everybody wants to give the Missouri Legislature the benefit of the doubt as it prepares to tackle the task of passing the several thousand new laws required to implement the new Constitution approved by the voters last month. It is generally realized that this is a vast undertaking, that it is virtually unprecedented, that careful preparation is necessary in order to do the work right. However, doubts are now beginning to creep into the public mind.

The Legislature isn't getting down to business with the energy and the persistence that are essential. The? long weekend adjournment is still all too popular. A 10-day Easter vacation is being discussed. Obstructionists are beginning to show their heads, and Speaker Howard Elliott of the House, a frequent absentee, is accused of stalling tactics. This Legislature has an opportunity to go down in Missouri history with a record of great achievement.

But It will have to get on the job right away if it Is to realize the people's high expectations. For Peacetime Mobilization To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: I'm all in favor of peacetime military training for the United States, for the continuation of many munitions plants and tank and airplane factories, and everything necessary to make a would-be trouble-maker think twice before making trouble. Then we will be prepared for any emergency. The best peace plan we can offer any nation with aggressive tendencies is to let it know we are always armed to the teeth. Maybe those Jap emissaries were nearsighted peering through their thick lenses, but they were plenty wideawake.

They came, they saw, they saw what they came for, what we were doing with ur iron and Bteel and how strong was our militia. Then they thanked us for food and wine and the information they got, bowed and smirked, went home, and said, "Now we shall strike. America has so little to defend herself with that we hall conquer!" So let's be prepared. If someone stands facing you with a gun, you're not very apt to want to start something with that person. EDITH TABACHNIC.

Equal Taxes on Insurance Missouri-incorporated insurance companies, it appears from testimony so far, favor making their premium receipts subject to the same 2 per cent tax now levied in this State on "foreign" companies. That is excellent. The Supreme Court decision that insurance is commerce seems clearly to require that the states tax all companies alike or tax none, and it would be folly to give up some two or three million dollars now received for the sake of giving less than one-tenth that much continued relief to "home" companies. We do not agree with the Missouri companies that this present necessity for legislative action grows out of a breached State right. It was never intended that the states should enjoy unbridled liberty to discriminate against one another.

Such practices never had any justification except that other states were doing the same thing, creating internal tariff walls to the detriment of everyone's trade and prosperity. Over on the positive side, the very fact that Missouri Saturday Evening Post Murder "Tha Philadelphia Murder Story," by Lrslla Feed. (Charles Bcrlbner's Sons, New York.) When the body of a murder victim was found in the goldfish pool in the lobby of the Curtis Publishing Co. building at Philadelphia, the Saturday Evening Post editors were quite upset. Ben Hibbs, the editor-in-chief, warned that there should be "no talking outside." Jack Alexander had no alibi, but was soon cleared of suspicion.

Practically all the other associate editors whose names appear each week on tha last page of the Post are in the story, but it is a fictional- detective, Col. Primrose, who at last solves the mystery and traps the killer. Leslie Ford has done well with her clever Idea of using real people in the latest of her series about the sleuthing activities of Col. Primrose, Mrs. Latham and Sgt.

Euck. The story itself is a good enough thriller, though a bit involved st times, but it Is th presence of the Pout personalities that puts it among the unusual detective novels..