THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN 'Warm, Isn't It? William L. Shirer I E. K. GAYLQRD. Editor Published Every Morning by THE OKLAHOMA PUBLISHING CO OAYrnnn uroaaway.
Oklahoma City. Telephone 2-1211. Sl gDG t. and Treasurer Day of Freedom! India Independent npHOUOH we Americans, in the mldnt or th 1 summer's heat and our other preoccupations. Edith Johnson A Small Town With Big Idea ONE noon group of men were lunching in the Francis hotel of Dunkirk.
N. a town of about one Of those average American communities where there is neither great wealth nor great poverty. As the men sat around the table the talk turned UDon a short new sinrv thou REPRJ5SEOTATIVJSS Unsolicited arUcte manuscripts, letters and pic- iimy auuiuuiy uu aware oi it. i'Tiuay will be Angeles. sponslbuity for their custody or return.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1947. TWENTY Direct, Push and Drive THE decision of the British Labor gov-A ernment to "direct nenniP intn Mn. had read that morning in the Dunkirk Observer. It was about the French town or Dunkerflue which had been stripped by tho Germans or livestock, tools of every kind, tractors and other motor vehicles, surgical instruments and dental equipment. Having Utile or Some 400,000,000 Inhabitants or ancient India will on Friday suddenly become politically free men and women I That one of the most numerous ol peoples, with 5,000 years of recorded history and a culture as rich as any the world has ever known, should have boon deprived of their political freedom' for nearly two centuries by tho taMdom-lovlng Britons is one of those nuprrmo absurdities (and Injustices) with which the story of human relationships on this planet is so fulL To a considerable extent, of course, the British government has made amends for the Tory Imperialism of the past.
As Prime Minister Attlee tial industries" is no surprise to students like Friedrich Hayek, who, in substance, predicted precisely what is now happening 2" uooiiig ma preaicwon upon trends of three years ago, when the Labor uj wonc wnn tne people were In a sad plight. Somebody at the table recalled that the town of Dunkirk, N. had been named in 1817 by a French trader because, situated as it was on Lake Erie, it reminded him ol the French port on the North Sea. This tale comes to us from Quentin Reynolds who wrote it for Collier's, the text condenspd nnrt party was Decoming strong. In his book.
"The Road to SorMnm i of the puDJisned in the cu Reader's Digest. published In 1944, he described a definite pattern to which any socialist government must conform if it is to remain intact. No matter how volubly its leaders may protest their dislikes for Involuntary servitude or drastic elimination of personal freedom, they must go on to the logical conclusion. If not thrown out of office. First they "direct" labor into the type AFTER all, ft ities," wked ally.
Why don't 3 help those u.y me tuiusiuer most essential. They quickly find that mere "direction" Picking up that suggestion Wallace A. Brennan wrote editorial for the Dunkirk Observer. Thi mght on and began to spread like wildfirp. A committee was formed, its members deciding that the sum of $2,500 could doesn't get the job done, so they are forced to push people around-and tell them in no uncertain terms that they must work at certain tasks, or else! Being equipped with "emergency powers," the inevitable handmaiden of socialism and fascism, they take this momentous step.
From there the next step to straight-out compulsion is merely to Dunkerque. The be raised and chamber of ana the city council chimed in. Any considerable amount of "Dlanned economy" necessitates these gradual but inevuame steps, "it must provide for the actual needs of people as they arise and Then somebody else had a more practical plan. Why not collect the money and invest it in livestock, seed, garden tools, surgical and dental equipment? For what could the people of Dunkerque buy in a land that has been stripped? WALTER MURRAY, Dunkirk's mayor called a mass meeting. Everybody came, representatives of CMC ClUbS, labor unions, business houses, lodges and veterans' organizations, all of whom accepted some share of responsibility.
men cnoose deliberately between them, Not Pretty But Important pHE average person doesn't like to think A much about garbage, dead cats and other offscourings of what we tentatively call "civilization," but when the removers and Tenderers of deceased animals can build up a national business' of $400 millions a year, it deserves attention along with the perfume industry; the production of roast turkey, etc. As a matter of fact, we In Oklahoma City have learned the hard way that we have a garbage problem and that if offensive material isn't quickly removed, it itn- mediately becomes a menace to health. Science enters Into the disposal of all waste material. When asked to define bacteria, an Ingenious college student said: "Bacteria are something that there would be stuff all over the place if there weren't any." He knew that much of the disposal of malodorous material is accomplished by an aerobic bacteria and their various cousins 1 and nephews. City officials learned recently that a chemical called "Chloroben" would im-a mediately stop the offensive odors that have lingered along downtown First street.
The cause of the odor is still uncomfortably present, but at least it it can be said that science has provided relief of a sort. Our city is now engaged In the laud- able project of eliminating the dubious fragrance of the North Canadian river, by Building new sewage disposal plants. This will provide another milestone of progress. In 1946 the nation's heroic men who trucked away executed elephants, cats, coyotes, hullsnakes and other defunct animals not suitable for eating purposes, grossed $400 millions, and probably will equal the record this year. Scientific methods play an important part, but economic factors are equally significant.
The rendering plants saved pounds of grease, more than 64,000,000 hides and other by-products, by utilizing dead animals. A man at Wichita, who is an outstanding civic leader, operates 38 pickup trucks, and they are busy over a broad tributary area. "We regard ourselves as a public service institution," says this man. And he is right. Where Democracy Falters A COMMITTEE of back-seat drivers can't direct the movements of a big modern airplane which has two or three dozen dials on the pilot's instrument board.
So, Instead of a town meeting, we have a temporary dictatorship that of the pilot. But if that dictatorship gets into politics and tries to get a permanent position, then it's time to look out! Steve Stahl, executive vice-president of i the Oklahoma Expenditures council, in a speech here Thursday night, said: I says Hayek. "It must constantly decide questions which cannot be answered by format principles only When the gov ernment decides how many pigs are to be raised or how many buses are to be run, which coal mines are to operate, or at On the very next day, Wallace Qiciiiiuii saia ecaionauy "Never before have we had a chance to play a dlstlnetnshed roU on Leonard Lyons world's stage. We can do maybe Just Dunkerque. Inevitably, we will do $500 Carries Interest For Just Three Seconds Debt Payment mucn more in a spiritual sense fc ourselves.
Let's do more than we ev( believed ourselves capable of doing Thanksgiving, 1946, -was scheduled tional debt for exactly three he's back Ing with his ears, in London, cured." banker, publisher and under secretary of the treasury, recently wrote an ol xjunxerque aay." And what i day it was. For almost everyone ap peared with a gift, large or small. There were all sorts of farm imple uummjr vjteea, me tells of two Britishers meeting at prised when Collier's sent him a $500 ber. Hawkins. "Have von hwni puzzle: Last Christmas Howard Hughes saw the large number of Christmas presents which his friends had given Johnny Meyer.
"Howard cannot understand." said Meyer, "why his friends should give presents to mo instead of to him because I entertained them all at his expense," that he hadn't expected payment and medical and surgical supplies. House- wnat prices snoes are to oe sold; these decisions cannot be deduced from formal principles or (settled for, long periods in advance. They depend inevitably upon the circ*mstances of the moment. In the end somebody's views will have to decide whose interests are more important, and these views must become a part of the law of the land." Mr. Attlee and his associates may dislike being called totalitarlans, but that is the ugly fact of today, and Mr.
Churchill cannot be blamed for indulging in a bit of told you so." Again the Golden Egg -pCONOMlSTS call It "the law of dlmln-124 ishlng returns," and old story-tellers called it "killing the goose that laid the golden egg." but In most respects the two concepts are the same. The 75 percent British film tax levied on American films was presumably imposed so that the British government would get larger revenue, but the only thing that will happen will be that it will get no revenue from this source' at aU, because the tax is confiscatory. Wonder If American high-tax politicians get anything out of that fact. mio tne namt of playing with hi; he had written it us a government happened then?" naked lh a mew ouerwgs 01 toys and gins wrote lo Collier's explaining this hogs were donated. The Elks donated elded to send poor 'Hawkins off to the situation and added that he had the offices of a New York advertising rA 01 tne magazine, 47.
The magazine will start accept- he might have used this money. He continued to play with his earsand it drove him so mad that he completely lost, Ma mHWw ms ed to no less than $100,000. The French ambassador, Henri Bonnet, arrived to receive thein fatmally Charles Boyer was there, too. TTARDLY had the excitement of Fadlman's discussion regarding funds kins," sighed the "Oh, he's all right," said the first. "When he $500 ana ms sccrctury ot state for India recently said in presenting to the commons the fateful 'bill granting independence to India, never before has so large a proportion of the world's population received its political freedom by a voluntary ace and overnight.
rpHAT Great Britain gave India its independ-en Its own free will is a bright page in its history. But historians, I believe, will also record that there was no other reasonable choice as the muddled Dutch will soon learn, to their cost la the East Indies, The British, to be sure, might have held on little longer in India, as the Dutch are trying to do in the Indies, by resort to military oppression. But their days were numbered, and they knew it. The burden was too great for a country so weakened by two World wars. Nationalism in India had become too strong.
And it is to the credi of the harassed labor ministers in London that they realized much more clearly than Mr Churchill that the Asiatic colonial age was dead, and that however bright a jewel in the empire (as Mr. Churchill loved to put it) India may have been, the stuff of empire also was gone jewels and all. Mr. Attlee, by his bold decision to grant India Independence, may have, while sealing the doom of empire, greatly strengthened the British Commonwealth. For the two new nations created in India, the predominantly Hindu Hindustan (with a population Rlone nearly equal to that of tha united States and Russia combined) and tha Moslem Pakistan will be, in the beginning at least-self-governing dominions of the British Commonwealth.
IKE the other dominions they will be free to J- secede. But it is not likely that they will choose to do so in the Immediate future. And as free nations with large populations and great potential resources thoy could Add immeasurabla strength and power to the commonwealth. For the Indians themselves as well as for the British and that handful of us from other western lands who have lived and worked in India, It must still be difficult to realize that India is suddenly to experience freedom this very week. To be sure, successive British governments had been promising India Its eventual independenca for generations.
But there was always a catch la every offer and savage repression followed each natural outburst ot Indian nationalism. The sahibs who hud gone out to India to work ostensibly for her progress always ended by convincing themselves that the Indiana would never be competent to govern themselves. Kipling and a host Of lesser writers mlrrared this great seif-dehuion of the sahib. I myself had gone out to India in 1930 at a fascinating moment of national resurgence and of evil, brutal oppression by the British raj Gandhi's civil disobedience movement, begun by his strange but symbolic march to the sea. to manufacture salt illegally a gesture so hard for a youngster from Iowa to fathom had Inflamed a large part especially the Hindu part of tha subcontinent.
GANDHI had been promptly clapped into jail along with thousands of his fanatical lieutenants, both men and women, and the British believed for a time that they had broken hia powerful national movement. But it was Ilka man trying to hold back the tides of the ocean. The only question was when the tide would burst and sweep the British out of India one way another, violently or peacefully. Looking back at it now, Gandhi's absolute certainty that India's freedom would be won in his own lifetime and that it would be achieved he always insisted it must be, without violence, seems remarkable. At the time I thought he was dreaming.
He seemed to me then, as he does now. the greatest figure of our age. But then all titanic figures in history were dreamers. Under the merciless Indian sun, I used to go for long walks with him. sometimes past the old forts outside of Delhi, when he was negotiating with the viceroy; sometimes along the rutty bullock cart trails in the deep hinterland, far from the roilroads and the modern civilization of the great cities, when he was trudging from village to village preaching civl disobedience, A WEIRD, weazened figure In Ms loin-cloth, but more nimble of foot In his sixties than was your correspondent in his twenties, Oandhl liked to keep up a constant stream of talk as he tripped along.
Most Indians and Indeed most American thought of him as primarily a religious teacher a holy But I Was fascinated by the masterful and practical politician in him despite ail his old-fashioned ideas about spinning and saty-agraha, or "soul-force," He would talk for hours about his tactics in driving toward Indian independence and though his tactics seemed absurd to a westerner who could see for himself tho power of British bayonets to rule India indefi-' nltely, he always seemed to mc to take for granted that before he died his battle would be won and India freed. A man of iron will, intelligence, astuteness and one of the most noble spirits of the ages, Gandhi, more than any other human being is responsible for India's freedom. It was his genius that shaped the rise of Indian "nationalism, aroused a lethargic people, fired them with the hope of freedom and forged a remarkable organization that swept them toward the goal. would pay the Interest xuau ms memory ne lorgot about play. would pay $5,000 a week." "Sorry, Irishman named John McCauliff who nt taice it, replied Fadlman.
Victor Riesel month." 'pw uou a a Piece in a Buffalo newspaper about the needs of the Polish people exclaimed, "Let's helo Poland Goods and money to the value of Union Is Hushing Up Another Expensive Inside Looting Job Churchill visited Moscow he went to the National hotel. Henry Shapiro, the United Press Correspondent came to Churchill's room prepared to guide s.idu,uuu were couected and sent to the Poles. That accomplishment, the Dunkirk Obserwr mmmonforl folks are no different from 'no- I he wanted to talk to' the Prpnrh nm. Then the people of Dunkirk began to observe a change in the community. The well-to-do gave to their own poor his phone number," Shapiro suggest- have just taken in an independent fishermen's union which has annn 000 from an eastern union affiliated r.T.V no- urmrcnui insisted.
ask the operator to get him for gulf coast shrimpers, crabbers, and outfits is being hushed up by some of its national officials, who have been in the strike news these past few aeep sea anglers who own a hotel of the Moscow beat, said that this wasn't trouble subsided. There was a finer community spirit. As John McCauliff said, "The hearts of our people have been defrosted. God has smiled upon us and we have now the best city in America." their own where they relax In Bibxi Miss. The seafarers have also iminn.
another local of this same national ized 60 optometrists and some poultry organization stole anotner quarter of Churchill disagreed and said; "I'll show rmJFZ t0 alk 10 these People-" He lifted the phone and told the operator, in English: "Get me the French ALLACE BRENNAN, writing money for high living in a Four- xne operator mut tered a reply in Russian "T.onir in Baltimore, believing things should be done in style, has purchased three shindigs, only a few blocks away from the White House, made the Johnny I say," said Churchill, "no use talking "trulls ior its organizers there. know it. But a small town can set Then he waited. The operator "found someone who understood English, lething big in motion. All we want do Is to promote neighborllness.
CIO will back Harry Truman for re the French Embassador T1X. Emll Rieve, a highly competent and skilled union uresldent with mmn America that feel as we do were to election and the AFL will split with a CHATTER: Mary Martin's daugh- it Dewey if he's nominated. Meanwhile spokesman on all economic matters. "ie exception of the really is whipping its propaganda into spenk well of him which makes him Hiiaiii: a no soon win aistriouto uuto stricken community in Europe the map is dotted thickly with such. And steter, in the road tour of "Annie Get Your Gregory Peck will appear with a number of Hollywood film stars at La Jolht Playhouse In ft performance for the benefit of 'the Runyon Fund.
Chic Farmer, the Ts bv j0hnny i ncense piaie attachments reading practically the only figure to enjoy it would be nice" as Mr. Brennan has aid, to have branches of the Dun- buck to PAC." Incidentally, PAC is swinging into Canada. Some 45 Canadian CIO leaders met in Port Roy- people helping others who have not Wednesday, it was decided that the for keeping an El Morocco photo out of the newspapers, was so Dlensi-rt 1 uiijAHMinc Dusmess at the National CIO convention would u.un. iiao icameu iremenaous vsiiKc uu uiKttiuziaoion ana politics, this publicity that he sent Mover a $100 check last week. Ullle sailed to England last week Labor's well rid of its biggest thief and extortioner.
Joe Fay, who in his prime as vice-president of the Inter- operate. Far from having been 1m- rpHE AFL's new National Farmers greatly enriched, Quentin Reynolds union, Dacicea by the tough and the tougher boilermakers spent as much as $2,800 a night for a luuicuea materially as well Lillie started to repair it. "Are you sure you can do it?" Miss Lillie was asked. She said: "If it isn't a watch lecruiMng neavuy in California's fruit sectors the John Steinbeck countrv Tho rTr 4. haps this writer's neighbor knew what of this union voted 6 to 2 to drop if hi it Wilson observatory, 1 ne was talking about when he said recently, never knew a real giver building good-sized railroad divi- "Government has become too complex for the individual citizen, working alone, to keep himself adequately informed.
On the other hand, he must be adequately informed because government has become too costly to leave to haphazard development." Take the matter of taxes. The citizen may think he controls taxation through his delegate in congress but it has come so that a large part of our taxes comes in indirect form. Stahl said there are 67 different taxes woven in the tie he wears, 164 different taxes in a cake of soap, and when a family eats one loaf of bread a day, it pays a yearly tax of $7.50 through indirect levies. All these have been levied in hundreds of roundabout ways by an ever-increasing bureaucracy at Washington. Gallup's recent polls disclose that the average American citizen is badly befuddled.
Even college graduates fall down in naming European countries by references to a map minus names. That's saying nothing about their knowledge of those countries. Yet we are egotistically calling ourselves "global-minded!" Only 10 to 15 percent of the people know anything specifically good or bad about the Taft-Hartley law, yet they express their views of that law quite freely. Mr. Stahl's first statement explains everything.
Bureaucracy has muddled things so badly by the very magnitude of its operations that it has made true democracy impossible. The only way we can Recover that true democracy is to interfere before it's too late, and streamline our whole government down to where everybody can understand it. India Is Free Or Is It? pODAY is India's first day of freedom, A in a complex sort of way. On this day there is a division between the India of the Hindus and the part that is called Pakistan, being the portions in which the Moslems predominate. One would naturally think that on such a day.
comparable to our own Fourth of July, the people of the liberated land one of the two most heavily populated countries on earth would engage in prayers of thanksgiving and peaceful speeches about the abolition of tyranny, in the shade of banyan trees, with potato salad, sandwiches, ice cream and cake to commemorate the momentous event, signifying independence of British rule. On the contrary, however. In some places the day is hailed with riots, bloody murder on the public square, and extraordinary violence of all kinds. The press dispatches do not tell what the people of India are fighting about, so it's a bit confusing to the occidental observer. Probably the most confused people of all are those who have been saying that we are now entering an era in which everybody on earth satisfied to participate in a world In which frictions between uauoos art automatically eliminated in a -world reign of law." president.
But they're still keeping It No Difference PRESIDENT TRUMAN is said to view a special session of congress with great distaste. Under present circ*mstances he doesn't like any session of congress, for that matter. The Gallup Poll Everybody Heard About the Saucers PRINCETON, N. Aug. 14 Now that the uproar over the "flying saucers" has subsided it Is a good tune to take a look at what the general public thought about them.
In the Ilrst place the results of publicity received by the discs would have been the answer to a press agent's prayer. Nine out of 10 Americans have heard about the phenomena, which were first reported June 25. As a test of the public's knowledge about current events, thii looms very large indeed and places the saucers on a par with Orson Welles' "Invasion from Mars," the Loch Ness monster and Tom Thumb golf. As an indication of how the saucer story spread, it need only be pointed out that at the same time only about half the people had heard about the Marshall plan, and only 61 percent had heard or read about the Taft-Hartley labcr bUl. Among college graduates only 2 percent said they had not heard of the saucers, while 17 percent of those with grammar school education or less were ignorant of the subject.
TITHEN It comes to having an idea what the VY "celestial crockery" really was, answers that people give are divided among (1) no idea at all; (2) imagination or hoax: (3) something real. "What do you think these saucers are?" No answer, don't know 33 Imagination, optical Illusion, mirage, etc 29 Hoax 10 S. secret weapon, part of atomic bomb, etc 15 Weather forecasting devices 3 Russian secret weapon 1 Searchlights on airplanes 2 Other explanations 9 102 Adds to more than 100 percent because some gave more than one answer. Guesses ranged all the way from the practical to the miraculous. Among the latter was a woman, citing Biblical text, who said it was a sign of the world's end.
A man in the west thought the discs were radio waves from the Bikini atomic bomb explosion, while another man saw in them a new product being put out by the "DuPont people." A PEW people sinelled a publicity or advertising stunt, while others felt sure that the saucers were after aU only some kind of meteor or comet. Further study, ol earlier "information" polls shows that the 90 percent who know about the saucers compare with the eight out of 10 voters who last January did not know what the Wagner act contained, the 51 percent who couldn't tell what "balancing tha federal budget" means. A recent event which approached the saucers in penetration of public conseiousneM was the Georgia governors battle last winter of which 84 percent of the people had heard. sion called the United Railroad Work EXCHANGE: When Lady Astor mind a prosperity that is material as Reuther's top lieutenants, Emll Mazeyi old Virginia home, "Mirrodor" which wen spiritual tne second often comes before the first appears. Tile strangest things do happen to labor: My friends over at thp Jlwnea i' ner niece, Mrs.
Donald Tree she cabled Mrs. Tree: out for a third party: He is generally I Elizabeth for her honeymoon." CeSS muniste recently strengthened theii" SPARKS OF LIFE By Chas. Kuhn which apparently is friendly to De- nntnuvn, IH NEXT TIME apent $200,000 trying' to defeat Jef- -uu," -uaoy Astor this reply: "Have offered 'Cliveden' to Mr Truman for Christmas." AMITY! This is why one of our foremost playwrights has taken a vow never again to meddle In the domestic disputes of any of his friends: From POOLIC FOR MINOR TRAFFIC -flOLE INFRACTIONS. OFFICER. IP you WANTA SHOW MOW TOOGH HEALTH NOTES: Auto union lovely ironies of history, by a well-meaning I you ARE, HUNT yp 50MC KCAC CRIMINAL? TO last week, hurt leg ligaments and ran 2 1 nu SM WJln the isband and listened to his denuncia-3iis of his wife.
From 4 p. m. until AND ANOTHER THINS I I -I tne 1 outnt rrom his bed for a while. National labor relations board chairman Paul Herzog is 111 In Now York mwi me wue and listened At 0:15 the playwright went to The 1 jjinxny reumo must be weak, Stork club where, five mlnufps latnr Sn un the rfhf Ttlf hUStmnd mk TK2 LOAN: Last week Judge Sam Lelbo- places and restaurants'how many mu- to visit the bishop," Romanoff had 11 I Berle and learned that mass employ yutiiets wnen ne started ment goes into the gags and shows behind the comedians who make the glorified' debating society to encourage? w'Huma put it, "tho consolidation of the union between England and India." UNDER Gandhi's expert hand and helped by another great man thrown up by the turmoil Jn India. Jawaharlal Nehru, and by Val-labhbhal Patel, an Indian Jim Farley, it became the most formidable revolutionary organization of Asia and easily the largest and most powerful political party in India.
Had it not been for the congress, the British would not be pulling out tof India on Friday. It will completely dominate the new state of Hindustan, or India, as the Congress prefers to call it, The congress is predominantly Hindu. Most Moslems are grouped in an organization which b-camo formidable only in the last few years, the Moslem league, created almost single-handed by another Important Indian leader. Mohammed Alt Jlnnah, a brilliant, very westernized lawyer of Bombay, who once was a leader in the congress but who now hates it and fights it with a venom exceptional even in India. But about him and the two free nations which'1 are to bo carved out of India Friday and what they face in the future and what the medieval like Indian princes facc-pcrhaps I can get in a few words next week.
in four unions the Radio Directors American Federation of Radio Artists and the musicians union are involved in Berle's half-hour show. After three months of negotiations, the Radio Writers' guild finally signed a union shop with major broadcasting networks. Georee Heller, ffenful la uuu. iiicn ne aDsent-mmdodly purchased an evening paper for 3 cents After his visit with the bishop was over. Romanoff suddenly realized that he had only 3 cents left not enough for subway fare.
He started to walk back to Manhattan, but realized he couldn't make it. He approached a cop outside tho Brooklyn Paramount, confessed his financial distress, and asked for the loan of 2 cents. Tho cop recognized him and gavo him 7 cents. "No Two cents will be sufficient," Mike insisted. "Take the 7 cents," the vo oe AOte "tell off-a fcw 8TMt PEOPLE WE KNOW Am MAKC 'STICK if this AFL union is set to lobby liere I Jockey shows.
1 Wrong train.".
