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EDITORIAL PAGE
La Grande Evening Observer
Frank Schlro, Publisher
WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUNE 6, 1915
And It's About Time!
EVENING OBSERVER'S
PROGRESS PROGRAM
IRRIGATION Complete the Grande
Ronde Valley irrigation project.
LA GRANpE A city of 10,000
Extend 'the city limits.
TODAY'S TEXT
Kor God Rivoth to n man that is good
in his sight wisdom, and knowledge,
and joy: but (o the sinner he giveUi
travail, to gather and to heap up, that
lie may give to him that is good before
God. This also is vanity and vexation of
spirit. Kcelesiastes 2 :2(i.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
These riches are posses.s'd, but no
enjov'd! Homer.
Our Community Cannery
With food supplies in the nation de
clared tighter today than for n year, it
becomes imperative that some commun
ity action be taken to retain the com
munity cannery in our city and county.
In the two seasons of its operation
nearly 00,(1(10 cans were processed by
several hundred county families. That
tin's did much to alleviate the food situa
tion is obvious. In addition, the can
nery has provided housewives with an
opportunity to practice some of the
finer arts of homemaking.
The cannery hitherto has been oper
ated as a cooperative affair between the
war food administration and the I.a
Grande public schools through the voca
tional education system.
The school system has announced it
self as perfectly willing to continue to
provide the teaching staff, sponsorship
ami maintenance for the project, but the
government insists it be housed per
manently as a condition of allowing it
to remain here. Immediate action is
Funny Business
'A lilllo over-drip attachment to proven) those Icrritit iquctkS ,i
while lit ' practicing!"
Page Two
necessary as many other communities
have already made application for sim
ilar projects as soon as they became
available.
The cannery can be located anywhere
in the community, but a building with
boiler and water must hp provided for
housing. To meet similar -situations'
Corvallis and Myrtle Point constructed
permanent housing for their units.
Equipment consists of three 200
quart size pressure cookers, three cool
ing vats, specially built canning tables,
four electricnlly controlled sealers and
other miscellaneous articles.
It has been suggested that if no other
convenient means of housing can be
acquired, the city and county govern
ments can cooperate in the construction
of an expensive unit for permanent
housing.
Loss of the cannery will be n loss to
this county. It is our hope that some
means of holding it here can be found.
Infantry Day is
June Fifteenth
On June 1", 10 I I, the army and
citizens cooperated in the celebration of
the first Infantry Day. This June 15
will mark Infantry Day II. During those
12 months the war has taken n deci
sive turn. G e r m a n y as a military
liower has, for the time being, been de
feated. Some day the full story of that
achievement will be told. When it is
told, the longest, though not necessarily
the most glamorous chapter in it wiil
deal with the weary, heroic, anonym
ous, unshaven, griping, determined foot
soldier. It's the infantryman who takes the
hiss and holds the hill and dies holding
it. It's the infantryman who mops up
and occupies. It's the infantryman
who, when all the scores are added up,
wins the war.
o SO THEY SAY
In such a world community of
machine pr iduetion, it is impos
sible that any nation henceforth
can live in isolation.
William I. Clayton, assistant
secretary of state.
Civil avi itior. is sure tn be a
great thins. It will step up tre
mendously because the war has
shown the possibilities of trans
ocean flying.
William S. Jack, Cleveland in
dustrialist. Wo do not propose to ask for
more aucr.ft than are ncevssary
for success1 -.il prosecution of the
war.
lien. II. It A'nolil, roimmuriler,
army air lorccs.
Wow is :t possible that ttwy
have been able to forget to this
extent all t!ie services I have ren
dered? Marshal II nri-Philippe Petaiti,
to stand trial for treason in
Funcc.
Washington Merry-Go-Round
Br DREW PEARSON
WASHINGTON Despite all the ballyhoo
about grandiose plans for the trial of war
criminals, the real (not is that, as of this
writing, not one Nazi has been listed for
trial by the American section of the war
crimes commission. ,
The British have proposed names. The
Russians have gone ahead with an undeter
mined number. And the United States army
has tried and punished Various Nazis who
committed crimes against American soldiers.
But not one name so far has been listed by
the United States section of the war crimes
commission under United States Supreme
Court Justice Robert Jackson.
Furthermore, at a secret meeting held in
Washington a few days ago, Justice Jackson
would not be pinned down to conviction of
any large group of Nazis, such as the ges
tapo or SS elite. guard, before Christmas. He
even said he wasn't sure they wore guilty
under International law.
How peculiar the whole runaround regard
ing the trial of Nazi war criminals is, has
just been emphasized in a confidential report
to the White JSouse by Herbert Bell, former
minister to Portugal and Hungary and until
recently Unitc4 States chairman on the war
crimes commission.
Mr. Bell reveals in his report that some
state department officials did not agree with
him that Hitlerites who beat up and killed
victims because, of their religion should be
considered guilty of war crimes. Bell took
a vigorous stand on this and eventually his
differences with the stute department caused
him te be euchred out of the war crimes
commission.
Naii-U. S. Cartels
Not much has been in the papers about it,
but a significant lawsuit is now being fought
out in New York between the United States
government and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
It involves 2000 German patents, which the
justice department claims were turned over
to Standard by the Nazis for safe-keeping
during the war. The government has seized
them and Standard is suing to get them back.
The patents are some of the most valuable
in the entire war effort, including those for
making synthetic rubber, which Standard
Oil held back from the American public for
a year and a half after the -war started in
Europe. ' -
WE, THE WOMEN
Br RUTH MILLETT
The short news item that told about a man
being fined $10 by a six-man jury for being
cruel to at rat,. raises the question of whether
or not the American mind will ever know
how to cope' with the Nazis, jiow that they
are conquered.
The man fined for cruelty allegedly
trapped a rat and tied him to a tree, so that
his two cats eoUld practico rat catching.
Maybe it wasn't a pretty sight. But if a
man's abode is infested with rats a loath
some animal without any lovable or redeem
ing qualities it seems as though he might
use any method possible to get rid pf them.
But a rat tied up in the sentimental
American mind isn't a rat at all, but a fel
low creature that deserves fair play and a
sporting chnce.
That kind of sentimental bosh makes us
lose sight of the fact that a rat, trapped, is
Behind Scenes in Washington
By PETER EDSON, La Grande Evening Observer Washington Correspondent
SAN FRANCISCO With some 40,000 to
45,000 native born American of Japanese ex
traction still to be released from war reloca
tion authority centers in the west, the prob
lem of refitting these U. S. citizens into ci
vilian life is being looked on with growing
concern. They have perfectly good legal and
constitutional rights, yet because the United
States is still at war with Japan there are
some elements of the population who seem
to believe that anyone of Japanese ancestry
must be kicked around.
In the first five months of 1045 there have
been 70 "incidents" of threats or terrorism
against Japanese-Americans who have at
tempted to return to their pre-war homes
after being released from the war relocation
authority centers. S'xly-fivc of the inci
dents have been in California.
Nineteen of these cases have involved
shootings. Ninety per cent of the shootings
have been in four central California coun
ties Merced. Fresno, Madera and Tulare.
None of the shootings have been fatal but
there have been several near misses, an at
tempted dynamiting, several cases of setting
fire to houses in which the Japanese-Americans
were living, labor disturbances in which
men refused to work alongside descendants
of Japanese, and a number of visits by local
citizens who have threatened bodily harm
to the Japanese-Americans if they remained
in the areas where they formerly lived or
now wish to take up residence.
The significant thins about al' these inci
dents is that there h.ive been nfl convictions
of the offenders. In the few cases that have
been brought to trial the accused have been
set free or giv-n suspended sentences.
W. R. Cozzens. deputy director of the war (
relocation authority in charge oi its western
operations throughout the war, looks upon
these incidents as the possible beginning of
hut he calls,' ' local option on citizenship."
Cozzens himself is a rative Californian
and probably the most experienced of all
VRA officials m dealing with the problems
of American citizens of Ji-panese extraction.
So there is no long-distance, social workers'
mollycoddling in his point of view. '
In themselves the 70 incidents may not be
considered Uttibly impoitant, says Cozzens.
' I
One of the most significant pieces of'evi
dence is a letter taken from the company's
own secret files, dated October 22, 1939, a
little over a month after the war started.
Standard's Frank Howard had gone to Hol
land to arrange various deals with I. G. Far
ben. This is the Nazi cartel with which Stan
dard formed its patent partnership.
The letter, signed by Howard, told how he
arranged to take over Nazi patents and hold
them, apparently for safekeeping, even if the
United States came into the war. Howard
reported: , .?.
"Purusant to these arrangements, I was
able to keep my appointments in Holland,
where I had three days of discussion with
the representatives of the I. G. They deliv
ered to me assignments of some 2000 foreign
patents and we did our best to work out
complete plans for a modus vivendi which
would operate througli the war, whether tha
United States came in or not."
If this document is not sufficiently con
vincing, however, the justice department has
another ace up its sleeve. The United States
army has captured three high-ranking offi
cials of I. G. Farben in Germany, President
Hermann Schmitz and Managers Max Ilgner
and Dr. August von Knierim. Their testi
mony, if given, may be veiy interesting.
Not only are many industrialists watching
the Standard Oil suit to see whether they
get the I. G. Farben patents back but, ac
cording to Attorney General Biddle, several
companies are already negotiating with Ger
man industrialists to work out new cart'-d
deals for after the war. .
' Capital Chaff
When a newsreel tried to get Representa
tive Clint Anderson (secretary of agriculture-to-be)
to pose with a pitchfork or on a
tractor, the genial Anderson declined, "I
remember when Cal Coolidge posed in a ten
gallon hat," he said. "You can't do that to
me. I'm just an insurance man" . . . AP re
porter Ed Kennedy, the boy who broke the
armistice story ahead of his pals, got chided
by the capital branch of the newspaper
guild, "Kennedy should come to Washing
ton," he was told. "With the vast number
of advance 'hold for release' stories here, it
should take no time at all for him to make
Richard Harding Davb look like a cub when
it comes to getting scoops.''
just a rat and what becomes of him doesn't
matter, so long as he isn't allowed to live
and reproduce his kind.
And so is a defeated and captured Nazi
a Nazi still. Let's hope that our sentimental '
pity for anything caught or capture won't
let us forget that or start talking about com
passion and fair play.
An American editor, back from a tour of
German concentration camps, has declared
that the whole German people should be
held responsible for war atrocities, and that
until we have eliminated the German gen
eral staff, we'' are going to have the seeds
of another war.
Undoubtedly that is a hard-headed, prac
tical, sane view of the matter. But will we
cany it through we, a people who can be
so sentimental and forgiving that we wopy
over what becomes of a captured rat?
yeari
but if this kind of terrorism is allowed to go
unchecked; it can easily lead to excesses.
Hitler got his start, Cozzens points out, by
sanctioning abuses against one group of native-born
German citizens. First they were
deprivd of, their citizenship and denied its
rights, Then there was terrorism against
them and -confiscation of their property.
These abuses grew until they became the
atrocities committed against the Poles, the
Dutch and all the German-enslaved people
of central Europe.
The time to check such violation of the
rights of citizenship is obviously before the
practice gets out of hand. None of the vic
tims of the 70 incidents has been a Japanese
citizen that could in any way be classified
as an alien enemy. Some have actually been
discharged U. S. servicemen. All have been
American-born citizens who happen to have
had Japanese ancestor!.
Analysis of the motivation behind the in
cidents reveals several curious factors. Only
a few of the acts of terrorism have been
committed by outright hoodlums, though
such incidents have been perhaps the worst.
In a majority of the cases there has been
a motive of selfish economic gain, the per
petrators being other American citizens who
have been profiting by war-time operation
of land or property boloneing to the Japanese-Americans,
while the owners were de
tained in war relocation centers. As soon
as the rightful ow ners return to reclaim and
resume possession of ;heir property or their
jobs the trouble begins to brew.
Another curious fact is that there appears
to be little real resentment against the peo
ple coming from the relaction centers by the
families of service men ot by the service
men 4,'iemsi .-es. American soldiers and
marines who have been taught and have nat- '
ural reasons to hate tnd kill all Japanese
might be expected to be hostile towards Japanese-American
civilians, but aren't. Th-;
reason is simply tha over 10.000 of those
American born citizens of Japanese extrac
tion have made combat re-ords in Italy kind
France and in the army intelligence services
in the Pacific of which any American soldier
or sailor who knows the facts can well be
proud.
Side Glances
f i
ftm
tOPft. IMS 8Y ZM SERVICE. IHC. T. M. t U. tKt. OTT.
V I
"My horoscope says this is a good day for important meetings,
but I wish we had time to sit dow.a in comfort while we tell
each other our troubles!"
O McKENNEY ON BRIDGE
By WM. E. McKENNEY, America's Card Authority
COURAGE IN OPENING
BRINGS SEVEN ODD
In the recent southeastern sec
tional championships in Miami,
Ned Tobin, the league's first sec
retary, and I ware pressed into
the game at the last minute to
fill out a table and at the end of
Tobln
AAKQJ10
V J 10 8 7 5
J42
A None
Duplicate Both vul.
South West North East
1 A Pass 2 N. T. Pass
3 V Pass 4 A Pass
Opening K. 1
the three sessions of play, were
out in fiont. I-,got quite a thrill
out of winning with Ned. He is
one of the old-time fine bridge
players end winning a major
championship at around 80 is
Questions & A nswers
Q Who is the heir apparent
to the throne of Iraq?
A Prince Abdul Ilah, regent
of Iraq, and di-ect descendant of
the prophet Mohammed.
Q President Truman recently
set up a special division for home
food supply as part of the war
food administration. Who heads
it?
A Paul C. Stark, Louisiana,
Mo.
. Q-
When is Father's Day this
Sunday, June 17.
What color pennant indi
cates the aoproach of a storm at
sea from the northwest?
A A red pennant below a
square red flag with black center.
Q At what altitude do cirrus
clouds occur?
A At 30,000 feet or above,
just at the base of the strato
sphere. This Curious World
o
r
A9875
V AQ9
A93
K 109
432 I N IAS
VK2 VV E 643
KQ108 a 765
862 Dealer J7!"
VVMiCH IS THE CAPITAL OF
iWirzEBLAMD y
i i m&Kf
G WATER SNAKES
AWCSS T"E LE42IN&
DBiTT?OEeS SAV.E FiSH.
ANSWER: Bern, not Geneva, as commonly believed.
NEXT: What ij a Louisiana marh hare?
67
quite a stunt. I . will look for
ward to defending with him next
year. ,,
He certainly got he maximum
out of today's hand. On the
opening lead, he had the choice
of making a safety play and re
fusing to win the first diamond,
or going up with the first ace and
trying for seven odd. Ned is no
coward, wd up with the ace he,
went. He then pulled a small
club from dummy. East' went in
with the ace, which Tobirijrump
ed. Now he took three rounds of
trump, finessed the heart. One
losing diamond was discarded on
the king of clubs and , tKet other
one ruffed for seven odd.
P IN FORMER
YEARS !K .
10 Years Ago
Sherman Harer ol La Grande
was graduated with the class of
1935 from Oregon State'collego
at -Corvallis, . where -he -f(jored
"inT?lei!trtFalrfgte
affilinted with ThetajXi. His
mother, Mrs. W. S. Harer,-ttend-
ed the graduation exercises..
Miss Donna Feik went to Rex
burg, Idaho, to join her sister and
brother-in-law and accompany
them to Salt Lake City.
A. W. Nelson and family left
for Portland to witness the Rose
Festival.
15 Years Ago
Two hundred dollars were do-'
nated to the La Grande munici
pal band by the American Legion
post to pay expenses on the
contest trip in July.
Mrs. W. H. Bohnenkamp, Mrs.
Chester Newlin, Mrs, F. S. Ivan
hoe, Mrs. Anna Pollick and Mrs.
Chase Bohnenkamp drove to
Baker to visit Mrs. C. Bohnen
kainp's mother, Mrs. R. Johnson. .
30 Years Ago ,.
Miss Irma Martin, daughter of
J. H. Martin, storekeeper for the
O.-W. for many years, (and Miss
Nell Kenneda, daughter of an
old-time employe of the company,
were chosen by the railroad to b4
its guests at the Portland Rose
festival.
Pouring of cement into the
framework about the city reser
voir was started, on a project to
increase its capacity .bjrf almost '
one-half. ,., r