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About La Grande evening observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1904-1959 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 12, 1945)
Side Glances Washington Merry-Go-Round EDITORIAL PAGE La Grande Evening Observer Frank Sohiro, Publisher WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 12, 1945 Page Two Many Things Can Happen While One Is Vacationing TODAY'S TEXT And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make mimy prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Isaiah 1:15. 2tett;ing; Acquainted -w-iwi tne daps We began the war against Japan with an appalling lack of understanding and interest concerning our enemy. The end of the war finds those deficiencies only slightly remedied among the stay-at-homes. What knowledge civil ian America has acquired has been sup plied by the Japs themselves in a series of painful lessons. It now seems necessary that those lessons continue. Americans in and out of government might well bono up on Japanese history economy, character and thought. With the help of the press there should be plenty of opportunity to acquire some belated knowledge, if we only take heed. We were fooled by Japanese indus trial capacity and by Japanese military efficiency and long-range planning. Wo laughed at the little buck-toothed, be spectacled Jap soldiers. We thought that because the allied high command chose to "beat Hitler first," the Jap anese war was a secondary matter. A lot of things corrected these mis conceptions. Among them were the scries of sweeping Jap conquests from t ho Aleutians to the approaches of Australia, and the fantaically deter mined defenses of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo and Okinawa. And we are still learning, as occupy ing forces uncover new fads within the Japanese homeland itself. They have discovered the elaborate defenses of the Tokyo area that would have made a Japanese invasion perhaps the bloodiest operation of its kind in history. They have learned from rescued pri soners a depth of Japanese cruelty which matches the bestiality of Himm ler and his kind, and the barbarism of Dachau and Uuchenwald. They have heard and we at home have read stories of torture, starvation, incessant beat ings and criminal neglect which disclose an insatiable sadistic appetite on the part of soldiers and civilians alike. This much at least we have learned of the baffling, ambitious, proud, half savage people who, having been de feated, must now be trained to 'live in a World that likes to think of itself as civilized. There will be more to learn of the recent enemy who still shows himself to be deceitful, dishonest and vindictive. There may be many redeeming qual ities in the native Japanese which will show themselves in time. But before that happens their minds must ho freed from the shackles of a feudalists, emperor-worshiping society which persis ted throughout the country's economic modernization. That process is going to take under standing, tact and firmness. It will be accompanied for a long time by danger. Meanwhile the American people, helped by returned servicemen who have known the Japs at first hand, can ac tively strive to rescue themselves from the ignorance which once gave rise to an almost fatal complacency. Funny Business 1 IS ' CO,l IM) I. M)tt 0)1 o SO THEY SAY The ninny problems accruing through our transition from war time economy to one of peace cannot be solved successfully if the 48 state legislatures adopt widely conflicting or competing methods of assistance and con trol. Gov. Walter E. Edge of New Jersey. The United States stands alone among the great powers as still firmly committed to individual initiative in the economic field. Honolulu Stur-Bulletn. Knowledge has become so vast that no one mind can compre hend it, and it is well for a per son to content himself with com petence in one great field. Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, president, Vassar college. "To keep other patrons' moulhi from watering we had one ttoak! Mexico is awake and Mexico w ill carry on her revolution. Manuei Avila Camacho, pres ident o Mexico. Br DREW PEAKSOIf WASHINGTON Even the army's friends on Capitol Hill say the brass hats are kill ing any chance for public support they might have had by their autocratic disre gard for eivilion needs in such fields as coal mining, steelmaking and railroading. One of the busiest railroads in the coun try today is the Southern Pacific, which has handled most of the cast-west traffic to the busy port of San Francisco. The S. P. is a single-track line able to carry its huge vol ume only by scheduling trains at 10-minute intervals round the clock. In order to main tain this schedule, it requires a huge crew of crack trainmen, repair men and other skilled workers. It has done pretty well even in the past year, although there was a recent bottleneck near El Paso which re sulted in the holding up of 75 trains. Southern Pacific officials have been beg ging the army to release skilled railroad men with the 80 points required for dis charge, or to furlough railroad men in this country with less points. ....... , Finally in mid-summer the army agreed to release 4,000 railroad men, with 2,400 of them assigned to the S. P. But then the army began going back on its promise and said it could discharge only 1,300 men. A few weeks ago, the army released 230 men to the Southern Pacific and said no more were available. The joker is the 24,000 men have gone into the armed forces from the S. P. employment roster. , Finally, war mobilizer Snyder stepped in and forced the army to release 4,000 rail road men, amidst loud squawks from brass hats that this action would destroy morale. Here is one illustration of how the dis charge of high-point veterans was being bold back in the army in this case Mor rison Field, at Palm Beach, Fla. Morrison Field happens to be under the command of Col. Richard T. Knight, the pilot who flew Wendell Willkie around the world and who als flew Henry Wallace through Siberia to china. Colonel knight is 32 years old and an ex cellent pilot. And apparently he liked the army which, considering his age and rank, certainly has treated him well. So he thinks enlisted men should stay in .the a.rmy. Joo, i For on Aug. 21, when Colonel Knight got, orders from Washington that all 85-point men should be discharged regardless of their technical specialty, t h e 32-year-old com mander hit the ceiling. The rest of the day he .spent burning up the wires to Wash ington, contending he could not operate if he discharged 85-point men. Many men at Morrison Field, who had not done one real day's work a week, were fu rious. Colonel Knight is supposed to repair planes brought back from India for the air transport command. But enlisted' men say his operation is so disorganized they are idle half the time and some of the planes have to be flown all the way to Long Beach for repairs instead. . . Capitol Chaff When radio station WOL, Washington, advertised for. a new radio personality to broadcast a news program to be known as "the Voice tit- Washington," a Latjn-Amer-ican diplomat, and a representative of the French government were among the large number of important government personnel, cab drivers, theater managers, servicemen and others who responded. Francisco Banda, until recently Ecuadorean consul-general in New Orleans, was one of the applicants. President Truman will soon issue a state ment favoring federally-sponsored seientif is research . . . The' British plan to help occupy Japan with a division composed of top English officers, enlisted men from Can ada, Australia and South Africa, has been knocked into a cocked hat by the Canad ians. So now English officers will command Australian and South African troops with the Canadians absent. On Pennsylvania Avenue Army training films and educational films, which were being burned until this column exposed the practice last May, Will now be distributed among the nation's schools. Along with them will go millions of dollars worth of surplus projection equipment, sound equipment and other apparatus bound to have a great effect on the little red school house of the future. Valuable army radio equipment will also be offered the schools WE, THE WOMEN By RUTH MILLETT Paris has made an unconventional conces sion to the current housing shortage, which apparently is as bad there as in the over crowded cities in the United States, The Paris Court of Appeals has ruled that divorced couples can continue living under the same roof so long as ono of them is un able to find separate quarters. That sounds like good, practical common sense. ' ' A man and woman Who once lived as man and wife ought to be able to share a house or apartment without difficulty. For unlike most people who are forced to share the same roof with others because of a housing shortage the divorced couple already know the worst about each other. The woman knows the man's taste in ra dio programs and whether or not he plays the contraption far into the night. The man knows whether or not the woman hangs her washed and dripping unmention ables all over the bathroom. And she knows whether or not he hangs up his towels and scrubs the tub. It is such petty things that make trouble between apartment mates. Furthermore, if the two are amiable a shared roof could work out advantageously for both. In return for the woman's contin uing to look after the man's laundry, pcrr ' haps even cntinuing to cook his nieals, he' could mow the lawn and fix leaky faucets and do other such odd jobs about the house. With the "help" situation being as bad as the housing shortage, that ought to be. quite a consideration. Only trouble is, it will probably be hard for the average couple, used to the casual or complete lack of manners in marriage, to start treating each other with- deference and consideration without which no two persons not tied by the bonds of holy wed lock can manage to get along under one roof. Behind Scenes in Washington By PETER EDSON, La Grand Erenlng Oheerrer Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C For a true gauge of the difference between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, get out Roosevelt's message to the first session of 79th congress last January and compare it with Truman's message to the second ses sion eight months later. There wasn't anything in Truman's mes sage that Roosevelt hadn't advocated be fore. But oh, what a difference in the em phasis and in the way of saying it. The lit erary styles of the two men are as differ ent as day and night, and that gives an in sight into their characters. Roosevelt's sen tences were apt to be long, with a lot of dependent phrases and clauses some of them set off by dashes and a good many semicolons: for Roosevelt was rather proud and conscious of his style, and the fine t images and flights of fancy with, which he polished off the work of his ghosts. Truman's sentences are short. Few sen tences run over 30 words. Truman's para graphs arc short, often single sentences. He uses few adjactives and they're the first ones within stab of his pen. It's an economical style. "This flics in the face of sound public policy," is the most cxtrava gent figure of speech you'll find in the mes sage. Keeping in mind the radio voices of Roosevelt and Truman, contrast the way they express similar ideas. Last January, Roosevelt said this: "Pence can be made and kept only by the United determination of free and peace loving peoples who are willing to work to getherwilling to help one another will ing to respect and tolerate and try to un derstand one another's opinions and feel ings international cooperation on which en during peace must be based is not a one way street." Truman says it like this. "We must turn from economic coopera tion in war to economic cooperation in peace. Our objective is to enable the peace loving nations of the world to become self supporting in a world of expanding free dom and rising standards of living." Get the difference tn emphasis. That stands out still more than when their ex pressions on full employment a(re com pared. Roosevelt "After the war we must main tain full employment, with government maintaining its peace-time functions . . . We must make sure that private enterprise works as it is supposed to work on the basis of initiative and vigorous competition, without the stifling presence of monopolies and cartels." Truman "To provide jobs we must look first and foremost to private enterprise to industry, agriculture and labor. Govern ment must inspire enterprise with confi dence. That confidence must come mainly through deeds, not words." Roosevelt on housing "The provision of a decent home tor every family is a national necessity, if this country is to be worthy of its greatness; and that task will itself create great employment opportunity. Most of our cities need rebuilding. Much of our farm plant is in a state of disrepair." Truman on housing "There is wide agree ment that, over the next 10 years, there should be built in the United States an average of from a million "to a million and a half homes a year. Such a program would provide an opportunity for private capital to invest from six1 to seven billion dollars annually . . . We must make it possible for private enterprise to do the major part of this job . . . federal aid should be cxlended only to those communities which arc will ing to bear a fair share of the cost." . Roosevelt on tax reform "As an inter gral part of this (tax modification) program to maintain high employment, we must, after the war is over, reduce or eliminate taxes which bear too heavily on consump tion." Truman on tax modernization "Major objective of this modernization should he the encouragement of business incentives and expansion, and of consumer purchas ing power." If you will compare closely the philoso phies expressed in these and other passages in the two messages, it may strike you forc ibly that the country has come a very long way in a very short time. ft COWt IMS BY nu SCTVlCr. IMC T. M. BEG. U. 8. PAT. Off. 1-13 "No, Steve never has led the class like you did, Oscar, but he's my choice for quarterback he owns the football!" ' o McKENNEY ON BRIDGE By WILLIAM E. McKENNEY America's Card Authority COUNT, SQUEEZE HELPS THIS HAND While Sylvester Gintell of New York has won some team cham pionships in the past, his first major pair victory was in the national men's pair champion ship this year with Lee Hazen. Haien A43 A J 10 5 J432 AQ5 A876 63 87 10976 32 N W E S Dealer A A Q J 9 5 4 K 10 9 6 K J8 Glntoll A K 10 2 KQ9872 AQS 4 Duplicate Both vul. South West North East 1 Pass 4 Pass S Pass 6 Pass Opening A 8. 13 Gintell certainly counted today's hand down nicely to execute a 'good squeeie play and rhtiko Ifis contract. East won the opening spade lead with the ace and returned the trump. Dummy's 10-spot won and the ace picked up the other adverse trump. At this point Gin- P BARBS As Yanks roll into Tokyo the Jap citizens are beginning to realize that they've been whit tled down to their own sighs. tell (took the diamond finesse. When it held, he decided He could not be lucky enough to have the club finesse work too, so he play ed out all his trumps. East found himself squeezed. In order to hold diamonds, he had to blank down to his king of clubs. Gintell led the club, went up with the ace, dropped East's king, and the club queen again squeezed East, e IN FORMER , YEARS . . Thirty Years Ago , j Some 75 couples were shrewd enough to foresee a very; enjoy able evening on the La: Grande tennis club's court last night when that institution gave an in formal dancing party. The event, the first of its kind ever present ed in La Grande, was ..success from every angle. A map showing considerable detail about auto roads in Ore gon, Washington, Idahp nd Ne vada, with a large map of. Cali ' forni, has reached the' Obscrver , office and may be consulted by anyone contemplating a trip to any part of these states. Fifteen Years Ago The purchase of the Enterprise city park by the county for de linquent taxes and the subse quent sale of the tax title to F. R. Asher for $55.25 was all based on an error in county records, and is wholly invalid, it was an nounced today. Now if they would just add another ingredient to DDT that will keep fingerprints off the wallpaper. General MacArthur made clean, clear, blotlcss signatures with all five pens he used on the Jap sur render terms. None of the pens came from the post office department. Towels arc coming back on the market. Good news for the ho tels and the Pullman washrooms. The boys who went to war gave their country first consideration. Their return calls for the same from their country. Ten Years Ago t The roads and highways com mittee of La Grande Commercial club yesterday afternoon submit ted five proposed road improve ment projects in this section to the state highway commission and engineers. In the main, the commission took the proposals under consideration for future de cision. Sounding an agressive call for Oregon to unite and rally fully to its industrial, economic and agricultural possibilities, and in almost the same breath, assuring this section that is will receive its share, Gov. Charles H. Martin last night addressed more than 300 Union county people at a dinner given in his honor. This Curious World IN THE SEClrJG STBAIT (a ' B UNITED STATES AND RUSSIAN Blto UlUWtUt ISLAND BELON&S TO RUSSIA , LITTLE DIOMEDE. JO THE ,U.S. GRASSHOPPERS, JERVED AS FOOD IN CHINA, ARE KNOWN AS "SHRtAPS OF THE EARTH." CORN BORER. IS A 9 -IS . ANSWER: An insect pest. NEXT: Tho hoi-foot alarm clock.
