page roua Th OHEG02Y STATECMA1L Solera. Orjon. TlmrBdaT Moxniag. March 15 1915 -i. - ItfiDU MUMMB MM "iVo Favor Sways Us; No Fear Shall Awe" From First Statesman, March 23, 1851 ,TOE STATESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY ; CHARLES A. SPRAGUE, Editor and iublisher - - ' A 5 . Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to th use for publication of all news dispatches credited Jo It or not otherwise credited in this' newspaper. Less for' Civilians . . From Los Angeles comes word that' manufac-" turers' of women's clothing agree that new gov ernment orders will soon make women's slacks a thing of the past; The order requires manu facturers to concentrate on making work gar ments, like overall. 'Just think of Hollywood without slacks, will i? Manv of its habitues would rather .go They ypul :!lL without clothes than not wear slacks! crne near enough to that as it is. .The-impending slackness of slacks, however, . is! just a sample of the tightening of controls which the government is imposing in many lines of civilian manufacture. The purpose in this instance is to provide greater supplies of work clothes overalls, workshirts, work gloves, etc. which are! sadlyj needed. But all along the line the pinch-is occurring., - Lumber is getting to be a precious gem, so difficult is it for civilians to obtain. Appliances ,which in the fttst flurry of reconversion were scheduled for this year are still unobtainable. Even repairs will be harder to get, so Washing ton reports to the country. There is a sudden scurry to see what has hap pened to food supplies too, with quite a dispute going on H among ! government agencies: lend N lease, the military, UNRRA,1, foreign economic welfare and war food administration. Each calls for greater: quantities of what appear to be shrinking supplies. ! : ' That is the picture at this moment: conditions . will be worse before they get better. But it would appear that the end of the war in tier many ought to bring some curtailment of gov ernment purchasing, except perhaps as to food stuffs. It surely will not take as large quanti ties of supplies, for the single war with Japan as it does to conduct the two-front war. Seeing the probability of a termination of the war in Europe this year the American people can get through with a minimum supply of es-S sentials. These the government should release for civilian use in order to keep the home war plant in city and country functioning. Civilian sacrifices so far have been chiefly inconven iences. We can stand more tightening up if needed, especially with the hope of an early vic tory in Europe. - l Soil Conservation;' "5 Representatives Heisler and Kimberling haya introduced a bill, HB 3$7, which would require (as the bill has been j amended) operators Jpf mining dredges to level off soil, rock and gravel , piled on tillable surface land in their dredging operations. The bill passed the house but I is lodged in the senatefommittee on mining which is said to be unfriendly to such legislation. Op erators of gold, dredges have asserted it would "put them out of business.' ji - : f The fact is that after the dredges get through with a piece of land it is put out of business for all forseeable time as far asiillage or grazing is concerned. No one who has visited the John Day or Sumpter valleys in eastern Oregon and seen the gravel heaps left by the churning dredges but grieves -oyer the utter' destruction of soil once rich in fertility, ilt will tale untold centuries for nature to heal those scars and make the lands ' economically valuable again J The question then is, are the lands more val uable for agriculture tiian for their gold? On the basis of current market values the? latter te seems to be preferred. But neither men nor -cattle can eat gold. 'The gravel heaps! caui never produce the grain arid he gtiss which the login of the bottom landl price produced. jThe thtie may come when that sjectiojl will really suffer for lack of tillable or grazing lands such as those along the John Day river. They are needed to grow feeds for the livestock that use the moun tain ranges in summer'; Realizing this, many landowners reject the tempting offers made for . their bottom lands which are underlaid with gold-bearing gravelsl iij ; . " ".,- ;jfk HB 387 does little more than nibble at the problem of soil destruction by the gold dredges. A real attempt to solve the problem' would be to require operators first to .remove the topsoil and then to level the tailings and recover the surface with the topsoil.; Expensive? Yes. But it might conserve the lands for indefinite use for growing grass and crops. J ! - w-- " .1 - AT Till: FRONT! ;;. Diligent Yank Find 1C3 Football for Making Ig iTrade " ht iftmiMMt wit Tte WaUtaxtos Btm The New Watch on the Rhine mmm 1 1 its Meivs Behind the News ; "J By PAUL, MAJLLON i ! - (DistribuUon by King Features Syndicate, Inc. Reproduction In whole ' or in part strictly prohibited.) i ' Impact of Taxes Frank Phillips, "chairman of the board of the Phillips Petroleum company, has had his board cut his salary from $50,000 a year to U He told his employes that he didn't see why the company should pay out $50,000 a year and ; benefit me by only $309.36. As a striking way of showing the impact of income taxation this method can hardly be beaten. Phillips of course -will not go hungry, as he has plenty of other income. But, we wonder is his company much better off? The $50,000 is deductible as an item of expense. The $49,999 save is subject to taxa tion, which may run as high as 80 per cent. So j the company isn't greatly benefitted by Mr. Phillips' magnanimous offer. Today being March 15, with income taxes due, the incident is timely for comment) The fact is that the government needs the money it levies, j If it doesn't get it one way it will have to another. Why not, then march up and pay - your tax and be happy you can contribute to the government's support? After all, you got the income didn't you? And would you trade your job or your business which gave you the income for a marine's job on Iwo Jima? ,' Admiral Nimitz neatly turned aside specula tion regarding the I command for invasion of Japan when he said, in an j interview in San Francisco: "If and when there is an invasion of the Japanese islands it will , be an army job." The job of the navy will be to trarisport the army and protect its lines of communication. He also said "There' is no difference of opinion or conflict over top commanders." Since he had just come from Washington- the admiral could speak with authority The general staff makes the decisions as to i campaigns and.; probably (general Marshall picks the commanders. He certainly - has made: few mistakes. , There has been no such fumbling ps there; was in the civil ' war for generals yould as Lincoln plead with Hooker, "go forward land give- us vic--tories." - -. ' li'Rl 4 .1. .. ,,1 , ' First private hydro-electric development of apy consequence that has been proposed in this 'state for years is that covered in the filing fit California-Oregon Power co for a power plant on the North Umpqtia river in Douglas county, with capacity of 40,000 kw. Growth in demand for electric energy and planning for the future account for the program. The company operates in territory not yet! reached by. government transmission lines. 'Use of electric power will continue to expand, land the company is wise . in anticipating its future demand. 1 -k m m interpret Signs point to a breakup in Germany. Slave laborers are leaving their jobs and roaming the country. Political prisoners are escaping; band itry is reported increasing. As the nazi ship springs leaks rats will start to desert it. Many will now pose as anti-fascists who acted only on compulsion. Curiosity is aroused over what the fool Hitler will do for his grand climax. Henry Wallace, new secretary of commerce,, learned td speak Spanish jand Russian and to throw the Australian boomerang. - Now he tells a senate committee he is going to learn how to fly in order to find out what the, private air plane business will amount to. That man cer tainly is versatile in his ambitions. i ' Editorial Comment f- ; BOUNDARY GUARANTEES -I The world moves at a rapid pace. At Mexico Chy. delegates to the Pan-American , conference, with the United States concurring, vote to guarantee the present boundaries and political independence of all member nations, which includes all the new world republics except Argentina. -' This, if ratified, as we think it will be, will con '; mit each power to go to war if necessary to protect any other from attack. It will virtually make war between American powers impossible. There has been little of this anyway, the last outbreak being between Bolivia and Paraguay, both of which ap pear willing now to lt bygones be bygones. Ag- . greasion from abroad occasionally threatens, as it did when the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed. ' There are occasional rumors' that the Argentine Is arming for attack on its neighbors. The coterie that rules Argentina now is known to be iealous of Brazil, a larger and more populous country which The WM News i By KIRKE L. SIMPSON i : i Invasion jittars ' sweeping Japan home Islands may be a bit premature. ! There is much to do on the other side of the world before full power can be concerted against the Japanese end of the dis integrating Nazi-Nipponese axis; but that does riot necessarily ' preclude early Allied steps to secure footholds in continental Asia. s , That is exactly ! what Tokyo fears. It explains Japanese discarding of the "protection" mask used in 1941 to cover seizure of French IndoChina. On Tokyo orders, Japanese troops are moving to disarm . or destroy all French and native forces." It is for defense against expected Anglo-American incur sions from across the South China sea into French Indo-China that could cut off ; the whole southern end of the collapsing Japanese "Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere" by land as well as sea. - It remains to be seen ! whether that is the pur pose that underlies creation of the powerful British Pacific fleet, American occupation of Palawan is--lands in the west central Philippines, just over 600 mues from the eastern bulge of Indo-China and seizure of the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao dominating the Sulu seal gateway to the South China sea from the Pacific. Disclosure from Bom bay that a French military mission has been in con sultation with Allied authorities for months and is now attached to Lord Louis Mountbatten's south east Asia command Will do nothing to ease Nip ponese apprehensions ' ' American nayal task forces have recently op erated close off the Indochina coast. American air power has been steadily! blasting at Japanese ship-' ping in Indo-China and at the narrow guage rail road that hugs the coast line all the way from Hanoi to Saigon, connecting central arid eastern China and Burma and the Malay peninsula. i - . i Announcement that a French military missions-is . (Continued from page 1) women : contemplating ; matri mony in! this wise: t ; "Our only" hopes for the new brides arid fiancees is that they do not make their marriages an .. escape Into mediocrity. So often a housewife becomes os embroil ed in little things. Their worlds can become bounded by four walls. Their conversation can degenerate to Johnny's ailments, their newest recipe, an effective diet, or the latest bit of scandal. It is easy to make tempests in teapots. It is easy to become narrow minded by living a qui et life."f i The alert Emerald reporter, Vicky Utz, gets a round-robin of interviews with Oregon wom en on how they contemplate a future as married women. One girl I asks if a married woman doesn't ; have a pretty . big Job - in "raing Johnny and man aging her home." She isn't con vinced that absorbing culture in afternoon teas is very broaden ing, f Another girl favors the old I Greek rule of the golden mean: "When a girl marries she should strive to strike a happy medium between home life and outside interests." Still another girl confesses she would like to ' be "embroiled" in the problems . of married life, and believes that college women will hold on to some of their, idealism. Still an other girl expresses the view that motherhood is woman's most 1 Important function: "women us ually make their best 'or worst contribution to. society in the children I they produce." This of course is just the cur rent outbreak of an old argu ment. Each generation of wom en has to' pass through . it, par ticularly since women got credit for having brains worth educat ing and gained emancipation for determining their careers. The y significant thing Is that r these young women are thinking ser iously about their future, about their responsibilities not only to their homes but to themselves. Already married women with a college education have demon strated that they can be excel lent homemakers and still not become "narrow minded." In fact education helps prevent them from going into mental decay within the walls of their -homes. In the world of the fu ture I i anticipate that college women will be even more suc cessful In combining home dut- "'VCSi-yy WASHINGTON, Mar. . 1 The Brynes super-committee on food exports was appointed . to draw (a shin-plaster over the mess which various government agencies have made of the for eign food supply programs. The! deft Mr. Byrnes is taking hold of the loose-running, open hearted, benevolent-handed! food dispensing bureaus in an effort to effect some equity ', between civilian needs here and fur ther shipments to Europe. Behind the move lay trust worthy reports of high accum ulations of food supplies In Britain and some other places abroad (no one seems to know where) ' while desperate -shortage exists in Greece and our occupied part of Italy (where published Inews reports say food is scarcer I than in the; Nazi-held part)! : J This puzzling condition has been kecentuated by simultan eous prospects that our own do mestic food supplies are going to become tighter and tighter for the housewife until fall at 'least. Furthermore we are entering planting season with the j most' difficult production outlook since the war started,' with help short er and implements scarcer than in the previous war years j The move was absolutely nec essaryand overdue. . ? i A foremost business man, just back from Europe, is my author ity for reporting an overaccum ulation of food in Britain.; For one example, he learned in Lon don from business sources of ' four Argentine ships, loaded with beef, refused entry and re quired to cruise around in the : waters offshore because store houses were filled and docking facilities limited by other supply ships Unloading. I In Italy and Greece he was in formed that the Russians party (the local people there no long er use the word communist, but call Stalin's devotees "the' Rus sian partisans") had offered im- tportations of food fori political ies, wifehood, motherhood,) with outside interests and dutiesi , 4 It is refreshing that; the col lege girls are as keen as any young women to flash their dia monds, and encouraging too that they look on matrimony jas a serious .undertaking and not just an amorous adventure. f ' ' "THE YOUNG IDEA". By Mossier dlLi aid is becoming attached to the Allied southeast Asia command car- pes a suggestion that at some moment a combined squeeze might develop from east and west to split .off Japanese garrisons in Malaya and the Dutch Indies for annihilation, with establishment of air andjea bases in French; Indo-China "as a necessary preuminary. One air; arid seacontrol of the Golf of Thailand were secured, simultaneous blows from -the Bay of Bengal and the South China sea to gain positions on the long, narrow upper .end of the Malay peninsula would seem possible. That would isolate Singapore. - ? 4 -;.: ii:,.. ."."1 -'..?-. . It seems obvious that 'General MacArthur's diver sion of forces from the Luzon campain to take Pal awan and the Zamboanga peninsula is designed to establish fleet access to the South China sea through the Sula sea gateway.; Those two air bases also will put an end to Japanese use of the oil from wells la North Borneo. - iri - ; $ . That nearby fuel source could be of especial value to the ships of the British Pacific fleet, mostly built for short range operations in European waters. wealthier. This lineup of all the American powers. including the UJS A. should serve to dispel any de lusions of grandeur that may be taking root along th Platte.- v A decade or two ago such a proposal would have been greeted with howls of horror by American isolationists, but we've heard nothing of them about this revolutionary step. Bather it is coming to be agreed that peace is indivisible, that to have it any where it must be. defended everywhere. This does not call for defending unjust boundaries or other situations, but those in the western hemisphere are reasonably satisfactory, so peace is more likely to be preserved by readiness to fight aggressors than by inviting their attacks through a policy of timid ity .; ; ; .,-.1:r"j:s-- We believe the Pan-American conferees ' are on the right track and that Argentina will eventually see the light, if only because of the manifest futil- .JJty of continuing as a minority of one. Baker Deo ocrat-IIerald. - rEe' mom J W weariaj my best shirt again?" considerations. Where the Rus sians could get food for export' he did not learn. He found the Italians ; nevertheless ) generally favoring the American occupa tion, despite the shortages of fuel ' and clothing as well as food. Beyond this report, the Nazis have flooded Holland with salt water. Southern Italian fields have not been cleared; of mines and -shrapnel and cannot be ful ly planted. Clearly Europe can not grow enough this year. The problem of feeding Germany Is coming up. , ji Now while no European seems to be getting food (Greece being in the same boat at Italy and France nearby), the afmy, lend lease, the Lehman outfit and the commodity ""credit corporation have been buying, and sending billions of dollars ; of foodstuffs abroad according to ; their an nounced figures., f The question, "Where is it?" is not the only one raised by these facts (the dependability of their source raises them above' the category of unauthoritative reports), but the condition also seems to inquiry if Britain and Russia have stored or intend to use our lend-lease food for the purpose of building influence and prestige ; on the conquered con tinent. If so, our lend-lease commitments could well be whit tled down. j The Byrnes announcement made it quite clear we cannot be too easy hereafter with our sup plies. Shortages of meat, but ter, lard and canned fruits and. vegetables will continue to tight en for an indefinite period. Why? Well, a year or two back, the government still feared over abundance, and grossly miscal culated all along the! food line. Even last" year the production of hogs was arbitrarily cut," also poultry. Spring production of hogs was reduced 29 per cent " lit Robert C. Wilson . (Substituting for Kenneth L." 5 Dixon) i ON THE: WESTERN FRONT -(T-This is a story of ambu-. dances and footballs. It involves the American field service nd'took place in, Alsace, Paris arid Loridon. ; C B. Afcex- ander of BaltimorevMd, needed ; 10 ambulances for his volunteer drivers j attached to the First French armyr .. - ' - Alexander and Mark Ethridge, Jr, of iouisviHe, Ky, went to ' see Gen Jean de Lattre de Tas signy about, getting those ambu lances. jThej general had a short age tooof; footballs. ," - He needed 100 pigskins for his officer candidate schooL "And so ii is a deal," said the generaLf ; "Til give you one new ambulance for every 10 foot balls you give me." It sounded like- an easy deal and Mehin Braunstein, son of a Pittsburgh, !Pa, sporting goods dealer, Was assigned the task of getting the footballs. Armed with letters from the general requesting the footballs, Braunstein flew to Paris. First he went; to supreme Allied head quarters. Then to French, spe rial services headquarters. Then to American supply officers and finally to the French commissar iat of sports. . ! "Sorrf , no footballs are kick ing around here," was the story, he got it each place. Braunstein recalled that ' be- i- - 1 ' 1 1 ' .- : .-- j -.j ..... . . , IiOiqON,;Ont-0P)-Snooky, an orange Angora cat, at the ripe old feline age of 30 has some thing to' meow over. The owner, Mrs. William Mal lough, claims Snooky is the old- est cat fin North America per haps ut the world. The jonly known contender to Snookys ti tle lives under the same roof an orange Persian named Scoot- ! er, who is 28 years old. Snook5 y was given to Mrs. Mai lough in 1915 by the 91st Cana dian Elgin regiment when that regiment, commanded by her late father, CoL William Ogilvie, went overseas in World War L' The regiment gave her , Scooter ' when it returned in 1918." ; h ' - 1 Likewise, too much labor was : taken from the farms, too little machinery allocations were made. We would not be even Vhere we are J had not we beep pro vided with unprecedentedly good weather? the past two years. Can we get I three "'years ''of weather s like that in a row? ! i?- The only indication so far Is good. . -Winter . snow has . piled . high throughout the agricultural belt and promises good subsur face moisture. Also winter wheat is bountiful. But the condition is enough to alarm the whole inner circle. Certainly it should discourage continuance of the free-distribu- : tdon onj a "what-do-you-want" rather than! "we-will-see-what- ' we-hav" basis for Europe. , An end of the. Continental war might allow release of some men ' ; for harvesting and perhaps might : ease lend-lease demands, but we will have to take on a third of Germany, at least, and certainly the- end will not solve the sit uation for this year. - The jobof feeding the world seems to have proved too great even fof us at least in the free and easy way we tried to do it fore the war sj sporting goods firm in London had exported - footballs to his father's firm. - So he hitch-hiked across the : channel in an RAF plane, only to find the company tied up with army orders. 1 But finally ; the American special services in Lon- - don said they could take care The other da Braunstein re- , turned to TassignyV headquar- I ten with 103 footballs. 24 pairs i of football shoes and 12 f ootbalT j : pumpi- r;-Sii::i;';'' . : The . 10 ambulances will be turning up any f day now. The JLitDrary Guidopost By W. G. Rogers AMERICAN CHKOKICX: TH AUTOBtOQKAPRr OF BAT 'STANNAKD BAKESL," (Scrlk ner; SSM). :,.. j Autobiographies are' apt to be cradle-to-grave jstories, starting in diapers and ending in dotage, or as it has been called, ariec dotage. , - v ( ;;. " i Baker's is a welcome exception. His book opens 'ith his first Job and stops with bis most recent one. It has form and purpose. It's compact despite its 300 pages, it's sincere and unaffected, it has a wealth of interesting Informa tion, it's well written, it'i timely.' It's not a great book but it's an important one. - The author, who lives in Am herst, Mass., began his career, reporting for . the 1 Chicago Re cord . . . for which .he covered among other events 'the march of Coxey's rmy . 1894. A few years later he was one of the group, tacludingLincoln Stefferis and Ida M. Tarbell, whom Theo dore Roosevelt blasted as muck rakers. ':. t ' . He imagined fondly, like half our newsmen, that he was col lecting the material for his "great American novelf" but he never got around to writing it Instead, under the name: of David Gray son, he produced Adventures in "Contentment" apd other books of homely wisdom. : He leads you I to suspect that he believes in J Grayson more than in Baker, yet it seems to me undeniable that he will last longest as the ultimate authority onWoodroW Wilson. fi Baker spent 1 21 years writing about the world: war I president and editing his papers ; this coun try is deeply in debt to Baker for that job well, done. He says of , Wilson: "I did not love him but, I believed and trusted in him be yond nyther riian.! -f ; g .- ii He paints - one : uriforgettable scene. Wilson had fallen ill. The "stooped, gray U faced, white haired old man,f shuffling along ! ( with a cane, onej side of his body drooping, entered a White House parlor for the first showing of the film which recorded his visits td Europe, when he was in full health, with the Allied world at his feet. :' - jv - (. But Baker has a sharp tongue. He writes of th Senate League foes' return to the failing presi dent of the actual copy of the rejected treatyrf! here express my deliberate opinion that this was one of the crudest, most despicable acts fever; committed in American Epljtics.' The Safety Valve LETTERS FROM STATESMAN READERS OPPOSES WORK OR J JAIL BILL j ; To the Editor: " ! Can "you believe the reasons which are generally given iri sup port of the May-Bailey bin for drafting labor? ' , They say we need to conscript labor to meet acute manpower needs at the present stage of the war. But upon analysisit turns out that there is no over-all shortage, after all. j The figures quoted to show current needs . represent local spot needs only, whihe are constantly shifting. In fact, every week we read of la bor being discharged at various points because of j cut-backs in production of certain items, or complete shut-down a, even though elsewhere production of specified items is being increas ed, so requiring morelabor. At most, only a few hundred thou-. sand workers are involved at any one time. . To fill j these fluctu ating needsl a free and flexible movement of labor is the answer, rather than rigid, regimentation. As indicated by the Kilgore-Wag-nes counter proposal, the type of public control that would really be adapted to promote labor-use adjustments while still preserv ing personal freedom) would fi the setting of employment ceil ings in given areas r- plants, thus regulating the industrial concerns involved instead of put ting all the individual workers ia chains. , "'if i As far as an over-all shortage of labor is concerned, : I under stand that both Senator Thomas and Mr. McNutt have recently admitted that as of January I, the manpower situation as a , whole was better than ever be fore. .' ; : I - . Since ' the labor shortage the ory does not stand analysis, pro ponents of the labod draft are now saying that it is necessary in order to boost soldier morale. "Equalify of sacrifice" is the-sic gan. But if the soldiers are fight- . ing for freedom and democracy, it is-impossible to see how their . morale could be unproved by the imposition of more: dictatorship at home, by the development of the same system -they are sup posed to be destroying abroad; . for the 1 key feature of the nazi system (s compulsory assignment - of labor, with individual choice completely f subjugated to the command of the state. It is a contradiction in terms to say that the democratic way is torenforce equality of involuntary J servi tude. Most 1 certainly, greater equality? Isi needed to improve democracy,; but Just the opposite -of servile equality under bond age, the need is to create equal ity of opportunity for free de velopment of individual capaci ties. Philip Isely, " . Route three, Box 887. Movie P rice Ceiling Eyed WASHINGTON, March 14 -(ff) OPA Chief. Chester Bowles asked congress yesterday to help slap a price ceiling on admissions to mo tion pictures, ; stage shows, ath letic events and. "all other amuse ment activities ! f ;; The have been free of Drice con trol so, far, Bowfes told a news conference, because most of those things were not fcovored by, the statutory definitiuii of a commod ity. . , I . - And the prices pave been going up year after year; he asserted. For example, the cost of seeing a movie has increased on the av erage, by about 3834 per cent from June, 1941, to last December.! British Capture Over Million Axis! Soldiers LONDON, March 14-WVLord Croft, parliamentary j undersecre tary of state ' f ot war, told the house of lords yesterday that axis prisoners captured by troops of the British commonwealth and empire on all fronts : during the, war now exceed t000,000. ' v V v. NML X.", i i .. lis , Three ... perfectly . matched rings including g r o o m's " wedding i band. The engage ment ring u alive with .the sparkle - a lovely: diamond. DIYIDID . -A VT : V. ' - . . i- . . .