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About The Oregon statesman. (Salem, Or.) 1916-1980 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 1948)
4 The Stat mom. SoUm. Oregon. Wednesday. Jan. 81. 1943 "No Favor Sway$ U$. rini SUUwu. March It. US I THE STATESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY CHARLES A. SPRAGITE. Editor and Publisher Member of the Associated rreas The AmmUM Press fa entitled ettka ef all the Ul mwi riU4 AT eew dispatches. A Kiwanian'v Book List The idea cum to James F. Roche as he stood on the bridge of the troopship "Argentine" and wondered how many of the thousands of young Americans she carried to war had known America. With the help of fellow Kiwanians he decided to stock in the ship's library a memorial shelf of 100 books books which tell the story of America with integrity and detachment, books permeated with the unique flavor, the strong colors, the speech and life and ideals of her people. The list of such books was compiled by Roche from selec tions submitted by 2.000 well-known Americans, critics, writers, editors, teachers, college deans, historians, politicians. It is pub lished in the January Kiwanis magazine. It is a common failing of many book lists that their pub lishers tend to label them with superlatives the 10 best, thf 23 greatest, the 50 outstanding, and so on labels which demand proof and evoke criticism. This particular list has no such grandiose pretentions. It does not claim to include all highbrow literature and It does not strive to glorify America through flag waving apologists or drum-thumping propagandists. . Instead, it tries to photograph America from every angle through 43 works of fiction: the "little people" In "USA? by Dos Passos, the workers in "Valley of Decision" by Marcia Davenport, the immigrants in "Giants of the Earth" byi Ole Rolvaag. the sharecroppers in 'The Grapes of Wrath" by Stein beck, the native aristocrats in "The Late George Apley" by J. P. Marquand, the negroes in "Freedom Road" by Howard Fast, O Pioneers" by Wills Cather. southerners hV'Look Homeward An gel" by Thomas Wolfe, the middle-class in "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis, etc. t Several authors, Wilis Cather. Kenneth Roberts, Edna Ferber and Conrad Richter. are represented by two or more books. It would probsbly have been wiser to sacrifice their surplus books In order to include other viewpoints of writers omitted works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Theodore Dreiser, James7 FarrelL and William Faulkner might have been Included. The proportion of plays and poetry seems meager. Are there ooly five American poets and three American playwrights worth mentioning? Perhaps this deficiency is amply balanced by the 47 works of autobiography, biography, history and miscellaneous. The list is excellent: Carl Sandburg's "The Prairie Years" of Lincoln, Carl Van Doren's "Benjamin Franklin," Claude O. Bower's "Thomas Jefferson." "The Education of Henry Adams," Richard Wright's "Nstive Son," Edward Bok, William Allen White, H. L. Mencken, Louis Adamic, Ernie Pyle. John G anther, Charles A. and Mary Beard, Theodore Roosevelt. Bernard De Voto. Francis Parkman. Ralph W. Emerson, B. A. Botkin . . . On the whole, this list accomplishes its purpose the picture presented include many sides, the ones we brag about and the ones we slough off. It is not enough to love a country blindly. Americans by birth or choice are ill-equipped for citizenship unless they understand the nation and the people. Who reads this collection of Americana must corns to a more appreciative and more Intelligent understanding of our country and its heritage. Power Shortage It takes longer now to brew the morning coffee and living room lights dim when the radio is switched on. That is because the average family uses nearly 800 kilowatt-hours more electric power a year than in 1939. two million new consumer families began buying power in 1947 and the new war-developed Indus tries require mere power than ever before in history. The power industry is producing more, too. Operating on a very slim margin of reserve generating capacity, -the industry Is st year generated a new record of 300 million kilowatt-hours. But that is net enough. And nowhere is power as tight as in the Pacific northwest. Fortune magazine reports that trans formers at Bonneville dam are so hard pressed that they must be sprayed with a fire hose to cool them, and the drastic federal budget cut last year was s considerable setback to adequate maintenance or needed expansion. Oregon has three federal generating plants. 20 private plants and 11 dams above 100.000 kilowatts. There is ample water power here for 39 federal -public generating plants and four such plants aie projected, according to the federal agencies operating in this area. The ultimate output of the Columbia river is 1J.859.7S0 kilowatts (excluding private potentials) nearly four million k.lowatts more than the ultimate outputs of the Colorado, Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers put together. Columbia out put is now only 1. 934.930 kw. The private power industry's five-year $5 billion expansion program is well under way and, by 1951, will add more gener ating rapacity than all government plants combined. No one knows how much power the nation will need industries like lijht metals, electrometallurgical alloys, chemicals, aeronautics and atomic energy are growing "power hogs." The increased federal power project funds provided in the proposed national budget should encourage the northwest to plan for unprecedented industrial growth. Private industry and government projects will probably have to get along and work together as best they can to harness the mighty Columbia to meet the public need. Alien Land Laws Impaired Steadily the walls built on foundations of prejudice are being undermined. Monday's decision of the supreme court held it was unconstitutional discrimination to prevent an alien ineli gible for citizenship from acquiring land in the name of his American-born son pretty well undermined California's (and Oregon's) anti-Japanese land laws. While the court did not de clare unconstitutional the structure of legislation aimed to pre vent alien ownership or leasing of lands that might be Si next step For justices were willing to go that far .now. Oregon already had legislation to prevent aliens ineligible to citizenship from owning land, and la the heat of wartime antagonism passed another very stringent law whose purpose was to prevent Japanese from coming back to Oregon and work ing land. That law has never been invoked and never tested. We doubted st the time if it would pass a court test; and this late division of the supreme court tends to confirm that doubt. It ought to be repealed. Meantime the Oklahoma university regents moved to com ply with the court's previous order by setting up in a few days' time a new law school for negroes. Of course it cannot so quickly equal the facilities afforded white students at the university, and the negroes object to the principle of segregation. The young woman who was plaintiff in the case continues to seek entrance to the established school and the case may get back to the supreme court. It is a long, slow fight but the battle against racisl Intoler ance haa to go on. The idea advanced by Governor Hall of letting Portlanders vote on a location for a state office building in Portland looks like passing the buck by the board of control. Ifs a state build ing, not a city building. Actually, when it comes to voting, the people of Oregon voted many years ago to locate the capitol in Salem, but the mandate is only about half complied, with. For this state office building in Portland, which we are not opposing, let the board of control look the ground over and then pick the best location it can find on the wast side. So Fear Shall Awe" exclusively U the aee rac rcpaau' tm this newspaper, m wU m all GRIN AND BEAR IT have Us4 eaofldenee ef advisinc Instead .ef beat -MATTER OF FACT- Lull in World Strife Viewed as Part of RetU' Long-Range Plan By Jeeeph and Stewart Alsop WASHINGTON. Jan. 20 Among the American experts, the horrified suspicion is mounting that the Kremlin has at last gain ed a kind of primitive understand- (n mr A ril l i I' as-ags, vi sausn win politics Thejk presidential can didacy of Henry A. Wallace, which thm com munist party ob-jT viously hopes will put s re- ' . publican r e a e - . tionary isolation 1st in the Whitr1 House, piainiyi t - . a Ak VasasssV And now there J"T A1!P4 are reasons for believing that the makers of Rus sian policy will grant the world a lull a period of relaxation of tension while congress is de bating the European Recovery pro gram. If true, this latter news is of vital importance. It is not too mucn to say nw Soviet bullying and Soviet ag gression have provided the con gressional m a -joritiea for every major measure of American foreign policy since the end of the war. Either just before or during each : debate, the Sov iets have said or done Just enough to frighten the waverers Into sup porting each bill, from the Brit ish loan down to interim aid. In the case of the European Re covery program, fsr larger in scale and more far-reaching in impor tance than any of its predecessors, it was frankly hoped that the Sov iets would be particularly help fuL The orations of Andrei Vi shinsky at Lake Success during the fall had seemed to set the tone. (The only amusement of the immensely unfunny London For eign Ministers' meeting was pro vided by a junior member of the American delegation, who sol emnly asked a Russian opposite number whether the Kremlin would object to Vishinsky being offered a high American decora tion "for his constant strong sup port of American policy.") Deeds Long Expected There were many grounds for expecting that after the break down of negotiations in London, the Kremlin would quickly follow Vishinsky's words with compara ble deeds. It was expected, in fact, that Draconian measures to consolidate Russian power in the Soviet sphere would be combined with aggres sion against every weak point within reach of Soviet power. While the last vestiges of oppo sition were crushed out in eastern Europe, pressure was to be inten sified upon Greece; the communist offensives in Italy and France were to be renewed with fury; a campaign for western Germany was to be launched, and so on. At the begining of December, all the evidence, secret and otherwise, suggested that this was indeed the Kremlin plan. And if this plan were now being executed, the ef fect upon the congress would be electric. Timetable Upset In December, however, came the setbacks at Paris and Rome, and shortly thereafter followed the up set of the Greek timetable, when the Greek army recaptured Kon itsa from the communist guer rillas. No doubt these events caused the Kremlin to resurvey the situation. And it is now believed that the decision was thus taken to defer further aggressive action for a little. In order to let the American congress forget Its sense of urg ency, and yield to the election year temptation to mangle or defeat the European Recovery program. Most of the data on which the ex parts base this tentative conclu sion cannot be revealed. The con clusion seems to be supported, however, both by whst Is known of the Kremlin's more recent di rectives to the western European communists and by recent slight changes in the method of Soviet diplomacy. I 7il By Liclity ta ear sea los. Waltoa. tksaa tm bay geventeaeat a To be sure, the lull that the world may now hope for will be both brief and very Incomplete, if it occurs at alL Preparations Kesnala The Preparations for more open aggression the struggle for key positions from which to paralyze the French and Italian economies; the effort to capture the west Ger man labor movement; the prepara tions for a larger guerrilla effort in Greece are still being carried on. Because elections are coming in Italy and Czechoslovakia, and because the campaigning season opens In Greece in the spring, the lull can hardly last beyond March. The expectation simply Is that during the two crucial months im mediately ahead nothing will be done to frighten the senators and representatives out of their obsti nate dream of false security. Dra matic stimuli are needed to arouse the present congress to any genu inely impelling sense of the world realities. Even a little calculated self-control in the Kremlin may be enough to make the congress lose touch with reality alto gether. Kane Awakening Dae If this happens, the dream will soon be rudely broken, to be sure. The defeat or gutting of the Mar shall plan should bring on a Brit ish financial crisis in the late spring, followed by liquidation of many British overseas commit ments. Simultaneously, events in western Europe must quickly as sume a new and terrible tempo. - By the -time of the party con ventions which so obsess the sena tors and representatives, the grim outline of the future should be clear enough to be understood even by Sen. Kenneth Wherry, end quite possibly by Sen. Homer Capehart. By the time of the No vember election, the whole coun try should be aware that congres sional politics and congressional Isolationism have involved us in an irretrievable world disaster. The authors of the disaster will then receive their Just deserts. Small Consolation But this will be small consola tion indeed, since the disaster will overtake not merely those who are responsible but every Ameri can. Under the circumstances, it might be well to consider the oth er alternative. This is for Secre tary of State George C. Marshall to spell out in detail the vague generalities of his statement on the price of inaction. If Secretary Marshall puts all the facts in the record, the congress will act. On the other hand, the congress can not be blamed too much if the ad ministration will not tell the known truth In concrete, under standable form. Coprricht. i N w Tor Herald Tribune, Inc. The Safety Valvo Lrrrns rsoM statesman READEKS DEFENDS DISTRICT ATTORNEY To the Editor: Having read articles concerning District Attorney Miller Hayden tin the way of prosecuting pinball and slot machine owners, I am wondering if this isn't a political attack on our district attorney and may seem so to many people who have read the numerous ar ticles. It seems as though our circuit judges snd Mr. Steelham mer are trying to use the slot snd pinball machines to defeat Mr. Hayden. I am not writing this article because I am for pinball and slot machines but for fair play in politics. Our last grand jury was held over for a whole year, and this is one thing that they had against Judge McMahan during hi term of office. Our very efficient and worthy district attorney is a prosecuting attorney and not an arresting officer. Yours sincerely, Lottie Pound Gilbert A ' Russian. Joonraal fThey Put (Editor's mete Oa a collec tive farm fa the Ukraine, Jena Steinbeck and Robert Capa were feasted as American meats. This Is their report ea hew they ate and what they talked abeat) CHAPTER. - VH Since we have come back from Russia, probably the remark we have heard most is this: "I guess they put on a show for you, I guess they really fixed it up for you. They didn't show you the real thing." The people in this village did put on show for us. They put on the same kind of show a Kansas farmer would put on for a guest. They did the same thing that our people do, so that Europeans say: "The Americans live on chicken." When an Amer ican farmer haa a guest he kills s chicken. They really put on a show for us. They came dirty from the fields, and they bathed and put on their best clothes, and the women got ; out from the trunks their- head cloths that were clean and fresh. They washed their feet snd put -on boots, and fresh laundered skirts and blouses. Little girls collected flowers snd put them in bottles, snd brought them into the clean din ing room. And delegations of chil dren from other houses came in with water glasses, and plates, and spoons. On woman brought a jar of her specisl pickles, and the vodka bottles from all over the village were contributed. And a man brought a bottle of Geor gian champagne, saved for heaven knows what great occasion. Homey Kitchen Scene In the kitchen the women put on a show too. The fire roared in the new white oven, and the flat cakes of good rye bread were baking, and the eggs were frying, snd the borscht bubbling. Out side the rain poured down, so we didn't feel badly, for we were not interfering with their work in harvest time; they couldn't have been working with the grain any way. In one corner of the dining room, which is the communal room, there was the icon, a Mary and Jesus, framed and gilded, under a canopy of hand-made lace. They must have buried these things when the Germans came, for the icon was old. There was a painted enlarged photograph of the great grandparents. This fam ily had lost two sons in the army and their pictures were on an other wall, in their uniforms, looking very young and very stern and very countrified. The host was about fifty, with high cheek bones and blond hair and wide-set blue eyes. His face was weatherbeaten. And he wore the tunic and broad leather belt of the partisan fighter. And his face was drawn as though some where he had received a terrible wound. Big Meal Readied At last the meal was resdy. Ukrainian borscht, which is a meal in itself, and hard fried eggs, with bacon, fresh tomatoes and fresh cucumbers, and sliced onions, and ( the hot flat cakes of sweet rye, snd honey, snd fruit, snd sausages were all put on the table at once. And then the host filled the glasses with pepper vodka, a vodka in which pepper grains have been soaked, so that it has an aromatic taste. And then he called his wife and his two grown daughters-in-law, the wid ows of his dead sons, to the table. Civil Service Position Open The Oregon state civil service commission Tuesday announced an open competitive examination for the position of accounts exe cutive II, for the purpose of es tablishing an eligible list from which a current vacancy as chief fiscal officer with the state board of health in Portland will be filled. Vacancies in other departments may be filled from this list in the future. The salary range is $360 to $450 per month. Applicants must have had three years of progressively responsible experience in technical account ing or auditing work and have graduated from a four-year col lege with major courses in ac counting and public or business administration, or have any equiv alent combination of experience and training. Application forms must be fil ed with the commission at 444 Center st. on or before January 31. Kiwanis Hears USC Law Dean An offer to swsp two weeks of southern California sunshine for two weeks of Oregon rain was made to Salem Kiwanis club mem bers at the luncheon meeting Tuesday in the Marion hotel. The offer was made by Sheldon Doug lass Elliott, dean of the Univer sity of Southern California law school, as an introduction to his talk on fair practices acts and laws of the various states, in particu lar those of western states. Dean Elliott, not hearing any "takers, went on to explain the length to which trade and occu pational regulations in particular now extend in some states. Dean Seward. P. Reese of Wil lamette law school, introduced the speaker. Members of the Willam ette law school faculty were guests at the luncheon. " on a Show'-Like In . - : x v" v" -v3 , s. ? rr. , f .'-'"'"V t '.-; ?: -, r Vfjy. f. 4 x A 4 -& vr, . v y c A ' ' ml ., , v , i - iA i J f..'V J - c: I "' .. . I Mamnahka preparing lanch And he handed each of them a glass of vodka. When the meal waa over there came the time we were beginning to expect. The time of questions. But this time it wss more inter esting to us because they were the questions of farmers about farmers, and about farms. Again it was clear to us that peoples have a curious composite idea of one another. The question how does a farmer live in America is impossible to answer. What kind of farm and where? Difficult to Picture It is difficult for our people to imagine Russia, with every pos sible climate from Arctic to tropic, with many, many different races and languages. These farmers did not even spesk in Russian, they spoke in Ukrainian. "How does a farmer live in America?" they asked. And we tried to explain that there are many different kinds of farms in America, as there are in Russia. There are little five-acre farms, with one mule to work them, and that there are great cooperation farms that operate like the state farms of Russia, except that the state does not own them. There are farm communities, rather like the village we were in, where the social life was somewhat the same, except that the land was not owned communally. One hundred acres of good bottom land in America are worth a thousand acres of poor land. And this they understood very well because they are farmers themselves. They had just never thought of America that way. Ask of Machinery They wanted to hear about County DA Asked to Rule on Method of Selecting Constable The question of whether the office of constable of the Salem district is elective or appointive is being probed today by Marion County District Attorney Miller B. Hayden at the request of County Clerk Harlan Judd Tuesday. Although no candidates have filed for the office of constable here yet, Judd said numerous Inquiries have been made. When the 1947 legislature abol-. ished the office of elective consta bles all over the state and made such offices appointive by the county courts, did the act in clude the Salem district. This question was put in Judd's letter to Hayden. The Salem justice of the peace district, Judd reminded, was also abolished by the legislature and the Marion county district court created which serves the entire county. The crux of the problem, Judd stated in comment Tuesday, lies in the question of whether the constable of the Salem district has jurisdiction over the entire county (as is the district court judge) or only of the Salem district. Judd also asked Hayden to rule on whether mileage fees are al lowable by law to election boards who deliver ballot boxes and elec tion retnrns and also for extra ex penses incurred during elections by the county clerk's office. With the approval of the coun ty court, Judd said, these fees have always been paid in Marion county in the past. But, the county clerk said, in the face of conflict ing opinions in other counties, he is asking for a legal opinion. Gervait Past Matrons Club l Entertained GERVAIS The Past Matrons club was entertained Friday, Jan uary 1. by Mrs. J. P. Aspinwall in Salem with Mrs. John Imlah and Mrs. E. B. Smith assisting. A no-host luncheon was served to 20 members. Mrs. W. B. Russell, junior past matron, was a new member and she was presented gift. Quilts for the Shrine hospi tal in Portland were completed. for the American gaests. American farm machinery, for that Is the thing they need the most. They asked about com bines, and feeders, and the cotton pickers, and the fertilizer spread ers; about the development of new grains, of cold-resistant grains, and rust-resistant wheat; about tractors, and how much they coat. Could a man running a small farm afford to buy one? The farmer at the end of the table told us with pride how the Soviet government lends money to farms, and lends money at very low interest to people who want to build houses on their farms. He told how farm Infor mation is available under the Soviet government. We said that the same thing is true in America, and this they had never heard of. They had never heard of the farm loans or of the great work that is done by our department of agriculture. It was all news to them. Aa a mat ter of fact, they seemed to think that they had invented the sys tem themselves. Sharp Questions Asked Across the road, a man and woman were working in the rain, raising the timbers for their roof tree to the top of newly built walls. And on the road the chil dren were driving the cows in from pasturage to the barns. The women in their clean head cloths leaned through the kitchen door and listened to the conver sation. And the conversation turned to foreign policies, about which we know very little, and could not answer very much. The questions were sharp. A farmer asked: "What would the American government do if .the Soviet government loaned " Charles Gratke To Address Press Conclave UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, Eugene, Jan. 20 -(Special)- Head ing a list of topflight speakers scheduled on the program of . the 29th annual press conference on the University of Oregon campus February 20-21, is Charles E. Gratke, foreign editor of the Christian Science Monitor and alumnus of the University of Oregon. Gratke is being brought to the campus, according to Dean George Turnbull of the university's school of journalism, through the courtesy of the Eric W. Allen Memorial fund, to address the conference and lecture to the school of journalism. This is the second annual lectureship under the fund. The first was held last year by J. S. Russell, farm editor of the Des Moines Register-Tribune. The Monitor's foreign editor editor has had an inside view of affairs in Europe for many years. Being in Germany when Hitler first came to power gave him a ring side seat at events which were culminated in the second world war. Sponsored ' by the university school of journalism and the Ore gon Newspaper Publishers asso ciation, the conference will open under Press Conference President R. B. Swenson, publisher of the Monmouth Herald. By John Steinbeck Photographs by Robert Capa America money and military aid to Mex ico with the avowed purpose of preventing the spread of democ racy?" And we thought for a while, we , said: "Well. we imagine we would deaclare war And he said: "But you have: loaned money to Turkey, which' is on our border, with the pur pose of preventing the spread of our system. And we hsve not de- dared war." Explanation, Sought And our host said: "It seems to us that the American people are democratic people. Can you ex- Dlain to us whv the American gov ernment has as its friends reac tionary government, the govern ments of Franco and Trujillo, the military dictatorship of Turkey, snd the corrupt monarchy ox We could not answer their questions because we didn't know enough, and because we . are not in the confidence of our makers of foreign policy. We told them the questions that are asked ia America. The questions about the domination of Balkans : by com munist parties, the questions and denunciations about the use of the veto by the Russians in the nited Nstions, the questions that are asked about the denunciation ox America oj tnc Russian press. "Must Be an Answer" j These questions seemed to bal ance each other, and they knew no more about their foreign pol icy than we knew about ours. There was no animosity in their questions, only wondering. Final ly our host stood up, and he rais ed his glass, and he said: "Some where, in all of this, there must be an answer, and there must be an answer quickly. Let us drink to the hope that the answer may be found, -for the world needs peace, needs peace very badly.' And he pointed to the two who were struggling with' the heavy beams to build a roof, and he said: "This winter those two will have a house for the first time since 1941. They must have peace, they want their house." He said: "They have three small-children who have never had a house to live in. There cannot be in the world any ! one so wicked as to want to put them back in holes under the ground. But that ia where they have been living. Wonder Aroused f The host opened the - cham pagne and poured a little of the precious fluid In each of our glasses. Te table had become very quiet. We. raised our glasses, and no one made a toast. We drank the chacpagne with out speaking. After a while wa thanked our hosts and drove country. And we wondered whe ther our host's hope was true, whether there really were people in the world who wanted to de stroy the new little houses again. and put the children in caves . . j , a i . t unuer lue grouuu. Oa this same eeUectivs farm. Kebert Cspa'a flash-bulbs effec tively broke ap aa amateur play pat on for the Aaaeiieaa visiters. What happened. te the play will be reported here by John Stein beck tomorrow. CepyrlKht, IMS. ky Jeha Steiateclr Intramural Speech Contest Planned I At Waiamette U. j Robert Sayre, student forensle manager, announced Tuesday that the Willamette university speech department will hold an Intra mural speech tournament during the first week of the new semester which begins early next month. Intramural teams of two, three or four persons could represent any class or organization on the campus, Sayre said. A trophy will be awarded to the organization of. the winning team and a $10 prize will be awarded to the winning 4m C .JJ. j The question upon' which all participants will expound is: "Re solved, that a federal world gov ernment should be established." BAUD OF HEADING Come la and See It! IIET7 imilATUIlE sonoioiiE "scr Finest "all-in-one" hearing aid ever made. Easy to wear as a wristwatch. Powerful natur alfar more economical. Sonolono Ilearing Cenier C Bash-Breymaa Bldg. 117 H. Commercial, Saleaa Phens till!
