The Courier-Journal du lieu suivant : Louisville, Kentucky • Page 6

Mark Ethridce. Publisher. Founded 1826 Barry Bingham, President. Editorial Pace Staff: Barry Bingham, Editor; Russell Briney, Associate Editor Barry Bullock Tarleton Collier Molly Clowes Grover Page Wednesday Morning, December 26, 1945 1 Two Wise and Courageous Needed: Better Relations Presidential Decisions Between Officers and Men THOUGH the "gripes" that have been voiced by our enlisted men in the war would fill great volumes and would doubtless scorch the paper on which they were printed, it is a useful thing to summarise them and see how they add up. Stars and Stripes has just performed that service, calling upon the Army and Navy to give serious study to the grievances with a view to promoting democracy in our armed forces.

How do these familiar charges look, thus conveniently summarized? They look reasonable, they look justified. There is no other way to characterize the complaint that officers, especially in forward areas, have a monopoly of liquor supplies, of all-hour passes, of dates with nurses and Red Cross girls, and a near-monopoly of tranportation and recreation facilities. Anybody who has talked to returning service men know that the enlisted men in general bear a grudge against officers. Some of that feeling can be laid to normal human cantankerousness. A great deal more of it must be attributed, however, to the system which sets up officers as a caste, a privileged class.

We cannot build the kind of Army and Navy we need for the future as long as that impression prevails in the mind of the average enlisted man, and it behooves us as a nation to find a solution. Stars and Stripes notes significantly that the complaints concern officer privileges in off-duty hours, not in line of duty. Combat wipes out almost all grudges while it lasts, but it is the nature of war that only a small proportion of men in arms are engaged in front-line fighting at any one time. The complaints listed by Stars and Stripes may seem trivial, but they loom large to men whose nerves have been stretched by strangeness and loneliness as well as by danger. Reserve officers should feel a particular obligation to study these charges and to try to urge the regulars toward a sblution.

The reserves fell heir to a system which so many enlisted men resent as undemocratic, and some of them bore their authority more arrogantly than the most unfortunate examples of Annapolis and West Point. The great body of reserve officers, however, felt a closer kinship to their fellow civilians who did not happen to get a commission. They would serve the Army and Navy well if they would work out patterns for relationships between officers and men which would eliminate those little inequalities that rankle, those small injustices that antagonize young men who have been brought up on democratic principles. The House That Too Much Jack Ituill Only Congress Can Avert A Major Emergency In the Spring By A GRAFT) N. IT LOOKS as if one of the roughest and wildest debates this country has ever fern in hptng up for along about next.

April or May. Th tg is being set for an emergency; we are preparing predicament for ourselves. For all of the powers th President needs to "Jiold the line" against inflation, and against hopelessness, and against improvident use of short materials, are set to expire on June 30; and it is quite clear that Congress intends to mt the situation out for at least four months, that it proposes to take the issues up only at the eleventh hour, when a fumble can send the whole structure toppling. The Office of Price Control is visibly frightened; the Wall Street Journal reports that price officials feel controls may break down and "just be ignored" if the final hour is allowed to approach without aigns of Congressional action. It is not hard to visualize an almost hysterical situation which could arise if, say, only five or six weeks of legal price control remained, and Congress were in a snarl.

No business man would be able to sign a contract for future delivery; he would not know what prices to insert on the appropriate dotted lines; and many producers would be tempted to hold off sales entirely until the question were resolved. Nobody can say how seriously controls with only five or six weeks of life left in them would be taken, and if once a general wave of defiance began, the Office of Price Administration would have no answer but to collapse in a heap, like an old lady with too many burdens and bundles. The Skin'of-YfHir-Teeth Approach Along with price control, the President's general priorities powers are scheduled to die on June 30. They were originally set to end on December 31 of this year, and have been extended for a meager six months only in the past few days; one more indication of how Congress favors the last minute, or skin-of-your-teeth approach to these basic questions of reconversion. The Administration had asked for a year's additional time, but Senator Taft led the fight to make it six months, and won, with the help of twenty-three other Republicans, six Southern Democrats, and one Progressive.

(More than thirty Senators were absent, though one additional vote on behalf of the President would have thrown the issue into a tie, and two would have saved his plan.) So there you have it; Senator Taft promises that Congress will watch reconversion developments, and, around April or May, will provide an additional extension, if necessary. But while it is all very well for Congress to say it will watch business trends, and be guided accordingly, the truth of the matter is that business watches Congress and is guided accordingly. Everyone tut us C.risi Is Cominp If builders, for example, feel that Congress is hostile to the priorities powers (which the President is using to channel lumber, into lower-cost homes) they may spend the next four months arguing against priorities, instead of building; whereas if the priorities powers had been extended for a year, they might go ahead and build. Congress cannot be so naive as to believe that its actions do not affect the business picture, which it declares itself so meekly to be objectively studying. April, May and June may be horrid months, unless we begin the debate on extension of price control and priorities shortly after the turn of the year.

It is rather absurd to sit around and wait for a crisis which one knows perfectly well is coming, like Arbor Day; and a number of our legislators may make unconvincing figures when they come running into the arena on that morning, bidding us to make some hasty stab in the dark at our problems because, puff, puff, we are short of time. It does not promote domestic tranquility, or improve our internal tone, to see such an elaborate build-up for the quite simple business of missing a bus. TWO excellent decisions were announced over the pre-Christmas week-end by President Truman. One assured the veto of legislation returning the United States Employment Service offices to the States at once. The other directed the admission into the United States within established immigration quotas of war refugees from Europe at a rate of about 39,000 a year.

The two subjects, of course, are unrelated, except in certain hyper-sensitive minds which will see the refugees as a contribution to our unemployment problem. This is not true. The number is relatively tiny, and the intention is that the majority be orphaned children. But, in any case, Mr. Truman is notably sound in both policies.

It would be the sheerest folly to restore the employment service offices to the States within 100 days, as Congress had decreed. Such dispersion and transfer would be bound to result, as the President said, "in a disrupted and inefficient employment service at the very time when efficient operation is most vitally needed by veterans, workers and employers." Employment ebbs and flows without any regard to State lines, and this is especially so in the reconversion period. Congress listened to State politicians eager to recapture control instead of to what the necessities of the situation cry out. And Mr. Truman was wise and courageous in repeating his advice that the transfer be postponed until June, 1947, and that needed, permanent changes in the whole employment system be effected meanwhile.

The President was also right in his incidental objection that the measure was made a rider to legislation having a different purpose in this case, a bill wiping $52,000,000,000 unused and now unneeded war appropriations off the books. A President cannot veto one section of an appropriations bill without vetoing it all. However, in this instance, he can accomplish for the present by directive what the main purpose of the bill was, and thus can sacrifice the whole thing without doing serious harm, in that way killing the objectionable rider. His action and protest, no matter what a majority in Congress may think of it, should strengthen popular support of Senator Vanden-berg's proposed constitutional amendment to authorize selective vetoes by the President. Displaced persons," the term applied to Europe's wretched masses of homeless, has a quite cool and antiseptic sound when one thinks of all the woe it represents, but there was human compassion, appropriate to the season, in Mr.

Truman's order. It is a fact that this action will save only a drop from the bucket of the Continent's misery, but the President has done the most that can be done under existing highly restrictive immigration laws. From a Congress in which various additionally restrictive proposals are pending, it is probably not now possible to expect any liberalization. Mr. Truman is to be commended for speaking out: "This period of unspeakable human distress is not the tune for us to close or narrow our gates." THE POINT OF VIEW development of sulfa, penicillin and streptomyicin.

And speaking of immortality, I also wonder if he could recall the name of the discoverer of any of these wonder drugs. We look too often to others for betterment of health and living conditions, taking much and giving little. How many of us cry for relief of our own suffering and at the same time deny others. None of us can be expected to devote all our time or resources to alleviate human misery, but we can, every one of us, take a small part by buying Christmas seals, giving to the Community Chest, the Red Cross and other agencies, devoted to the welfare of all. Louisville.

William H. Smith. Franco's Spain The recent letter of Samuel D. Warren on "Franco's Spain" is really a comedy of errors. The regrettable feature is that Mr.

Warren is unwittingly aiding the spread of Communism. Parts of his letter have the ring of sincerity, and for this I respect him. For a complete refutation of practically every statement made by Mr. Warren, I refer him and others of open minds to the article of W. G.

Krivitsky, former general in the Red Army, which was published in the Saturday Evening Post of April 15. 1939. This Russian who "enjoyed" the confidence of Comrade Joe Stalin dispels all doubt concerning Franco's fight for Spanish freedom and exposes the Spanish Loyalists for what they really were, a Communist-dominated clique bent on destroying Spain in the interest ot, the Soviet Union. Louisville. Louis A.

Bahr. An Irate Constituent I personally think that Senator Barkley and Congressman Gregory have cost the farmers of western Kentucky thousands of dollars by their advice. Do we want men of this type in our next Congress? Hopkinsville, Ky. C. D.

White. Wants Fathers Home Why doesn't the Government send all fathers home, unless they wish to remain in the service? There are worse tragedies going on in the dislocated homes than war. Some people think that children do not grieve for their fathers. Well, they do and sometimes are more to be pitied than the grown-ups, who understand what it is all about. Have a heart and use a little common Brief But Highly Useful Career In Louisville IN THE very short time that he has been a resident of Louisville only 22 months, as a matter of fact James T.

Griffin has established himself as a factor in the civic life of the community who is going to be sadly missed when he moves away February 1. He has been extraordinarily generous of his time and energy in a variety of public causes and has manifest an ardor for the general progress and welfare which would have done credit to a native whose roots here went back for generations. His business career has moved him from one city to another, but he has always, so we understand, carried his public spirit with him. Certainly, he brought a lot of it to Louisville. The common regret at his departure is tempered, of course, by gratification in the fact that it means advancement with his company and in his commercial responsibilities.

He is the sort of man whose successes rejoice his friends and whose friends are many, spontaneously attracted. Darnall General Hospital To the Editor of The Courier-Journal: When Keen Johnson became Governor in October 1939, a contract had been let for construction of the main administration building of a new projected state hospital for the mentally ill in Boyle County near Danville, now known as Darnall General Hospital. The Johnson Administration completed erection of the building and construction of the essential utility units including an electric power plant, a water system and sewage disposal plant as well as necessary sewers, cost of which was paid for jointly from the State treasury and Federal funds obtained from the Public Works Administration. This phase of the new institution had been completed in the summer of 1941 when the national Government's military preparedness program was getting under way. The Federal Government was beginning to build a number of large hospitals.

So there was born the thought that perhaps the Federal Government might be interested in a plan under which use of the institution would be made available for the period of the national emergency. Governor Johnson discussed the matter with Dr. A. T. McCormack, now deceased, then State Commissioner of Health, and other of the foremost physicians who were serving on an advisory committee on mental diseases.

Dr. McCormack went to Washington and succeeded in interesting the Surgeon General of the Army and members of his staff. On August 1, 1941, Maj. Gen. James MaGee, then Surgeon General of the Army, and Col.

John R. Hall came to Kentucky from Washington. They visited the hospital site and were impressed with its possibilities. As result of that visit there was worked out a lease agreement between the State of Kentucky and the Federal Government under which the properties constructed and about 600 or 800 acres of the land that had been bought were leased to the Army for one dollar a year for the period of the emergency. The Army was authorized to construct any additional buildings required.

At termination of the war the Army obligated itself to return the property to the State of Kentucky in as good condition as it was when accepted. The Federal Government has expended more than $5,000,000 in erection of additional buildings at the hospital. Now that intention has been expressed of returning the property to the State, it is reasonable to anticipate that the buildings will go with the property intact. Since the late Dr. McCormack is not here to sit in on negotiations affecting the return of the property to the Commonwealth, I can think of no one quite so capable.

and thorough in all transactions for the good of the Commonwealth of Kentucky than Former Governor Johnson. C. P. Thurman. Louisville.

Science and Human Welfare I am in complete sympathy with "Sinus Sufferer for 40 Years" and everyone else suffering any malady, but in his letter, a degree of selfishness and ignorance could be detected which is common to too many ot us. He says "We rack our brains over atomic energy that will destroy, etc." Destruction is not and has never been the purpose of scientists in developing atomic energy. They have worked unceasingly and unfailingly in search of methods to allay suffering. I wonder if "Sinus Sufferer" knows who is responsible for the development of the different rays used in the treatment of disease, the most important of which is cancer. Let us not censure these great men for "giving us no consideration" when they are devoting their lives to help humankind.

The time spent to improve business conditions is compared by "Sufferer" with time spent to improve health conditions. Actually, there is no comparison. He will do well to investigate the work being done by agencies to control tuberculosis, cancer, leprosy and social diseases. I wonder if he knows how much has been accomplished in the field of biological chemistry in the past five years. I refer to the Ephraim Tutfs Creator Died Before His Creature ARTHUR TRAIN was a distinguished lawyer and a pleasant spinner of maga7.ine fiction.

His chief claim to fame, however, will undoubtedly be through the existence of a purely imaginary, character who has been endowed with corporeal existence by some thousands of indignant readers. This creature was the hero of Mr. Train's frequent and ingratiating short stories, and was a country lawyer of uncommon wit and sharpness. As a character he was not wholly original and the tales of his rural Fair Play. sense: SENATOR SOAPER Says A Texas evangelist avers that no new sin has been originated in 5,000 years.

Nevertheless we believe that learned counsel at Nuernberg have turned up some interesting variations. A New England safe-cracking is laid to amateurs, though what an ama- teur safe-cracker might be we never cunning possessed, as Mr. Train was the first to acknowledge, a strong flavor of corn. But for some mysterious reason Ephraim Tutt captured the minds and hearts of innumerable otherwise level-headed people. To Ephraim Tutt went duns, confidence letters from "relatives," a plea from the sedate Who's Who for biographical data, and a steady stream of requests from hapless souls in need of legal advice.

Wrien Central City. The Tobacco Problem Why bother the Governor about tobacco sales? What legal authority can he exercise? It did no good when Governor Laffoon or Governor Chandler tried to intervene. Of course, if the farmers want to withhold their tobacco from the market it might have some effect. However, what can be done with the weed if not marketed? There is a monopoly in raising tobacco, confining it to certain farmers and denying others who have become of age or those who have bought land and the former owner has retained all allotments. Now if there is an over-production what can keep the price up? I would like to have an allotment, even at a 30-cent average.

With good land and facilities for housing. I have no base. Every farmer or landowner in Kentucky should have the same right to raise tobacco as corn, wheat, fruit, hay, and all other products. Of course, agitation may help some. However, with continued Increase in taxes of manufactured tobacco products, the price cannot stay at the high peak.

Exporting the surplus is the only hope. Murray, Ky. T. O. Turner.

Letters should be brief (rarely abore 300 words), preferably typewritten on one side of the paper. The writer's name and address must be signed, to be published only with his consent. The Courier-Jour-nal reserves the right to condense. Train knew. Does he leave some of his own money? To the best of our recollection, the only cooling-off period that worked was leaving Adolf's mighty Wehrmacht for a couple of winters on the steppes.

A local character in possession of several pounds of butter and bacon is looking over the '46 refrigerators for something with a time-lock in the door. Our thoughts are with you, Argentines, though your politics we deplore. Dispatches have you suffering in the sweltering heat you lucky people. i Having no office to go to, Whittier could relax when snowbound and write it up for posterity. Our Well-Selected U.N.O.

Delegation By JAY FRANKLIN. Washington. PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S shrewd grip on the mechanics of American politics is best illustrated by his nominations for the U. S. delegation to the Assembly of the United Nations.

The selection of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt widow of the wartime President is especially good, both as party politics and as national politics. Mrs. Roosevelt is a political power in her own right, with a strong national following and with an important position in the politics of pivotal New York State. Both as a woman and as a politician she is widely respected and can represent in the Assembly the warm and generous sympathies of the millions of simple American men and women who hate war and hope that victory will bring a better world.

The two Senatorial nominees Chairman Tom Connally of Texas and raaking Republican Arthur Vandenberg of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are natural and emphasize the non-partisan foreign policy contemplated by our membership in the U.N.O. With them, both the Senate and the public can be assured that the peculiar responsibility of the U. S. Senate in foreign policy will be safeguarded and that decisions will be responsibility related to the real political forces in American life. The other American delegate, former Secretary of State Edward R.

Stettinius, is already our representative on the Security Council. His selection as a member of the delegation to the Assembly means that his position in the Security Council will be directly related to the entire delegation and will not be p.uallel to ami independent of that delegation. An added touch o( unity is provided by the assurance hat Secretary of State James F. Byrnes will attend the opening of the Assembly. Mr.

Train, growing uneasy over this powerful tribute, stated firmly and, he hoped, finally, that there was no such human being as Ephraim Tutt, he was fiercely assailed by Tutt partisans who insisted that, their hero did indeed live and rescue poor widows from designing villains. Perhaps wfth the death of his creator, Ephraim too will be allowed to die. But in a curious way he seems to have become a part of our lighter literary folklore, and folklore always has a body of believers for whom dull truth has little attraction. What Do We Mean By 'Socialized Medicine'? Bv TARLETON COLLIER from the traditional arrangement of private fees or from the doctrine that the ministrations of medicine are the functions of physicians as individuals, somehow apart from the organization of society though paternally related to it. A more nearly exact definition of "socialized medicine," it seems to me, is a system in which all physicians are public employees and all medical services are dispensed by the State, just as if all schools were public schools and there were no place in the educational system for private, parochial, denominational or special-purpose, specially endowed schools or colleges.

(This analogy of the school system is a good one, and we'll come back to it.) Committee, of which Senator Murray is chairman; in the House, to the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, which has a subcommittee on health, headed by Representative Priesl, one of the stout supporters of the idea. This strategy docs not, of course, alter the principles and the issues involved. The main conflict rages around the nature of health insurance. Private medicine, as represented by the American Medical As- i sociation and many a local and State society, including has become extraordinarily active in urging systems of insurance for medical care and hospitalization. It is now aggressive on the point, as if to overcome the suggestion that the practitioners themselves are insensitive to the poor distribution of medi- cal care.

'W" ml On this point a reading of the bill is commended to all physicians. They will see that it labors to establish freedom of choice by patients in selecting physicians, by physicians in entering the system and serving insured persons or staying out and refusing them. Section 205-b says: "Every individual entitled to receive general medical or general dental benefit shall be permitted to select those from whom he shall receive such benefit, subject to the consent of the practitioner or group of practitioners selected and to change such selection. And 205-e says: "The Surgeon General shall publish and otherwise make known in each local area to individuals entitled to benefit under this title the names of medical and dental practitioners and groups of practitioners who have agreed to furnish benefits under this title. Senator Wagner, elaborating on this point i in a statement accompanying the bill, said: "If the bill is enacted into law, physicians will continue to practice medicine much as they do now.

They will have the choice of practising full time under system, of combining care of patients paid for by the system with care of uninsured patients and of those who prefer to pay for their care privately (that is, without making use of their prepaid protection), or of continuing to practice full time outside the system." monly referred to as "the American Beveridge Plan," or "the cradle-to-the-grave" bill. The latter provides for sion of the social security system to, cover masses of people not now included like the self-employed, agricultural workers, domestic, employees of non-profit institutions, etc. and for increase of pay roll taxes and deductions to pay for health insurance (doctors' and hospital bills). However, the original bill has been buried in committees of House and Senate going on tp three years, and its supporters had begun to despair not only of getting action on it but also of keeping the issue before the public eye and ear. Therefore, it is not hard to see that the new bill is a piece of strategy no less than part of the normal routine of getting a law passed.

It seeks to break a bottleneck. The new bill concentrates on the health insurance section of the old bill, bolstered" by broader federal aid for public health and maternal and child care services, medical care to the needy and grants-in-aid for research and professional education. It pointedly avoids any stipulation as to how money is to be raised, whether by pay roll taxes or appropriation, and thus it escapes assignment to the Ways and Means Committee in the House and the Finance Committee in the Senate, both of which so far have kept the original bill in pickle. It goes into friendlier hands in the Senate to the Education and Labor Nobody, nho employs this highly controversial term thinks much about defining it. First of a Series.

TODAY we approach with a brave heart the subject of what some of the neighbors are pleased to call "socialized medicine." The discussion involves a definition of that term what it means but more particularly what it doesn't mean and the best way to get at it is to take up Senate Bill 1606, entitled "A Bill to Provide for a National Health Program." This is the bill introduced by Senators Wagner and Murray on the day, November 19, when President Truman sent to Congress a message proposing a system of compulsory health insurance. It is the bill which the American Medical Association has protested as involving "socialized medicine," a term that has come to be applied from this source less as a description than as an epithet but a term in the use of which a majority of the association's members, the busy physicians who seem to respond almost automatically on this point, doubtless would concur. It micht be well to seek a definition of "socialized medicine" or to inquire of the average physician what he means by it. In the latter case one is likely to find that he means any system which departs fJHE proposal for a national health program, as made by President Truman end embodied in the new Wagner-Murray Bill and a similar bill introduced in the House by Representative Dingell of Michigan, is based on a system of compulsory pre-paid health insurance. This is the heart of the legislation, and everything else in the bills is concerned with machinery for administration of the funds calculated as around $3,000,000,000 a year thus raised.

The new bill is lifted almost bodily out of the original Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill which, introduced in 1943, is com JIOWEVER, it insists that the insurance system be voluntary, and thus that the ministrations of medicine remain in the hands of the profession, which will continue to set the rules of practice, fees, as at present. It insists that a compulsory insurance plan, with the Government collecting fees via pay rolls and paying for services rendered to the insured groups by physicians, hospitals and nurses would change the existing system, "socializing" it, making physicians the retainers or even the slaves of the Government. "I did pick up all of MY toys you don't call thai mine, do you?".