Coral Gables Historical Archive
Coral Gables Riviera
Friday, January 16, 1942, page 6 (of 8)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
CORAL GABLES RIVIERA
AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER Published every Friday by the Miami Riviera Publishing Co., 306 Coral Way, Coral Gables, Fla. Established January, 1926 Combined with the Dade County and Coconut Grove Times, 1929. ALBERT E. HARUM President and Publisher JAMES B. MOORE Managing Editor Mailing Address, P. O. Box 704 Telephone 4-1634 Member, Florida Press Association National Editorial Association Represented in the National Advertising Field by the American Press Association, New York City SUBSCRIPTION RATES Six Months $1.25 One Year $2.00 Out of Town $3.00 Entered as second class matter May 21, 1926, at the Postoffice at Miami, Florida, under Act of March 3, 1879.
About the Blackout
The city's performance in last Sunday's blackout does credit to the name of Coral Gables. Not only was the darkening of homes and business places almost 100 per cent effective, but there was no disorder nor accidents to mar the record. Only a very few cases of lights showing were reported by the air raid wardens, and in the majority of these, an effort had been made to black out. Gables residents were probably better warned of the blackout than other sections of the area, because police cars cruised the residential areas with sirens going full blast and most residents heard them. Just how effective this warning method will be in a real emergency is a matter that should be given a good deal of thought. Since the danger of an actual raid is a very real one, nothing should be left undone to give the residents ample warning. The installation of stationery warning sirens throughout the city is a project that should be given serious consideration. It might prove quite expensive, but if it does the necessary job in a real emergency, it would be well worth the cost.
Valuable Improvement
Workmen this week started tearing out the center strip of paving on Ponce de Leon Boulevard from the island south to Bird Road. When this is completed, the strip will be replaced with a beautiful parkway, landscaped with trees and tropical shrubbery. The cost of this improvement to the taxpayers will be negligible. The rock that is being removed will be used to resurface the Tahiti Beach Road, now badly in need of repairs, and the city will be saved the expense of buying new surfacing. The beautifying of this section should go a long way toward increasing the value of property in that area and futhermore should eventually promote the erection of quite a few apartment buildings in that section. The city should be commended for bringing about this improvement at so little cost to the citizenry.
BUY A SHARE IN AMERICA DEFENSE SAVINGS BONDS AND STAMPS
BANK WITH YOUR COUNTRY is the theme of this effective Defense Savings poster now seen in store windows and in the lobbies of buildings all over the country. Drawn by artist Henry Billings, of Rhinebeck, N. Y., the poster portrays the spirit of patriotism by investing in the United States Government through the purchase of Defense Bonds and Stamps. Stamps are priced from 10 cents to $5; Bonds from $18.75 to $10,000.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Continued from Page One commercial boom in automobiles and all manner of luxuries and gadgets. Mentally and morally we did not dare to prepare ourselves for the war which our undeclared but mortal enemies were organizing against us; every effort to prepare the people was met by cries about war-mongering, interventionism, and Mr. Roosevelt's alleged ambitions to make himself a dictator. Thus, in physical terms we are about one-third prepared, and mentally and morally we are scarcely prepared at all. We have now to learn in the hardest possible way and in the shortest possible time the elementary truths which we refused to believe and would not learn. We have to learn in humiliaiton and be defeat that under no conceivable conditions could our position in the Pacific be defended without a British alliance in both oceans which would, by guaranteeing the security of the British Isles and the continents, particularly of the French empire, have released adequate British naval forces to Singapore. Yet as late as a month ago the President could not know whether Congress and the people would understand that the defense of Malaya, Burma, the Dutch East Indies and Australia was a vital American interest and not just "British imperialism." We have to learn what every competent American naval strategist has always known-that, even if there had been no Pearl Harbor, even if every American warship and bomber were in the Pacific and the whole Atlantic were left unprotected, we were bound in the first long phase of a Japanese war to lose ground in the Far East, and to be cut off from the normal supplies of essential raw materials that we draw from the East. Yet with the Japanese war openly threatened for eighteen months by the Berlin pact signed in September, 1940, we have chewed up rubber and metals and diverted skilled men and machine tools to what was within a per cent of an all-time record boom in passenger automobiles. We have, moreover, dillied and dallied in accumulating stockpiles of raw rubber, guided by the readily foreseen Japanese blockade of the Far East. We have to learn an elementary truth which will nevertheless come home to our people as a startling surprise: that the greatest American industry, that the most characteristic American industry, that the industry which has grown up deep in the heart of our country, in Senator Vandenberg's Michigan and in Senator Taft's Ohio-that the motor industry is dependent for its very existence upon the defense of the British imperial position in the Malayan seas. We have to learn not only that in an isolationist America we cannot continue to ride freely in automobiles, but that unless we can conquer quickly in war purposes the whole vast resources of the automobile industry, we can lose the war. If we face it, we shall be rationed not by our own government but by the Japanese and the Nazis. What, we might as well ask ourselves, will be the price of rubber under a victorious Japanese monarchy? The price, we may be sure, will be more than dollars; it will be our very independence. The restrictions which have now at long last been placed upon the sale of new tires cannot be looked upon as a passing inconvenience. They are only the first beginnings of what will be the most radical and rapid change in our ordinary ways of living that this generation has ever known-a change which will not be so dangerous nor so heroic as that which has occurred in England under the air raids. But it will be none the less profound in its effect upon the habits of our daily lives. For to an immense degree our ordinary lives are centered upon the automobile, and in the coming months we shall have to restrict drastically not merely new tires but the private passenger automobile itself. We ought, as clear as a matter of common fairness, halt completely the sale of new and even of slightly used cars until a system of rationing can be organized. And we shall have to proceed as rapidly as possible to the rationing of gasoline so as to cut down the lowest limit the wear and tear on tires and cars which will be, for the duration of the war, irreplacable. Even if we wanted to, it would be futile to complain, or to feel sorry for ourselves. For there is no possible way in which our customary use of automobiles can be maintained during this war or restored after the war, except by the defeat of our enemies. We are in a one-way street, and if there are any whose hearts are faint and have no stomach for what they will be required to do, let them fix it clearly and unalterably in their minds that our enemies are not only ruthless but that by our standards they are poor. Our enemies do not have cars as we do, almost as a matter of course, and it is utterly unthinkable that they will permit us to return to our luxuries if they prevail and have the power to dictate the terms of peace. We must, therefore, look upon these first restrictions as the beginnings of a new way of living, harder, much simpler, and much more laborious. It would be sham and vulgar heroics to say that the restrictions resemble or even approach the hardships of the men in the armed services. For they are men, most of them, separated from their families and facing the loss of their lives. But while the civilian restrictions will not make heroes of those who suffer them, let us hope that he can be accepting them with good humor-begin to feel a little less uncomfortable on the side lines. Soon we shall acknowledge, what all true men know in their hearts, that the easy way of living to which we have been accustomed were about ripe anyway for a shake-up which would bring forward again the sterner virtues that ennoble men's lives. Surely the churches and the universities and the schools will not fail to see that, as the clamor of commercialism which has drowned out their voices subsides, the time has come again for them to speak clearly. For the people will be listening as they have never in our age listened before. They will be listening as men listen only when the great issues of life and death, of honor and self-respect, are thrust upon them, and their ordinary trivialities fall away. Thus, though it is for the government to impose the restrictions which the war demands, it is from the hearts of the people themselves and from their leaders and teachers, if they can find the inspiration, that there must come the grace to make these restrictions an affirmation of the enduring realities and of the saving virtues of life. Only then shall we go forward, a regenerate people, equipped to do our duty. (Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc.)
After Winter -- Spring BY BROWN
1ST MOSCOW DRIVE WILL I HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN? 2ND MOSCOW DRIVE HITLER
OUR TOWN by Jim Moore
JIM MOORE Did you ever get a letter from a cat-the four-footed kind? Neither did we-but City Manager A. B. Curry can now claim that distinction and put in his application for Bob Ripley's Hall of Fame. It all started at the last commission meeting when the city fathers got a letter from Mrs. Dorothy Morrison, calling their attention to an ordinance, long on the books, requiring that all Coral Gables cats be equipped with bells. The reason for the ordinance is the fact that this community is supposed to be a bird sanctuary, and the bells would prevent predatory felines from creeping upon our unsuspecting feathered friends with the result that the birds end up on the inside of the cats. Well Mrs. Morrison, in no uncertain terms, informed the commission that the ordinance was not being enforced, and that the cats (sans bells) were playing havoc with our bird life. His honor Mayor Joe Whitley added further to their depredations by reporting that they occasionally ate his gold fish. Then the city manager stuck his neck out. Curry sprang to the defense of the local kitties, stating that the well-fed Gables cats didn't act that way, but those blankety-blank strays from across the Tamiami Trail kept coming over into Coral Gables for their feathered luncheons, and that there was no way of telling them about the boundary lines. Well, the story found its way into the press, as such things have a habit of doing-and then came the mysterious letter, duly signed with the imprint of a cat's paw. We quote the letter: "Mr. A. B. Curry City Manager Coral Gables Dear Sir: "The Patriotic Association of Tommy Cats, residing in those sections across the Tamiami Trail and points beyond, at an indignation meeting this morning, following a hasty perusal of the newspaper, hereby, herein, and hereon, demand that you make a public apology and retract your far from fact statement that cats from beyond the Trail are responsible for the bird and gold fish depredations upon these dwellers of the sanctuary of Coral Gables. "Red Bay Billy, Jr., the President of the Cat Association, emphatically avers that the only occasion on which he visited your renowned city was once at midnight, and as a result of the luring, comchither tactics of a Persian Belle of the feline tribe, and after following this shameless female to a point adjacent to the City Hall, he was treacherously pounced upon by resident cats of Coral Gables, and attacked in great numbers-Japanese fashion-without warning. Since that period, dating back several years, Red Bay Billy, Jr., and all cats across the Trail belonging or not to the Association, have ceremoniously avoided even an accidental or incidental stroll about or within the boundaries of your City Beautiful. "Speaking or touching upon that subject of the Mayor's goldfish being devoured-judging from the cats encountered the night of my first and only visit to Coral Gables-my only wonder is that the ravenous felines of your City didn't attempt to make a feast of the Honorable Mayor as well as his gold fish. Red Bay Billy, Jr. His Paw Print and Seal" Coming from a cat, those are pretty harsh words and the City Manager is in a dilemma. Firstly, it's hard to know just how you go about apologizing to a feline quadruped. Secondly, Mr. Curry is just a bit dubious about the veracity of Mr. Red Bay Billy's statements and points out that Mr. Adolph Hitler uses the same tactics in condoning his actions when attacking helpless nations. At any rate, Mrs. Morrison and the other bird lovers in Coral Gables will be happy to know that the city fathers have given instructions that the bell ordinance be inforced to the limit-and all cats, whether they live in Coral Gables or across the boundary line, had better tinkle when they walk through the streets of our fair city.
Mark Sullivan UNITY NECESSARY TO WIN WAR
To win this war, the civilian population of the United States must achieve a condition which may be described roughly, as this: It must become an integrated industrial machine operating as one national unit-integrated, as nearly as possible, to the degree that a single industrial enterprise is integrated, such as Ford, or United States Steel. This national industrial plant must have, as its central and primary purpose, the production of war goods. Also this must be its sole purpose-certainly the only purpose to be kept in mind. Much more than 50 per cent of the output must be war goods Goods for civilian must be a side-line, and must be limited to what the civil population can barely get along with. What has just been done about rubber tires must be duplicated about many lines of goods. Probably the percentage of rubber made for war purposes may be as high as 80 or 90, with 10 to 20 per cent for civilian use. Some such ratio must be achieved in line after line of goods. Into this national industrial machine, all the adult civilian population must fit, many as workers directly on war goods, others working indirectly, all as sacrificers-and all integrated into the machine. This is what our enemy nations have done. This is what we must do to win. For achieving such an integrated national industrial mechanism, and operating it; for binding it together and holding it together, there must be an inner structure, partly like a skeleton, more like a web, the web of a fabric. It is not enough to have a head, a czar. We commonly think in terms of a czar, but a czar is less essential than the inner web. This inner web cannot be improvised, cannot be put up anew-there is not time. No wise person would attempt to create a new web. What each nation does is to take the web of national industry that already exists and turn it to the new use. Where do nations find this web of industry? Hitler uses the long existing German system of private industry, the cartels, with Nazism imposed upon it. Italy uses the Facist organization of industry, semi-private, semi-state, that has been built up over a period of some twenty years. Russia uses a Communist organization of industry that it has built up over some twenty-five years. England uses the long-existing system of private industry with government to some extent imposed upon it. The point is, each nation uses the web it already has, the existing web into which industry is already geared. No nation tries to get up a new web in wartime-only disaster could follow. Where is the United States to find its web? By the test of competence alone we must judge our need. In our emergency we cannot afford to take account of economic theory, or hoped-for social good, or even morals. In the United States, throughout our history, the web of industry has been what we call the business man, with the groups and associations in which he belongs. This has been the most competent organization for the production of geods the world has ever seen. Some nine years ago we began an attempt to check and weaken the aggregate business man as the web of our industrial and economic life. For the attempt there were various motives. In the minds of some who made the attempt, the justification was defects in the morals of business, the excesses and even crimes that some business men had committed during the 1920's. In the minds of others the motive was to bring about a new social and economic system. To conduct the fight to attack and discredit business men as symbols, business as a system. The objective intended took two form. One was government ownership and operation of business. This objective has not been attained to any great percentage-operation of government into the public utility industry has been the only conspicuous example. Much the larger objective, and the one that has been more nearly accomplished, was to put labor leaders on a par with business men, or even above them, in the management of industry, in the direction of our economic system. Does this serve us now? It does not. Labor leaders are not competent managers of business-if they were they would be business men, not labor leaders. Two persons start out as boys, in coal mine or iron mine or other industry. One, because of special talent that leads him on, comes to the top as a labor leader-that is Mr. John L. Lewis. Another, because of a different talent, comes to the top as a manager of industry-that is Mr. William Knudsen, or any one of scores of examples. The relative private and public virtues of the two may be this, that or the other-One is a business man, the other is not. One can today help to provide us with our desperately needed web for making the United States into a great integrated individual machine. The other cannot. The serious thing, the disturbing thing, is that at the moment war struck us, we were in the midst of an attempted transition from an existing web of industry to a new one. This is ominously reminiscent of the fate of France. If history is obliged to record that we suffered disaster in this war, a principle reason would be that we attempted to carry on at the same time a foreign war, and a domestic transition from one system of industry to another. (Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc.)
This One's on You
WELCOME SONG-It was the first meeting of the Kiwanis under the leadership of William L. Gray, newly elected president. The dessert had been consumed and the new high mogul called for a song, and then stood surprised as the Pianist Harry Rath played "The Old Gray Mare" while the entire membership paraphrased the words with "Old Bill Gray, he ain't what he used to be". JARGON-We're accustomed to the usual soda fountain patter such as "Shoot one" for a Coca-Cola and "Heat a pair" for two cups of coffee, but we were a bit surprised when we ordered a toasted English muffin in Breeding's the other morning to hear the counter girl shout "Burn the British". We asked the girl whether the R. A. F. cadets, who eat there frequently, seemed to mind the expression and were informed that they looked a little startled the first few times they heard it, but now didn't seem to mind it at all. LAZY THIEVES-We've been warning people to be careful to park their cars in a safe place, due to the fact that the rubber shortage may cause an increase in tire thieves. Evidently one pilferer didn't want to take the trouble to remove a tire when he could get the next best thing. He stole a pair of roller skates from the Thomas C. Poole's car the other evening. PARADOX-The recent blackout brought to light the fact that two of the very few glimmers reported in Coral Gables came from the offices of a power company official and an air raid warden. CIRCUS STUFF-We've heard of tandem and one-wheel artists in the bicycle field, but Patricia (Tish) and Jack Wilkins, children of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph L. Wilkins, do a stunt that is worthy of notice. With "Tish" perched on the front fender of Jack's bicycle riding backwards and doing the pedaling, Jack sits on the front seat "Turk" fashion, with his hands on the handlebars, doing the steering: As they sit this way, facing each other, "Tish" twirls and throws a baton in the air, never failing in the catch as they ride along. BLACKOUT-Friend of ours has a novel speedy way to black out his living room without even stepping outside the room. He has his throw rugs equipped with cloth tape loops, and his windows with metal hooks. The minute the siren sounds up go the throw rugs onto the hooks and the room is completely blacked out. We thought may-be you'd like to do the same. PEARL HARBOR-Morris Cold, in the recent past, tried riding on his car without tires removing his little Ford. Result was the loss by complete demolition of his car-and the purchase of another with no necessary financial ramifications. Now, before Morris leaves the Riviera office his wife calls so she'll know when to start worrying. We overheard this between Morris and his wife the other day: Morris: "Okay, I'll hurry home." His wife: "No, no. Don't hurry, Remember Pearl Harbor."