Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1915 — Page 2

The Enemy of All the World

By Jack London

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It wu Silas Banner-man who finally ran down that scientific wizard and arch-enemy of mankind, Emil Gluck. Gluck’s confession, before he went to the electric chair, threw much light upon the series of mysterious events, many apparently unrelated, that so perturbed the world between the years IMS and 194 L While the deeds of Emil Gluck were all that was abominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity for the unfortunate, malformed and maltreated genius. This side of his ptory has never been told before, and from his confession and from the great mass of evidence and the documents and records of the time we are able to construct a fairly accurate portrait of him, and to discern the factors and pressures that molded him into the human monster he became and that drove him onward along the fearful path he trod; Emil Gluck was born In Syracuse, H. T„ in 1895. His father, Josephus Gluck, was a special policeman and night watchman who, in the year 1900, died suddenly of pneumonia. The mother, a pretty, fragile creature, who before her marriage had been a milliner, grieved herself to death over the loss of her husband. This sensitiveness of the mother was the heritage that in the boy became morbid and . horrible. In 1901 the boy, Emil, then six years of age, went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Ann Bartell. She was a vain, shallow and heartless woman. In her breast was no kindly feeling for the sensitive, shrinking boy. Also, dhe was cursed with poverty and burdened with a husband who was a lazy, erratic ne'er-do-well. Young Emil Gluck was not wanted and Ann Bartell could be trusted to impress this fact sufficiently upon him.' As an illustration of the treatment he received In that early, formative period, the following instance is given: When he had been living In the Bartell heme a little more than a year, he broke his leg. He sustained the injury through playing on the forbidden roof —as all boys have done and will continue to do to the end of time. The leg was broken in two places between the knee and thigh. Emil, helped by his frightened playmitM, m«n»giwl to drag himself to the front sidewalk, where he fainted. The children of the neighborhood were afraid of the hard-featured shrew who presided over the Bartell house; hut summoning their resolution, they rang the bell and told Ann Bartell of the accident She did not even look at the little lad who lay stricken on the sidewalk, but slammed the door and went back to her washtub. The time passed. A drizzle came on and Emil Gluck, out of his faint lay *obbing in the rain. The leg should have been set immediately. As it was, the inflammation rose rapidly and made a nasty case of it At the mid of two hours the indignant women of the neighborhood protested to Ann Bartell. This time she came out and looked at the lad as he lay helpless at her feet Also she hysterically disowned him. It was a woman, Elizabeth Shepstone, who came along, learned of the situation and had the boy placed on a shutter. It was she who called the doctor and who, brushing aside An* Bartell, had the boy carried info the house. When the doctor arrived Ann Bartell promptly warned him that she would not pay him for his services. Far two months little Emil lay in bed, the first month on his back without once being turned over; and he lay neglected and alone, save for the occasional visits of the unremunerated and overworked physician. It would seem strange that from the hands of Ann Bartell Emil Gluck should have received a college education; bat the explanation is simple. Her ne’er-do-well husband, deserting her, made a strike in the Nevada gold fields and returned to her a many times millionaire. Ann Bartell hated the boy and immediately she sent him to the Harristown academy, a hundred miles sway. Shy and sensitive, a lonely knd misunderstood little soul, he was more lonely than ever at Farristown. He was a remarkable student Application such as Ms would have taken him far; but he did not need application. A glance at the text meant mastery for him. The result was that he did an immense amount of collateral "reading and acquired more in half a year than did the average student In half a dozen years. In 1909. barely fttHteea yearn of age, he was ready—*maro than reedy,” the headmaster of

the academy said —to enter Tala or Harvard. His Juvenility prevented him from entering those universities, and so, in 1909, we find him a freshman at historic Bowdotn college. In 1918 he graduated with highest honors and immediately afterward followed Professor Bradlough to Berkeley, Cal. The one friend that Emil Gluck discovered in all his life was Professor Bradlough. The latter’s weak lungs had led him to exchange Maine for California, the removal being facilitated by the ofTer of a professorship In the State university. Throughout the year 1914 Emil Gluck resided In Berkeley and took special scientific courses. Toward the end of that year two deaths changed his prospects and his gelations with life. The death of Professor Bradlough took from him the one friend he was ever to know, and the death of Ann Bartell left him penniless. Hating the unfortunate lad to the last, she cut him off with one hundred dollars. Thq following year, at twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolled as air instructor In chemistry In the University of California. Here the years passed quietly. He was twenty-seven years of age when he first sprang into prominence in the newspapers through the publication of his book, “Sex and Progress.” It was a book for scientists, and not one calculated to make a stir. But Gluck, in the last chapter, using barely three lines for It, mentioned the hypothetical desirability of trial marriages. At once the newspapers seized upon those three lines, “played them np yellow,” as the slang was In those days, and set the whole world laughing at Emil Gluck, the bespectacled young professor of twenty-seven. Photographers snapped him; he was besieged by reporters; women’s clubs throughout the land passed resolutions condemning him and his Immoral theories; and on the floor of the California assembly, while discussing the state appropriation to the university, a motion demanding the expulsion of Glnck waß made under threat of withholding the appropria tion —of course, none of his persecutors had read the book; the twisted newspaper version of only three lineß of it was enough for them. Here began Emil Gluck’s hatred for newspaper men. It was the newspapers that were responsible for the next disaster that befell him. For the five years following the publication of his book he had remained silent, and silence for a lonely man is not good. His only recourse was books, and he went on reading and studying enormously. But in 1927 he accepted an invitation to appear before the Human Interest society of Emeryville. Hqi did not trust himself to Bpeak, and as we write we have before us a copy of his learned paper. It is sober, scholarly and scientific, and, it must also be added, conservative. But in one place he dealt with, and I quote his words, “the Industrial and social revolution that is taking place in society.’ r A reporter present seized upon the word “revolution,” divorced it from the text, and wrote a garbled account that made Emil Gluck appear an anarchist. At once "Professor Gluck, anarchist,” flamed over the wires and was appropriately “featured” in all the newspapers in the land. He had attempted to reply to the previous newspaper attack, but now he remained silent. Bitterness had already corroded his souL The university faculty appealed to him to defend himself, but he sullenly declined, even refusing to enter in defense a copy of his paper to save himself from expulsion. He refused to resign, and was discharged from the university faculty. • Persecuted, maligned, and misunderstood, the forlorn and lonely man made no attempt at retaliation. Having lost his position, and being without any income, he had to find work. His first place was at the Union Iron Works, in San Francisco, where he proved a most able draughtsman. It was here that he obtained his firsthand knowledge of battleships and their construction. But the reporters discovered him and featured him in his new vocation. He immediately resigned and found another place; but after the reporters had driven him away from half a dozen positions, he steeled himself to brazen out the newspaper persecution. TMs occurred when he started his electroplating establishment in Oakland, on Telegraph avenue. It was a small shop, employing three men and two boys. Gluck himself worked during this period he perfected the Improved ignition device for gas epgines, the royalties from which ultimately made him wealthy. He started his electroplating establishment early in the spring of 1928, and it was the same year that he formed the disastrous love attachment for Irene Tackley. Now, it is not to be imagined that an extraordinary creature such as Emil Gluck could be any other than an extraordinary lover. In addition to his genius, his loneliness, and his morbidness, it mast he taken Into consideration that he knew nothing about women. Irene Tackley was a rather pretty young woman, but shallow and light-headed. At the time she worked in a small .candy store across the street from Ginck*s shop. He used to come in and drink ice cream sodas and lemon squashes, and stars at her. It seems the girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was “queer,” she said; and at another time she called him a crank when describing how he sat aft the counter and peered at her through his spectacles blushing and stammering when she took notice of him and often leaving the shop in precipitate confiasfam.

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Gluck made her the most amasing presents—a silver tea service, a diamond ring, a set of furs, opera glasses, • ponderous “History of the World” in many volumes, and a motorcycle all sllverplated In his own shop. Enters now the girl’s lover, putting his foot down, showing great anger, compelling her to return Gluck’s strange assortment of presents. This man, William Sherbourne, was a gross and stolid creature, a heavy-jawed man of the working class who had become a successful building contractor in a small way. Gluck did not understand. He tried to get an explanation, attempting to speak with the girl wheil she went home from work In the evening. She complained to Sherbourne, and one night he gave Gluck a beating. , Still Gluck did not understand. He continued to seek an explanation from the girl. In fear of Sherbourne, he applied to the chief of police for permission to carry a revolver, which permission was refused, the newspapers as usnal playing it up sensationally. Then came the’murder of Irene Tackley, six days before her contemplated marriage with Sherbourne. It was on a Saturday night. She had worked late in the candy store, departing after eleven o’clock with her Week’s wages in her purse; She rode on a San Pablo avenue surface car to Thirty-fourth street, where she alighted and started to walk the three blocks to her home. That was the last seen of her alive. Next morning she was found, strangled, In a vacant lot. Emil Gluck was Immediately arrested. Nothing that he could do could save him. He was convicted, not merely on circumstantial evidence, but on evidence “cooked np" by the Oakland police. There is no question that a large portion of the evidence was manufactured. The testimony of

Traveled His Whirlwind Path of Destruction.

Captain Shehan was the sheerest perjury, It being proved long afterward that on the night in question he had not only not been in the vicinity of the murder, but that he had been out of the city in a resort on the San Leandro road. The unfortunate Gluck received life imprisonment. Gluck entered San Quentin prison on April 17, 1929. He was then thirty-four years of age. And for three years and a half, much of the time in solitary confinement, he was left to meditate upon the injustice of man. It was during that time that Ms bitterness corroded him and he became a hater of all his kind. Three other things he did during the same period: he wrote his famous treatise, “Human Morals;” his remarkable brochure; “The Criminal Sane,” and he worked out Ms awful and monstrous scheme of revenge. It was an episode that" had occurred in his electroplating establishment that suggested to him Ms unique weapon of revenge. As stated in Ms confession, he worked every detail out theoretically during his imprisonment, and was able on Ms release, immediately to embark on his career of vengeance. Hi” release was, sensational. Also it was miserably and criminally delayed by the soulless legal red tape, then in vogue. On the night of February 1, 1932, Tim Haswell, a hold-up m»t», was shot during an attempted robbery, by a citizen of Piedmont Heights. Tim Haswell lingered three days, daring which time he not only confessed to the murder of Irene Tackley, but furnished conclusive proofs of the same. It is inconceivable to us of today—the bungling, dilatory pocesses of Justice a generation ago. Emil Glnck was proved in February to be an innocent man, yet he was not released until the following October. He came back to the world in the fall of 1932, as usual a “feature* topic in all the newspapers. The papers, instead of expressing heartfelt ragwt, continued their old sensational persecution. One paper, the San Francisco

Intelligencer, did man. John Hartwell, its editor, elaborated an ingenious theory that tried to show that Glnck was, after all, responsible for tbs murder of Irene Tackley. Hartwell died. And Sherbourne died, too, while Policeman Phillips was shot in the leg and discharged from the Oakland police force. The murder of Hartwell was long a mystery. He was alone in his editorial office at the time. The reports of the revolver were heard by the office boy, who rushed in to find Hartwell expiring in his chair. What puzzled the police was the fact not merely that he had been shot with his own revolver, but that the revolver had exploded in the drawer of his desk. The bullets had torn through the front of the drawer and entered his body. Spontaneous explosion was the police explanation, and the chemists of the cartridge company were well bullied at the inquest. But what the police did not know was that across the street, In the Mercer building, room 833, rented by Emil Gluck, had been occupied by Emil Gluck at the very moment Hartwell’s revolver so mysteriously exploded. At the time, no connection was made between Hartwell’s death and the death of William Sherbourne. Sherbourne had continued to live In the home he had built for Irene Tackley, and one morning in January, 1933, he was found dead. Suicide was the verdict of the coroner’s inquest, for he had been shot by his own revolver. The curious thing that happened that night was the shooting of Policeman Phillips on the sidewalk In front of Sherbourne’s house. The policeman crawled to a police telephone on the corner and rang up for an ambulance. He claimed that someone had shot him from behind in the leg. The , leg in question was so badly shattered

by three .38-caliber bullets that amputation was necessary. But when the police discovered that the damage had been done by Ms own revolver, a great laugh went up and he was charged with having been drunk. In spite of Ms denial of having touched a drop, and of his persistent assertion that the revolver had been in his Mp pocket, and that he had not laid finger to it, he was, discharged from the force. Emil Gluck’s confession, six years later, cleared the unfortunate policeman of disgrace, and he is alive today and in good headth, the recipient of a pension from the city. Emil Gluck, having disposed of his Immediate enemies, now sought a wider field, though his enmity for newspaper men and for thf police remained always active. The royalties on his ignition device for gasoline engines had mounted np while he lay in prison, and year by year the earning power of his invention increased. He was independent, able to travel wherever he willed over the earth and to glut his monstrous appetite for revenge, He operated wholly alone, hut he created a thousandfold more terror and achieved a thousandfold more destruction than all the terrorist groups added together. He signalized Mb departure from California by blowing np Fort Mason. In Mb confession' he spoke of it as a little experiment; he was merely trying his hand. For eight years he wandered over the earth, a mysterious terror, destroying property to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and destroying countless lives. One good result of his awful deeds was the destruction he wrought among the terrorists themselves. Every time he did anything the terrorists ip t|ie vicinity were gathered in by the police dragnet and many of them were executed. Seventeen were executed act Rome alone, following the assassination of the Italian Mug;

(achievement of his wu tho assassin*-1 tfam of tho kins and queen of Portugal. It was their wedding day. All possible precautions bad been taken against the terrorists, and the way from the cathedral, through Lisbon’s streets, was double-banked with troops while a squad of two hundred mounted troopers surrounded the carriage. Suddenly the amazing thing happened. The automatic rifles of the troopers began to go off, as well as the rifles of the double-banked Infantry In the Immediate vicinity. In the excitement the muzzles of the exploring rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter was terrible —horses, troops, spectators, and the king and queen were riddled with bullets. To complicate the affair. In different parts of the crowds behind the foot soldiers, two terrorists had bombs explode on their persons. 'These bombs they had Intended to throw if they got the opportunity. But who was to know this? The frightful havoc wrought by the bursting bombs but added to the confusion; it was considered part of the general attack. And Emil Gluck chuckled and went his way. He knew. But how was the world to know? He had stumbled upon the secret in his old electroplating shop on Telegraph avenue in the city of Oakland. It happened, at that time, that a wireless telegraph station was established by the Thurston Power company close to his shop. In a short time his electroplating vat was put out of order. The vat wiring had many bad joints, and, upon investigation, Gluck discovered minute welds at the joints In the wiring. These, by lowering the resistance, had caused an excessive current to pass through the solution, “boiling” it and spoiling the work. But "what had caused the welds?” was the question in Gluck’s mind. His reasoning was simple. Before the establishment of the wireless station, the vat had worked well. Not until after the establishment of the wireless station had the vat been ruined. Therefore, the wireless station had been the cause. But how? He quickly answered the question. If an electric discharge was capable of operating a coherer across three thousand miles of ocean, then, certainly the electric discharge from the wireless station four hundred feet away could produce coherer effects on the bad joints in the vat wiring. Gluck thought no more about it at the time. He merely rewired his vat and went on electroplating. But afterward, in prison, he remembered the incident, and like a flash there came into his mind the full significance of it He saw in it the silent, secret weapon with which to revenge himself on the world. His great discovery, which died with him, was control over the direction and scope of the electric discharge. At the time, this was the unsolved problem of wireless telegraphy —as it still is today—but Emil Gluck, in his prison cell, mastered it. And when he was released, he applied It. It was Emil Gluck that caused the terrible German-American war, with the loss of 800,000 lives, and the consumption of almost incalculable treasure. It will be remembered that in 1939 strained relations existed between the two countries. Germany, though aggrieved, was not anxious for war, and, as a peace token, sent the crown prince and seven battleships on a friendly .visit to the United States. On the night of February 15, the seven warships lay at anchor in the Hudson opposite New York city. And on that night, Emil Gluck, alone, with all his apparatus on board, was out in a launch. This launch, it was afterward proved, was bought by him from the Ross-Turner company, while much of the apparatus he ÜBed that night had been purchased from the Columbia Electric works. But this was not known at the time. All that

was known wag that the seven battleships blew up, one after another, at regular, four-minute Intervals. Ninety per cent of the crews and officers, along with the crown prince, perished, Germany believed that it had been done by a submarine, and immediately declared war. It was six months after Gluck's confession, that shq returned the Philippines and Hawaii to the United States. 'ln the meanwhile, Emil Gluck, malevolent wizard and arch-hater, traveled his whirlwind path of destruction. He left no traces. Scientifically thorough, he always cleaned up after himself. His method was to rent a room or a house, and secretly to install his apparatus —which apparatus, by the way, he so perfected and simplified that it occupied little space. After he had accomplished his purpose, he carefully removed thb apparatus. He bade fair to live out a long life of horrible crime. The epidemic of the shooting of New York city policemen was a remarkable affair. It became one of the horror mysteries of the time. In two short weeks over a hundred policemen were shot In the lege-by their own revolvers. Inspector Jones did not solve the mystery, but It was his idea that finally outwitted Gluck. On his recommendation the policemen ceased carrying revolvers, and no more accidental shooting occurred. It was in the early spring of 1940 that Gluck destroyed the Mare island navy yard. Prom a room In Vallejo, he sent his electric discharges across the Vallejo straits to Mare island. He first played his flashes on the battleship Maryland. She lay at the dock of one of the mine magazines. On her forward deck, on a huge temporary platform of timbers, were disposed over a hundred mines. These mines were for the defense of the Golden Gate. Any one of these mines wan capable of destroying a dozen battleships, and there were over a hundred Tne destruction was uutuw,

bat ft mi a only Gluck’s overture. Be played his flashes down the Mar* uurwj shore, blowing up live torpedo boats, the torpedo station and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. Returning westward again, and scooping in occasional isolated magazines on the high ground back from the shore, he blew up three cruisers and the battleships Oregon. Delaware, New Hampshire and Florida —the latter had just gone into dry dock, and the magnificent dry dock was destroyed along with her. It was a frightful’catastrophe, and a shudder of horror passed through the land. But it was nothing to what was to follow. In the late fall of that year, Emil Gluck made a clean sweep of the Atlantic seaboard • from Maine to Florida. Nothing escaped. Forts, mines, coast defenses of all sort, torpedo stations, magazines—everything went up. Three months afterward, in midwinter, he smote the north shore of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Greece in the same Btupefying manner. A wail went up from the nations. It was clear that human agency was behind all this destruction, and it was equally clear, because of Emil Gluck’s impartiality, that the destruction was not the work of any particular nation. One thing was patent, namely, that whoever was the human behind it all, that human was a menace to the world. No nation was safe. There was no defense against this unknown and all-powerful foe. Warfare was futile —nay, not merely futile, but itself the very essence of the peril. For a twelvemonth the manufacture of powder ceased and .all soldiers and sailors were withdrawn from all fortifications and war vessels. And even a world disarmament was seriously considered at a convention of the powers held at The Hague at that time. And then Silas Bannerman, a secret service agent of the United States, leaped into world fame by the arrest of Emil Gluck. At first Bannerman was laughed at, but he had prepared his case well, and in a few weeks the most skeptical were convinced of Emil Gluck’s guilt. The one thing, however, that Silas Baimerman never succeeded in explaining, even to his own satisfaction, was how first he came to connect Gluck with the atrocious crimes. It is true, Bannerman was in Vallejo on secret government business at the time of the destruction of Mare Island; and it is true that on the streets of Vallejo Emil Gluck was pointed out to him as a queer crank; but no impression was made at the time. It was not until afterward, when on a vacation in the Rocky mountains, and when reading the first published reports of the destruction along the Atlantic coast, that suddenly Bannerman thought of Emil Gluck. And on the instant there flashed into his mine} the connection between Gluck and the destruction. It was only b hypothesis, but it was sufficient. The great thing was the conception of the hypothesis, in itself an act of unconscious cerebration —a thing as unaccountable as the flashing, fur instance, into Newton’B mind of the principle of gravitation.

The rest was easy. “Where was Gluck at the time of the destruction along the Atlantic seaboard?" was the question that formed in Bannerman’s mind. By his own request he was put upon the case. In no time he ascertained that Glu6* had himself been up and down the. Atlantic coast in the late fall of 1940. Also he ascertained that Gluck had been in New York city during the epidemic of the shooting of police officers. “Where was Glqck now?” was Bannerman’s next query. And as if in answer came the wholesale destruction along the Mediterranean. Gluok had sailed for Europe a month before. Bannerman knew that. It was not necessary for Bannerman to go to Europe. By means of cable messages and the co-operation of the European secret services, be traced Gluck’s course along the Mediterranean and found that in every instance it coincided with the blowing up of coast defenses and ships. Also, he learned that Gluck had just sailed on the Green Star liner Plutonic for the United States. The case was complete in Bannerman’s mind, though in the Interval of waiting he wound up the details. In this he was also assisted by George Brown, an operator employed by thq Wood system Of wireless telegraphy. When the Plutonic arrived, off Sandy Hook, she was boarded by Bannerman from a government tug and Emil Gluck was made prisoner. The trial and the confession followed. In the confession, Gluck professed regret for one thing only, namely, that he had taken his time. As he said, had he ever dreamed that he was to be discovered he would have worked more rapidly and accomplished a thousand times the destruction he did. His secret died with him, though it is now known that the French government managed to get access to him and offered him a billion francs for the invention whereby he was able to direct at pleasure and closely to confine electric discharges. "What?” was Gluck’s reply. “To sell to you that which would enable you to enslave and mistreat suffering humanity?’ And though the war departments of the nations have to experiment Is their secret laboratories, they have so far failed to light upon the slightest trace of the secret. Emil Gluck was executed on December 4, 1941, and he died at the age of forty-six, one of the world’s moat unfortunate geniuses; a man of tremendous intellect, but whose mighty powers. Instead of making toward good, were so twisted sad warped that he became the mog t gearing of ozttb Mmmmm - tm u , .