Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 272, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1918 — Page 3

On the Placid Thames

ON 'A QUIET reach of the Thames my friend’s houseboat is tethered to two posts —as if it neve? meant to go away, Fullerton J. Waldo” writes from London io the Philadelphia Ledger. Just above ihe mooring place the old, gnarled Charon who for a penny plies his trade lias dug up ancient British poetry and Roman spearheads in the mud. But we did not now require his professional service, for across the river to meet us came like a. shaft of light his amateur rival. (“Rival,” of course, if you run the word back to its origin, means one who dwells on the bank of a stream.) She was a girl with hair of burnished gold bobbed and filleted, who bent mahwise to the oars, in her yellow sweater and white skirt, a naiad of the rushes who seemed to have risen out of the stream, its own authentic spirit. The houseboat itself, white-painted, held aloft under its striped canopy and ever soft red rugs, a hanging garden of geranium baskets, with vines whose tendrils delicately wavered on the soft whisper of the breeze. A clutter of canoes and punts gently fretted the /floating platform below, as though .upon a river Of Cathay. In the I’vlng tooiji, radiant with violas And roses and geraniums, the filmy snow of the curtains was parted by a fireplace and over it a clock-restored the sense of time that elsewhere was pleasantly absent or negligible. . _ Met a Flying Man. ; Two railed gangways led ashore—and no sooner had I put my modest luggage aboard than to the_ shore we went, to find golf links close at hand, where the frit sheep grazed. A young and debonair Englishman met its there, and I learned to my surprise that be was accidental. He was a flying man, and something wrong with the engine compelled him to volplane (down to a paddock next thd~golf course. “’Tis an ill wind that has 'blown me good,” I thought, as I shook bands with this Brushwood boy angel unawares. The larks were singing, and I paused often with cleek or lofter in midair to hear the sound. I think-1 care more for George Meredith’s “Lark Ascending” than I do for Shelley’s “unpremeditated’,’ singer, but if I had to choose between them I would take them both. Such overflowing billfuls of ecstasy, from such a little bird! And he presently went off- (it seemed) in company with a disreputable troupe of sparrowhawks, singing to them still, as an opera tenor might chant for a company of songless tramps. Can it be that an English links, with Paul Potter cattle and Daubigny pools and willows round gbout, ever hears a harsh word over a golf ball sliced or stymied or in obstinate hiding? Above us airplanes purred and were vigilant unceasingly. And in my heart I blessed them, and with my hand I waved them greetings that I hope they saw. In a single group on the way to the links I had beheld seven captive "sausage” balloons—as though a benevolent constitutional monarchy had sent all these things that a plain American might have aii afternoon of sport. What close neighbors are the Implements of war and of peace in the old world today 1 ' u , • i We-walked back >to the boat, through a sgarden plot brimming with blue violas, and there was a tiny cemeterf with more violas in a glass oh the grave of a cygnet born the day before. Mother Bird Had Done Murder. - Then we met the mother bird, the murderess. In stately clrdes she swimming* round the boat, a swan more lovely to look upon than any that bore Lohengrin and heard his tributary song. ’ \ ; The day before four cygnets were hatched out. Three of them were with fcer^nov?—-the fourth, she had decided, with an unruffled calm I- doubt not, was one too many. So she had slain it. tranquilly, enough the bereaved family was taking its outing—-so sogn after the funeral! Father was the advance guard, Ilk* a cruiser bringing In a transport ship and lesser ’ craft Two gray fluff balls were on the mother’s back, In a warm cradle deep and soft between her wings. They arched and stretched their necks is they saw her doing, and took In all the view, and peered over the side with a remarkable air of detachment at their small ther paddling desperately to keep up

A Quiet Reach of the Thames.

with the procession, with his/day-old wings and feet like those of the Platypus that you may see in a Strand window devoted to New South Wales. Father did more than circle about and pride himself. When the young and foolish dog attached —If one may say so—to the boat started to swim the river to look for rats a-plenty in the farther bank, the male swan would steer down upon his snuffling bead as ruthlessly as Horatio Lord Nelson on the track of a French frigate, and If a rescue party did not at once pole shoutingly to his salvation, in a punt it went hard with the furred swimmer in battle with the feathered, who from his superior height, had something of the. advantage z>f mounted policemen over a pedestrian. Antics of Water Babies. Suddenly Mother Swan swished her head about and said something in a hissing dhdertone to the indiscernible (■ar of one of the’ gray fluffs —for out it sprawled from its snug shelter and into the darkling Thames it tumbled on its back. Quick as a midge it righted Itself. Here was ’a fine chance for little paddllfig brother to get aboard —-but Ulas! though he could swim better than the sturdy British schoolboys round the bend, he could not climb, and so he cuddled in the lee of his mother like a tug that noses a lordly ocean liner. In the performance of these darling little web-footed water babies using their mother for an excursion steamer ■as audaciously as a land baby tides “pick-a-back” in she nursery, there, was a ludicrous resemblance to the holiday trippers who were overcrowding the small but ambitions river steamers from lock to lock. But the swafi’s babies, trying to make a neck like mother’s were undulant as serpents and restless as weathercocks, in their curiosity, whereas ’Arry and ’Arriet often sat with their backs to the river oblivious to everything but love’s young dreams. As the rose flush of the sky paled to lime yellow on the way to the few - short hours of night the family sat down to dinner, and there the cook, a dignified parishioner, had fixed for me—the gentleman from America —a great bowl of geranium petals, blue flowers and white carnations. “Are you sure,” she had asked her mistress anxiously, "that these 'are just the colors of his country? I would like sb much to please him; You see we owe so much to America 1”

Sherwood Eddy in the course of his various trips to th? Far East has had opportunities of seeing some striking changes. The following is his story of the development of a Korean church: "Twenty years ago when I first went to Korea, I stopped in the little town of Pyeng Yang and visited a church, It had seven members; it met in a mud hut about ten feet square; it could, hardly be called a church. .The last Sunday I was there (1915) I saw 1,500 members filling every seat on a rainy Sunday. They were so busy that they had no time to fiear a foreigner speak. Eight hundred of them were out to prayer meeting every Wednesday night, and all of them wished to pray. Already they, have sent out forty-two branch churches. They have the membership at the home church, and that membership increased from the original membership of seven until they have sent out 30,000.”

Took Him Out of the Mud.

1 "It was the first time I ever felt like a hero,” an Indianapolis man told of-, ficials' at the Marion county war savings organization offices.. “My little girt caused me a lot of worry one night by crying out a number. of times, Take him out of the mud? In the morning I made inquiries and then accompanied her to her school. There I found her teacher had rigged up a dummy soldier in an imitation trench filled with mudj As the sales of Thrift stamps by the children increased the soldier was raised gradually out of the*mud onto a ladder leading ‘over the top.’ According ,to the plan sales amounting to >175 remained to be made before the soldier was out of the mufl. My little girl begged me to take'hlm out, and I yielded, buying the- required number of stamps. As that roomful of youngsters stood and cheered me I felt like a real hero.”— Indianapolis News.

Growth of a Korean Church.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER IN3.

HOME TOWN HELPS

HIGHEST TYPE OF CITIZEN HHHM MurWh. See, Tendency of the Times ancLHelps Direct It Correctly. Who is be? A person who keeps, his eyes open and knows what is goini im, and who asserts a smarlction from what fie sees. OneuiiajfthiPk it is very difficult, considering fee complexity and multiplicity of event*. to possess oneself of a governlngriruth from the driftwood of the rapidly passing stream of things. But that is not what he has to do. If a person has to wait for every little particular he will never reach a judgment or belief. You can see such pedpie in a community, mere peckers of bird seed, full of vapid talk and controversy. They are no more agents of truth than Old Nick is. ’ You don’t have to inspect each particular straw to see what a haystack Is. You can look at It, see its form, understand its purpose, and know al! there Is in a haystack to know. So in life, the small facts are endless and shed no light. One must turn from them to the tendency or policy and make up his mind from that. Such a discovery is easier than a single fact. One cannot make up one’s mind from little things, for they are endless, one suggesting another infinitely. So a general view that expresses a tendency provides the opportunity for a conviction. The civic duty, then, is to get acquainted with the tendency of a measure of policy, the influence it has on other things and how it affects the habits of a community. This constant lowering about particulars never constructs a real faith. One has to take his stand on an axion or self-evident truth and then look out and see whether a circumstance Is coming to him or going frojn him. That is the way to get at a tendency which is the necessity habit of good citizenship. It is the small mind that is constantly looking for peanut facts and reasons. It is the larger mind that looks for tendencies, and the field for Its exercise includes all national, state and city affairs. A man who doesn’t see tendencies there is a poor citizen, and they are legion.—Columbus Journal. 1

CONSIDER LOOKS OF THINGS

Any Number of Reasons Why Every Effort Should Be Made* to Make Home Attractive. “In traveling through a certain section of Rlinois the other day I noticed that most of the homes \vere cheerless nmi desolate,” Director Charles Adkins told me the other day. “The yards were full of weeds, there were no flower? nor vines, and tlie majority of the houses were unpainted. “Who would want to live in such a place? What attraction is there to keep the boys and girls on the farm? I felt like asking these people why they didn’t paint up and clean up and ■make their homes look like something.” Soldiers are required to keep their equipment clean and their faces shaved because of the effect on their morale. A clean, trim-looking soldier has more self-respect and fights better than a slovenly one. The man who takes pride in the appearance of his place Is a better farmer and a better man cn that account. The whole family undertakes its tasks more cheerfully and -more successfully because of IL — Prairie Farmer.

Respect Other People’s Property.

Attention to other people’s property adds to the national wealth. The idea seems'to have gotten abroad that wealth is purely a personal matter. To a certain extent that' is true. But wealth produces for the common good. The facts show taut not dire poverty but growth and development Is the occasion of discontent. You can do your part in the upward match of progress by teaching men that every property loss brings calamity on the-community. And the principle works both Ways. Men often sow for the other man what they theihselves reap. Be a constructionist and learn to respect other people’s property. ,

Houses From Barns.

In the growth ofXrnr towns and suburbs, especially in the older ones, places of several acres are frequently divided into smaller building lots, writes Helen Bowen in the House Beautiful. Such places usually have barns or stables which are often sufficiently well Built add in sound enough condition to be remodeled into bouses. In the present high cost of lunibhr and labor, the saving Is worth considering, thouglt It varies greatly ih different cases. If the barn has a good foundation, a strong, sound frame, and does not require much altering in size or shape, the saving will be considerable.

Trees to Honor War Heroes.

In the American. Forestry Magazine, the official organ of ihe American Forestry association, an editorial is devoted to the move in several cities to plant treee in honor of the war heroes. The magazine urges that this be inade a national movement It Is urged that • boulevard be planted as “Liberty Row" or line some special street with “vierary oaks,” each to bo named for a Mien hero.

Voices from the Clouds

Unknown Ten Years Ago, Wire- . less Telephone is Now Widehj Used on the Battle Fronts 1

mOW would you like to take up the telephone in the seclusion of your brary and talk to your son on the battlefields of France something on this order? Scene: An American home somewhere in the United States. Family reading the latest war news from the front. Mother, dad and sister Sue thinking about the big part Brother Bill is playing in the great game over there. B-b-b-b-lihg! The telephone rings! Dad takes up the phone. Central aSks if you are there and then hooks up the connection. After an instant comes a familiar voice: “Hello, hello! Is that you, Dad? This- is Bill.” . “Well, well/ boy, where are you?” “Just got in from ramming another hole through the Hindenburg line. Got the Hun on the run. Feeling great. Good luck; good-by!” If Kaiser Bill had delayed pulling down the roof on the house of the world a few years longer it is quite likely such scenes would have been possible, says a writer jn the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Fathers and mothers would have been able to talk to their sons in the faraway military camps here at home. They could have conversed with them thousands of miles out at sea while the great gray ships were conveying the boys over the blue. They could have heard the voice of the boy from the battlescarred fields of France and Flanders.

Radio-telephony at the beginning of the world war had just about reached the practical stage where it was to take its ‘place with radio-telegraphy as one one of the marvels of the age. One year after Mars unloosed his guns the human voice was projected across the Atlantic ocean—from Arlington, Va.. to the Eiffel tower in Paris. In-, telllgible speech was transmitted also from New York city to Pearl Harbor in faraway Hawaii, close to 5.00 Q miles, or further than from New York to Paris. Rome or Vienna, or from New York to the North Pole. Scientifically demonstrated as a feasible proposition, the wireless telephone was about to be commercialized when the war intervened. Fathers and mothers of America could talk to their sons in France today as outlined above were the facilities available. But man has had to devote all his endeavors to the overthrow ofmilltarismc and as a consequence the peaceful developments of the scientific world have been held in abeyance until the time when the beast of carnage shall have been caged and the human family take up again the wonders of the new era. ’ * War Hastens .Development The war, if anything, however, has .but hastened the universal utilization of radio-telephony. While the world Is engrossed in the ntanic struggle from Belgium to Switzerland, It has not had time to note ill/the remarkable progress that has been accomplished in the conversion of the “tlieoretical" to the “practical”—the dream turned reality. - Aviation was a hazardous game in America before the war—scoffed at

Not Afraid of Hangman.

There are said to be about 20.000 Czechoslovak troops In a single group with” the* Italian artny. , They were trained near the hill town of Perugia, and then moved to the battle front. They are mostly deserters from the Austrian army, and their uniform cheerfulness, in view of the fact that a hangman’s rope possibly .them, should they <be captured, is remarkable. But Italy is taking no chances with these invaluable additions to her fighting force, who, though

as the sport of daredevil fanatics. Yet at this moment the winged members of our air cavalry take to the clouds with the same nonchalance that the average motorist tunes up for a trip to the seashore or mountains. Robbed of Its battle dangers aviation today stands out as an accomplished fact, to be negotiated with ease, comfort and safety. Our boys after the war will turn their garages Into hangars. The aerial postman breaking records today between New York and Washington is a harbinger of the new era of air transportation. So #fter the yrftr the wireless telephone will be developed as a casual commercial asset and men will talk with their business partners in London, Paris and Rome, say the scientists, just as today they use the telephone to communicate with Atlanta or Chicago. In the army and navy of the United States this fall, radio-telephony is playing a potent part in the business of winning the war. Thousands of young men who go up to the' radio arms of the service are linking together the fighting forces of the nation so that, each and every separate unit is closely united under a single guidance, working cohesively for the one supreme attainment and at a moment’s notice in the most Intimate contact with their military directors. The great problem in radio-tele-phony at first was, the question of sufficient energy control. It was necessary to develop transmitting stations capable of generating high-fre-quency currents and radiating them so that the currents induced in the receiving apparatus when rectified would cause no disturbing noise in the telephone receiver. It was necessary also to find the. means by which the amplitude of the high frequency currents could be controlled and modulated by the voice so that the amplitude of radiated waves followed closely every variation in the voice. . Brought Under Control. .

.All of these difficulties hpve been overcome in the last few years by the world’s renowned scientists. A system of control has been built up with the pliotron as Its potential pivot so that the amount of energy in the wireless telephone transmitter need be no larger than that commonly used in standard telephone circuits. It has been found possible to connect up thjs radio telephone with the- regular telephone lines so that conversation may bo carried out between two people, l»oth of whom are connected with the radlo-stations by means of the regular land lines. Two fields of activity for rndlo-tel-ephony opened up with the development of the first wireless telephone. The first was for long distance where wire telephony was Impossible over submarine cables and expensive on land. The other was for short distances between ships at sea, and between land stations. Atmospheric Conditions. Transoceanlc communlcation Is likely to be developed faster than inland nidlo-lelephony. It was pointed out some'time ago by J. J. Cd<fy, the electrical engineer whose achievement made possible the first wireless telephone messages from New York to Pear! Harbor. Hawaii, that transmission across the ocean was easier than across land because there were fewer atmospheric disturbances. “Overcoming these disturbances is the greatest problem we have at hand.” he said. "We do not know exactly what causes them, but from our first experiments we know that they are greater in summer than in winter, so are probably caused by electrical disturbances in the atmosphere. Theoretically any number of messages can be kept separate by tuning the appa-

they wear the Italian gray-green untform. carry on their collars the stripes, red and white, of their national Bohemian colors. They are to be used only when Italy strikes her next blow, and can advance instead of retire. Judging by the way things are going for Austria, the smiling, singing Bohemians ought soon to be finding their hands fuIL Thoroughly dry bran will quickly cleanse, the finer velvet and woolen fabrics. ’

ratus and other devices. Practically when it comes to the rapid vibration* necessary to carry the human voice, the number is very limited. There i* no way of preventing anyone within the zone of communication from taking any message his instrument is tuned to. And IT there were many messages st once they would interfere with each other." It would appear now that these difficulties were being overcome for, according to reports from the battlefields of France, the wireless telephone is proving a mighty valuable asset in the maneuvers of modern warfare, despite all the gunfire and the disturbed atmospheric conditions. Going over the top in trench warfare, tlie old reliable telephone was a handy asset in commuicating to the rear the results of the advance. But lately the traops have been going forward so fast that as soon as one telephonic line would be set up another extension would be necessary to keep pace with the flying Yankees. "Hellos” From the Clouds, It Is in the air service that the wireless telephone now is being employed to such remarkable advantage. Voices out of the air, messages filtering down through the clouds, report the observations made during a reconnaissance flight and convey to headquarters the valued information as to the movements of the enemy troops. It is said the airplanes now in flight uncoil a long strand of wire which acts as the antennae for transmission of the message. An observer In <i huge ’plane, noting the desertion of a village by the - retreating Huns, has but to take • up the telephone and “hello” his chief with the Important message. Instanter the Yankees are away in pursuit The incandescent lamp plays an Important part in the great game of wireless telephony from air fleet to land battlements. A tiny lamp that can generate one horsepower of energy Is used to receive the faint currents and a larger one boosts the currents so that the ordinary telephone apparatus can receive them. According tb report, it Is a common occurrence for a young American or French aviator now to be talking to base beadquarters while flying high in the heavens 80 to a 100 miles away. With the receiving apparatus on the earth attuned to take the contact of wave lengths from fils sending apparatus aloft he is able to report'instantly on the developments below. The wireless telephone has been little more than ten years on tlie way in the piatter-of actual demonstration of theories long held tenable. It began with simple experiments In the New York laboratories of Professor Lee DeForest, who succeeded In transmitting a distance of a few feet across a table without wires. Message of Peace. It was first employed at sea on shipboard In July, 1907. -in reporting yacht races from the yacht Thelma In Put-ln-Bzy, a distance of four miles. Next experiments were made on the battleship Connecticut off Cape Cod. Without wires messages were relayed to the battleships Kentucky and Illinois, a distance of eight miles. From this beginning radio-telephony was developed until trans-oceanic communication became possible. All that has been done in a military way cannot be revealed until the wnr is over, but ft. is certain then to unveil some startling disclosures. It seems certain, for one thing, that the message of peace, proclaiming the overthrow of German militarism and the triumph of democracy, will be relayed completely around the world by the wireless telephone—a voice out of the clear sky proclaiming the dawn of the great day. ' L 1 ___

- - Manless Bombing Plane Invented. Jacob Weisbaum of Cincinnati. Ohtou lias Invented wnat he calls the “Weisbauin manless bombing plane.” He claims the machine, without the aid of human hands after It leaves th* ground, can be propelled through th* air nt terrific speed toward an objec-. tlve upon which It will automatically* Japanese claim to have Invented; matches that will light perfectly event when wet. .