Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1919 — PLANNED KINGDOM DESERT [ARTICLE]

PLANNED KINGDOM DESERT

Adventurous Youths Had Great * Scheme to Make Fertile Region of Waste Sahara. ; Governmental authority, co-operat-ing with fiarehtgl authority, has tliwarted a romance of youthful adventure at t>envcr~7which reads like a Stevenson or a I‘oe. Two boys, sixteen and fifteen years old, had planned the establishment of the kingdom of Sahara. They bad studied maps and devised engineering plans, delved into finance and perused the military art, until the fund-of their information yjikS astonishingto those whbse. .duty compelled them to step across the adventurers’ path. The Denver youths were planning soon to invade the Sahara ami set up their "kingdom, over which the? were to rule as joint kings. The natives Were to be organized into a powerfyj army of 7,000.000 men. This army was to dig great artesian wells, water from which was to form two lakes with an area of 250,000 square miles. The Senegal and Nile were to be flooded, shutting the new kingdom safely in against hostile incursion. Portugal was to be coerced into ceding Portuguese East Africa to the new kingdom ; in return for which Portugal was to be helped to take British and French Guiana and the former German possessions in Africa. Each of the joint kings had figured out an income of $14,500,000 for himself. A dream, born of a disordered fancy? Sure, but — No more of a dream than that of the German military party which started out four-years ago to drive the British lion to his den, to clip the wings of Liberty and tie America to their chariot wheels. Building a powerful, kingdom in a desert would be no greater task than that assumed by the Germans of laying civilization by the heels. Henceforth, if anyone proposes to fly to the moon or to build a spiral stairway to the earth’s center, he may cite the example of the ruler of a once great people who assumed a task similar in Its elements of romantic adventure and similarly impossible of achievement. A new standard for foolish effort has been set for all time.— Cleveland Plain Dealer.