Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 191, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 October 1935 — Page 7

OCT. 10,1935

It Seems to Me HEWOOD KM IAM very pleased to read that a Federal commission is predicting that in 1960 there will be twice as many citizens above 60 years of age as there are now. In 1960 I will be just barely in this group myself, and I wouldn’t want to lack company. An additional finding of the National Resources Committee is that in this year to come youth will play a smaller part in the affairs of the nation. It .seems that, youth will represent a decreasing proportion of the population. Out of these facts and the-

ories the committee proceeds to outline certain results which seem to me debatable. “Life,” so the committee says, “will be marked by changes to quieter forms of recreation and there will be greater stability in occupation and in existence generally.” But this overlooks the fact that when these 60-year-oldsters are more numerous they may also grow far more lively by a process of mutual encouragement. And even now it is not quite obvious that the quieter forms of recreation make the greatest appeal to the ancients.

—‘""""TV" '* m" W 's

Heywood iiroun

The National Resources Committee, I realize, has studied immigration statistics and watched the birth rate curve flatten out and turn downward. But I ■want to know if they sent any of their scouts and investigators to the college football games throughout the country. ana Old Grads Arc Fiercest SUCH investigators almost certainly would have come back to report that the fiercest and partisan rooting was done by the old grads. It has been my experience that when the spectator just behind me begins to break my hat in his exuberance over a touchdown he is almost certain to be a retired banker 75 years of age living in Englewood, N. J. The young fry in their turn invade the field after the final whistle to demolish the goal posts if their side has won. It is held that they go through their strange antics because they wish to have bits of timber to display on the walks of their dormitory living rooms. I doubt that any such ambition spurs the young on to bloody fisticuffs. They perform the rite of goal post destruction because they are spurred on by an audience, and that audience is composed almost entirely of old men of more than 60, with a sprinkling of old ladies. And why does the college half back who has wrenched his knee insist that he will not leave the game, but must remain to die for Dear Old ? There, again, he is carrying on the tradition of the men of 60. Os late I’ve seen a disposition among college students not to take football with all the fervor which surrounded it 30 or 40 years ago. On several occasions some undergraduate editor of a college paper has blazed out with an editorial condemning the overemphasis of the game. Or it may be that the student publication is up in arms about the fact that the team is paid by the state or other lovers and patrons of clean sport. And when such a piece appears upon the campus there is always hell to pay. The fury and the tumult come from an aroused alumni body. Merchants and lawyers and muscular Christian clergymen write in to the college president letters.beginning, “Are we mice or men?” a a st Fatal In Peace Hope THE old grads would not have the rigors of football abated by an ounce or atom. And yet I can not carry this conception through to its seeming logical result. We have heard a great deal about the theory that old men make wars and young men fight them. The prediction of the Federal board on the face of it would seem to be fatal to the hope of peace. But at this point I must desert my allegiance with the young and go over into the group of the middleaged. where I will not properly belong for months to come. It has not been my experience that age is necessarily warlike and youth pacific. It is true there has been a college movement against war, but to some extent its activating force has come from men of 60 and more. It isn't always true that we grow more conservative and reactionary as the years pile upon us. I could mention quite a number of elderly people who are moving to the left with all the speed of sprinters. If the old grad yells himself hoarse about the bloody affrays of the gridiron it may be that this is his form of release. Quite possibly he is an entirely peaceloving person except on the annual afternoon when Yale meets Harvard. Even the aged and infirm are capable of learning. They may be particularly of a class to which I belong. We who are bound to matriculate into carpet slippers and a place before the fire have heard a great deal about the stodginess of old men We are forewarned and forearmed. It is our intention to fool them. (Copyright, 1935)

Your Health -BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN-

A FEW weeks ago an old man in Tennessee was bitten by a rat and shortly thereafter developed rat-bite fever. People generally were astonished that the bite of a rat could produce a definite disease, and also that such a case had occurred in the United States. Actually, rat-bite fever is a well-recognized disorder. Recently a good many cases were reported among men who had been working in the sewers in London. When human beings are bitten by animals of the rodent type, including incidentally not only the rat, but the weasel, the pig, and occasionally even the cat, they are sometimes infected with a peculiar organism which produces a disease of the whole body. a a a THIS disease Is characterized by short attacks of fever, alternating with periods without fever, and an eruption on the skin. Such cases have been known in the United States for a century. Thore have been instances of children who have been bitten by rats when left alone by their parents, particularly when they lived in basement homes or poverty-stricken tenements. Os course, a cat may become contaminated through its hunting of rats. The doctor makes his diagnosis of this condition not only by the symptoms that have been mentioned, but also by finding the germ which caused the disease in the wound, and examining material taken directly from lymph glands near the wound. It is customary to treat this condition with salvarsan or arsphenamine. Most patients are quite cured after two injections of this remedy.

Today s Science BY DAVID DIETZ

A TINY marine creature which has left the ocean to dwell in the sands of the shore, thus repeating the process by which, in all probability, life first passed from the ocean to the land, is described in a monograph just published by the Smithsonian Institution. Strangely enough, these creatures, known technically as the sand-dwelling copepods, altrfbugh they constitute a large and important group of organisms, have been unknown to science. Their existence was discovered a few years ago by the late Dr. N. A. Cobb of the United States Department of Agriculture, and their study has been continued by Dr. Charles B. Wilson, who is author of the present monograph. a a a COPEPODS, known more familiarly by the not very elegant name of “sea lice,” are minute crustaceans which occur in the ocean in extremely large numbers. (Familiar examples of large crustaceans are lobsters and crabs) The copepods make up a large part of the plankton of the ocean. The plankton are the sum total of various minute creatures who compose the food of many fish. Dr. Wilson has found that the beaches along Cape Cod and the Maine coast, are literally teeming with copepods. They remain in the sand and mud after the tide has receded. Some are found as far up on the beach as the high water mark.

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Boake Carter

the British, alongside the Dutch, are perhaps the world’s greatest colonizers. The British had had many years of colonial military experience as precedents upon which to proceed in South Africa. They had a great military machine, plenty of guns, plenty of munitions. Something of a parallel to Ethiopia and Italy, you say? Yet, the Boers, with only 19,000 men still in the field.

drew 400,000 British troops against them beiore they finally surrendered! ana AFRICA has a way of dealing with Europeans who tread among her jungles, who clamber rudely round her mountain tops. Streams the night before may be raging floods the next morning. Seven days later, the same streams may be mud puddles. And the same may be said for water holes. Capt. William A. Anderson, the only American ever to gain a commission in the British army without first having to swear allegiance due to the discovery of an. old colonial law which absolved such requirements, and writer of several excellent books on East Africa, told the author that he drank water from just such mud holes, because of water shortage, and discovered bodies of dead natives in the slime beneath. Malaria wreaks its havoc among Europeans, dysentery will decimate any force that must march —and Mussolinia’s men are having to march many hundreds of miles through Abyssinia, in scorching heat. And as they march they are subject to attacks from intestinal parasites, the likes and kinds of which only Africa and her tropical regions can breed. Pests such as jiggers, bot-flies, tse-tse flies, ticks and the ordinary diseasecarrying flies, will take their toll among the campaigning soldiery. a a a ONE may escape these things in peace time—but not in war. War is a time when a man is thrown on his own resources and he who has neither gumption, self-reliance nor ar. ability to shift for himself, is the one who goes under, never to come up again. A man may be wounded—in the leg, let us say. It may prevent him from walking. As he crawls, ants will swarm over him and he will die a death of horrible agony. A bullet is merciful—but the fiery gnawing of flesh-eating ants sends a man writhing, screaming, tortured into insanity, and then to oblivion. An Indian soldier fell in one of the British African campaigns. When the natives found him he was dead—from starvation. The natives laughed, called him a stupid fellow. A British officer, astounded, asked why. The natives cast about them and returned with worms, reptiles, berries and said: “Here is food all around this man—and yet he starved.” But foreign soldiers don't know these things—and they don’t live on repti’-es or worms—and they die—of starvation, often in Africa. There are snakes, deadly scorpions whose bite can cause a man to lose his leg—and there are lepers in Abyssinia. a ts a THESE are the armies of nature —and they are deadly. Combine them with the depressing effect of a climate which saps the strength of the white man, throw in a dash of homesickness — and then perhaps one may understand very slightly how Africa can demoralize a young European soldier. Yet upon the natives, these things have no effect. They are either immune to them or indifferent. Great tales of horrors have come forth from both sides, to date. The propaganda press agents have been trying to outdo each other on atrocity stories—first the acid of the Italians to burn the Ethiopians’ feet: then the lions Selassie is going to let loose on the Italians and sundry other nonsensical stories. Lions fear men, except when hungry, cornered or surprised with young. And there isn’t enough acid in the whole world to cover even a few of Ethiopia's valleys, let alone scatter hillmen and tribesmen and put them out of action. a a a ARMORED tanks can’t race over a country similar to our own Colorado —yet far worse, where there are no roads, but there are tangled brush, forests and no means of keeping mechanical equipment in repair. Gas is good for trench warfare and large bodies of men, but not for native warriors scattered all over the landscape in small, swift-ly-moving bands. Italy has one of the bestequipped air corps in the world. Its fighting planes are among the fastest, and its oombing pilots among the best in the military business. Its fighters and pursuit ships may play havoc by the old World War tactics of ground-strafing—-diving upon detachments of troops moving across open ground and machine-gunning them from 25 or 50 feet. But this can be done only in open country. The country through which the Italians must campaign, if they are to take Addis Ababa, is mountainous, over and around which treacherous air currents flow. a a a THE United States Marines wrote a brilliant aerial combat chapter in Nicaragua—another mountainous country with few landing places in cases of emergency. But didn’t Sandino run the Marines ragged for three or four years, and in the end Sandino was murdered by one of his own men after the Marines had left the country! If the Italian bombers destcev the one railroad, they will be do-

BLACK SHIRT BLACK SKIN

The advance of Italy into Ethiopia and the mounting tension over Europe as Britain glowers over *ie war tone puts added emphasis on this enthralling "Inside story" or the Ethiopian war. The Times today presents the ninth installment of Boake Carter's gripping book. "Black Shirt, Black Skin.”

ing a great service to the Ethiopians, because they never wanted it in the first place. And in the second place, Italy would be destroying internationally - owned property and therefore would be called upon to indemnify those whose property her airmen destroyed. a a a TT is probable that the Italians A are not Intending use of tanks or planes for an intensive mechanical or aerial warfare. They can not—for Ethiopia is about the worst country in the world in which to try to demonstrate effectively the modern implements of war. Instead, despite all the horrors and the heat of the great Danakil depression on the north—and the vast waterless plains to the south of Italian Somaliland—it is without doubt that Mussolini’s generals intend to push troops across these wastes, to the rim of the uplands 300 and 400 miles in the interior of Ethiopia. And the thrusts will probably be made to meet at Addis Ababa and squeeze the Ethiopians in a v * ce the jaws of the vice extending north to Asmara, in Eritrea, and south to Mogadiscio. And cavalry and infantry will * carry the brunt of the attack. a a nPHE costs will be terrible. Men A and horses will die like flies—but the die has been cast—and when a dictator says “March!” one marches! The cost will not be counted. Italy is out to stretch itself from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean—and the joining of Italian Somaliland to Eritrea, with Ethiopia as the connecting link, is just the beginning. But what of the resistance the Ethiopians can give to these invaders of the House of Savoy? To gain a key of some sort, one must go back to 1886 and the Battle of Adowa. Africa was then being sliced, up among the powers—with Great Britain, as the strong man of the group, taking the juiciest slices; the French getting their piece, the Italians and the Germans and the Belgians getting the rest. Abyssinia, under this slicing-up, came under the Italian sphere of influence. Egypt backed out and France and England pocketed the Somalilands. King John of Abyssinia was killed in battle. Menelik took his place. The Italians thought this was a good opportunity. Menelik and the Italians signed the treaty to observe frontier lines, but the Italians decided to expand southward as well as assume a protectorate over Abyssinia. The French were not then on friendly terms with the Italians. Menelik raised an army of 100,000 Abyssinians and the French helped him. Italy walked into a trap at Adowa and was licked badly. a a a THE troops were conscripts from Italy. The people back home objected to the slaughter of soldiers for the sake of building an African empire. So the Italians retreated, signed anew agreement and remained satisfied with Eritrea. On the result of this one great battle, Ethiopia has built most of her military boasts. To a certain extent, It might be likened to a little boy, who suddenly landed a lucky punch on the jaw of the bully and knocked him cold, and ever after came to believe that he was invincible. Much has been written about the Battle of Adowa and more has been said of it—but it is a dangerous precedent to go on to judge the relative military values of Ethiopian and Italian soldiers. To begin with, the Italian command committed glaring tactical errors in driving pell-mell into a situation which even the greenest subaltern could see contained all the earmarks of almost certain defeat for the attacking troops. Secondly, the war at that time had split public and political opinlorT jac * c h° m e in Rome— and the politicians were not lending the right support to the military. * a a * I ''HIRDLY, the Italian high command was split wide open with petty jealousies. At the time

Freedom of the Seas Isn't Worth War to United States, Says Johnson

BY HUGH S. JOHNSON Times Special Writer New YORK, Oct. 19.—Freedom of the seas was one of Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points, on the strength of which Germany disarmed to its enemies in 1918. Wilson dropped it deep in the ocean on his way to Versailles. Maybe that was just as well. The development of sea-borne commerce literally created some great nations out of little—the British Empire, Holland and the magnificent Spain of Philip, and before that, the Italian merchaot state and the League of Hanseatic cities. For such nations the Inviolability of their sea-going commerce was life or death. Therefore, international law developed a doctrine that the commerce of neu-

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

The Story Behind the Ethiopian War

By BOAKE CARTER

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The speedy advance of the Italian infantry and motorized units has made the movement of the big field artillery pieces over the inadequate Ethiopian roads one of the biggest military problems of the campaign. That it has been successfully solved is proved in thb picture, rushed to civilization by plane from the Aduwa front, showing artillerymen warping their gun, into firing position.

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A warrior of wide experience, Ras Seyoum, King of Tigre, leads the Ethiopian forces facing the Italians on the eastern front. Seyoum is shown here in his elaborate commanuer’s costume.

the Battle of Adowa took place the commanding general had received orders relieving him of his post and informing him that his successor was on his way out from the home country to assume command. The relieved general, bitter and infuriated, decided to try to achieve one spectacular victory in order to confound those who had taken his post from him. So he rushed his troops madly into Adowa and was slaughtered for his foolhardiness. On the other hand, the Abyssinias have been unfairly maligned by a good many high military officers of the general staffs of the world, by being refused due credit for defeating the Italians at that time on their own merits. The truth is that a large number of Abyssinian warriors poured a most accurate and vicious rifle fire into the Italian ranks—and this was responsible chiefly for the European troops’ initial confusion. a a a AND here rises the question of the Ethiopian equipment. They have only old rifles, of patterns discarded by the leading I>owers. Many are new, more are old. And so the Ethiopians have a difficult ammuniton supply problem. They must equip themselves with so many different types of cartridges as to cause confusion and delay. But this has resulted in a peculiar condition. The tribesman w r ho has a rifle, cares for it as though it were his most treasured possession.

tral nations must not be obstructed by belligerents on the high seas, except for peaceful goods sailing under an enemy merchant flag (which could be captured but not sunk), or for munitions of war shipped under a neutral flag (which might be taken by visit and search, but not by destruction of a neutral ship), or for actual blockades of enemy ports (but not blockades of w'hoie sea areas by proclamation). a a a THE doctrine went to smash in the World War. German submarines destroyed neutral ships not running any actual blockades, and destroyed enemy merchant ships without capture. England continuously gave us as great causes for war as Germany did. and actually blockaded the port of Hew York,

Then knowing, too, that it is hard for him to get ammunition, he shoots only when he is sure that his bullet is going to go exactly where he wants it to go. So, because of the shortage of ammunition, the Ethiopian rifleman has become an expert marksman, who doesn’t waste what he has, and doesn't shoot wildly at every falling leaf or moving branch. It was this kind of rifle fire the Italians ran into at Adowa and few military big-wigs have recognized the Ethiopians for this. a a a PAGAN and Somali tribesmen are armed with long knives and spears. Arabs carry Damascus blades or knobby bludgeons, with which they wreak devastating havoc, if they can ever get close enough to their enemies to use them. Asa soldier, the Ethiopian has courage bordering almost on the fanatical, and is as agile as a monkey. He can cover ground at an amazing speed, knows how to take advantage of every bit of scrub, boulder, or rise in the ground, shoots with deadly accuracy from each bit of cover and finally work near enough so that he can suddenly spring up and come to grips with the enemy. In a w'ord, he is a wizard at guerrilla warfare. ana FACED With all these diffculties and barriers of Nature, Italy can fight only one kind of a war—an engineer’s war, combined with the ordinary old-time military effort of infantry attack. The Italian engineers are being forced to build railways, bridges, waterworks—all of them, of course, vulnerable lines of communication. Contact must be kept all the time between two divisions, at least —so that reinforcements may come at once, in the case of heavy attack. So roads are essential. The reason why Mussolini waited, cold-blooded, unremitting, for the rains to cease before launching his campaign is that Ethiopia can boast only of mule tracks, which simply bog down wheel traffic of any kind, no matter how light, in wet weather. The fertile part of Abyssinia lies on the plateau 5000 feet up from the lowlands and virtually the only valley which gives entry in a steady, easy slope, is the Hawash River valley, through which runs the Dsibouti-Addis Ababa railroad, operated by France. Round all other sides, the rise is steep and sudden. It places attacking forces at a disadvantage, wide open, as they try to scale the slopes, to the fire and the sallies of the defending forces, entrenched at the top. a a a ITALY does already have a toehold at the very northern tip of this plateau. This way is crisscrossed by rivers, ravines and gorges. Here is where Italian engineering efforts is being taxed to the fullest, spanning bridges across these fissures in the earth’s crust. Like all tropical countries, while the days are steaming hot, the nights are genuinely cold, especially on the plateau. They are allies of fever and malaria—and as there is no cover of any kind—obviously protection will have to be supplied to the Italian troops by their engineers. Here, again, is one more reason why Italy is facing a stupendous road-building job, in her effort to conquer this ancient kingdom of Kush. There are some military experts, for instance Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Gwynn (retired), Royal Engineers

The reasons for this change were that under the modem principle of “the nation in arms,” practically everything is a munition of war. The extension of the radius of action of modem navies is such that they can put an actual blockade on large areas of the high seas. Finally, submarines and airplanes can’t visit, search and convoy a captured vessel to a prize court. Thus the reasons for the old rule are weakened. In modern war, no great belligerent, fighting for its life, can accede to the doctrine of freedom of the seas. Can a great neutral insists upon it to the point of war? Not unless its own life depends on it—and ours does not. (Copyright, 1935. by United Featun Syndicate, Lnej

of the British army, and an authority on Abyssinia Egypt and the Sudan, who bel:eve that if Italy campaigns slowly the first season, concentrates on annexing Harar, Danakil and Ogaden provinces, it would be possible for the Italians to join together Eritrea and Somaliland and form one unbroken front along the east side of Ethiopia, from which to carry on operations the second season. a a a BUT in this matter of objectives, Italy is on the fence. If she takes the aforementioned three provinces, she will have so much waste land on her hands. If she undertakes the major venture, how long can the pocket’oooks of the Italian peole stand the strain? Under the present restricting conditions of credit can the Italian people carry on a major attempt at empire building? Much has been written concerning the supposed fear of the British military authorities over their interest at Lake Tana, in northern Abyssinia. The most common explanation given is that the English fear that if the waters of the lake fall into Italian control —the fertile Sudan and the British cotton interest in the Nile valley to the north will be harmed. This fear is overrated, for the rivers drain down from the mountains in a northerly and westerly direction, irrespective of what happens to the waters in Lake Tana. The majority of these rivers, dashing pell-mell, in white boiling foam, down the mountain sides, drain into the Blue Nile below the lake and serve to augment that flow which does come from the lake. The Ethiopians can not use the water from the lake. And, moreover, even if they could, they wouldn’t have any use for it. The obvious customer is Great Britain and the Egyptians. If Italy ever did gain control of the lake waters, it isn’t likely that Mussolini would jack up the price of water to the one and only customer he can get to use the water. Thus to sum up: a a Emperor haile selassie has few modern implements of war, and no highly trained military machine. Nature is his greatest ally, with all its terrors of pestilence, disease and rough terrain. Italy has a mighty—but untrained, untested—military machine. Economic stress at home, and the rekindled fire of imperial conquest in the breast of the typical beardless Fascist youth, drive her on, regardless of the awful cost. Nature is her worst enemy—not Selassie. Italian victory depends upon two things—how smart are her generals and commanders and secondly, how smart is Haile Selassie in his application of fighting tactics and generalship? If the black emperor has decided to carry his modernism into the field of war and attempt to fight Mussolini’s men with modem tactics, the modern way, with munition dumps, trench warfare and artillery duels, he is handing his country to II Duce on a silver platter. If, however, Selassie is wise and smart enough to forget his modernism for the moment, let his tribesmen fight the best way they can—the only real way they know how to fight: a running, harrying, guerrilla war—the military experts of many major powers figure that he can stand off Mussolini for two or three years, perhaps even longer. And in three years, who knows what may happen to Italian credit and Mussolini? a a a GIVE the tribesmen of Ethiopia good rifles, good standard ammunition and a plentiful supply of machine guns, and they triple the work of the Italian army. They can raid lines of communication, harry transports, destroy bridges—in a word, carry on the type of warfare which was made so famous by that military genius, Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence seldom carried on warfare against men. Instead he blew up railroad tracks, bombed trains, poisoned water, wrecked transports. His tactics stultified the Turkish campaign in Mesopotamia and freed the Arabs. If Selassie is a smart enough man to take a leaf out of the late Col. Lawrence’s book of military tactics as practiced with tribal warriors, he might cause Mussolini to wish he had never heard of Abyssinia. And so in answer to the question—Can Italy Conquer Ethiopia?—yes, at a cost which might be so colossal in men, money and prestige as to become an empty and hollow victory of no benefit to the conqueror whatsoever. (Monday: Empires and Pawns.) (Copyright. 1935. Telegraph Prow, Harrisburg, Pa.;,

Fair Enough MSTBROOK PEGLER WITH puzzled interest I have observed in the last few years the development of anew style and anew interest in sport writing which indicates that the playing fields of the United States of America have been moved indoors and that the leaders of the world of sport are not active athletes but professional gamblers, press agents, ticket speculators, politicians, spendthrift scions of the idle rich, whispering smut singers, meat show dancing ladies, police characters and common barflies. These are charm-

ing people, to be sure, and this note on anew phase in our life is submitted in the best of temper merely as a marker along the path of progress. It is a neverending pleasure to study the personality of a nightside character who made a fortune laundering linen for his fellow-man and often threatens, on good white newsprint, to buy a major league ball club with some of it. I am convulsed by the dry humor and dialect of the former pants presser who became a bookmaker and have enjoyed a thousand whimsical items about a number of

men whose pedigrees may be found at police headquarters but not Yale or even in the bulky files of the A. A. U. Yet there is something lacking from the sport pages these days, and I think that what I refer to is an occasional mention of a competing athlete couched in the language of sport. It would be a pleasant change of pace to come upon a personal piece about a football player or golfer, or even a figure skater, written in terms which need not be uttered out of the side of the mouth. nna H ho Likes Garlic Straight? OF course, young football players are likely to be busy or otherwise unavailable for interviews, and it may be that very often when they can be had’ they turn out to be inarticulate kids without spectacular personal traits w'hich make for easy writing and casual reading. Moreover, it takes a deal of enterprise to go up the country to some college town and put up in a pitcher-and-bowl hotel for days at a time to obtain this sort of material. And the stuff when it is obtained, requires more careful and tactful handling and better wTiting than the night club type of sport, story, because the school boys have not struck the pose of fiction characters so common in the figures who sit around the night clubs and delicatessens waiting to be celebrated in print. If I might offer an opinion it would be that the reason for this new' preference for the night side personnel and the gin mill locale is two-fold, the one following the other as the night the day. First, many of our sport journalists have lost interest in sport and taken to night life, and, second, as a result of that, they don’t know enough about sport and sportsmen any more to permit even a plausible pretense. A few years ago a whiff of the underworld was interesting relief from the innocent heroics and the austere virtue of fair competition between the lithe, lean bodies playing games singly, in pairs and in teams. But, like garlic, this element is something which is most effective when used in moderation. Like garlic, too, it is not enjoyable when taken straight. a a a Just Noted in Passing 1 WOULD like to remark while on this subject that one veteran sport w'riter of national prominence W'ho has remained strictly a sport writer, hewing to the line always, is Mr. Grantland Rice, who has been covering the athletes for more than 3’ years. Mr. Rice seemed old-fashioned for a while when the vogue for underworld sport copy was coming along because he continued to w'rite about forward passes, the new tackles at Illinois, Tommy Armour’s irons, the swimmers, archers, boxers and tennis athletes, strictly as athletes, and let the night life of sport alone. But there is no man in the country now who knows one-tenth as many actual players, past and present, and their records, styles and prospects, as well as the one man who has the greatest excuse to be sick of the whole business. I find that my interest in band leaders, radio artists and ladies who do a kootch under another name in the night clubs has been more than served by the minute reporting of the Broadway journalists. When I turn the sport page I have a wish to know who won the ball game, how come and by how much. I am not seriously annoyed about it all. It is just something I thought I would mention. (Copyright, 1935. by Onite and Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Times Books

YOU go on a binge of bayous, bravado, boardfences, and freshly cleaned boas in “Valiant Is the Word for Carrie,” by Barry Benefield (Reynal & Hitchcock; $2). Valiant in all its romantic meaning is the only w'ord for Carrie Snyder as she mothers a kneetrousered little man who dotes on alley-cats, and his grown-up brothers who sail cocktail boats on Sazerac seas. The charm of the South's chinaberry trees follow Mr. Benefield's latest first-person confessional and yet if one takes a handspring back to the hammock where his successful “The Chicken-Wagon Family” first was read one will find that book lingering with him as Carrie Snyder performs. Carrie kidnaps and participates in prison deliveries for a boy who grew into a man and did not realize it. aa , a r I 'HE adolescent romance of “Addie” and “Jim” of A the “Chicken-Wagon Family” is projected in new garb into Mr. Benefield’s latest novel. When Carrie Snyder “pleasures” in her suffering, the reader “pleasures,” too. and winces only when reminded that Carrie is a carry-over from the “Chicken-Wagon Family” and a competent feminine counterpart of the earlier novel’s valiant—Jim, a tramp newspaper man. But Carrie shows a more matured Benefield who w'ould have liked to have let her ride in the “ChickenWagon” tome if he had not been under the compulsion common among former newspaper men to write of his late craft. The book is for those who like artlsanship. a bit of make-believe, and is a splendid antidote for blase ones who still believe heroines can not suffer without whimpering about it. 'By Arch Steinel.)

Literary Notes

In an article on the job of an editor in the October issue of The Writer. Edward Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly reveals that three books published by his house were each cut by a total of between 20,000 to 30,000 words. He is commenting on manuscrips too long for their own good and he says: “In this case the extraneous flesh should be cut away, more often in paragraphs than in pages and always so as not to cut main arteries.” The three books so extensively cut were “The House of Exile,” “Grandmother Brown’s Hundred Years,” and Forty-Niners,” all SSOOO prize winners. “Knight Enters the List” is the caption on the announcement of anew publishing house, to be called Knight Publications, Inc. Offices are at 118 E. 28th-st, New York. The new firm in* nds to publish “vital non-fiction of timely and compelling interest, written in a style attuned to the pulse of the twentieth century.” J. B. Priestley is going to New Haven for the tryout of his new play. “Eden End,” and then he is going to a ranch in Arizona, where he plans to spend the winter with his family. Jules Francis Segal, formerly of the editorial department of Alfred H King Inc., is a victim of the popular myth that an author's first writing is necessarily autobiographical. He is taking all sorts of abuje because of his story in this month s Voyager calif i Hater.” *

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Westbrook Pejler