Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 235, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 December 1935 — Page 17

It Seems to Me HEYM BROUN WASHINGTON. D. C. Dee. 10.—“ He Isn't in,' 1 said Connie over the hotel telephone. “No. I have no idea when he'll be in. Sometimes he goes out and stays for hours getting material for his column. No, I couldn't say.” Raising myself to one elbow on the davenport. I asked with a certain degree of interest, “Why am I out and why won’t I be back for hours?” “It's a high school pupil who wants to find out about journalism.” “Now, you see, you ought to let

me decide for myself whether I'm out or not,” I answered. “Here w ! e are in a strange city, hundreds of miles from home. We know practically no one, since most of the high officials of the United States government are out of town. Suddenly the phone screams. Are we being invited to the White House? Frankly. we are not. Neither is it an ambassador asking us to cocktails at his embassy. It isn’t even a Congressman just a simple high school lad calling up out of the night to say that he wants to come to me, of all people, to learn

Ileywood Broun

about Journalism. Don't you see the romance and responsibility of it all?” She shook her head. “Well, it’s like this: Suppose when I was very your.g I had called up some great newspaper man. No, that's not quite the way I want to put it. Suppose when I was very young I had called up some newspaper man to ask him about journalism and suppose his wife had lied to me and said he wasn't in That might have changed my whole career. Today I might be a lawyer or a doctor instead of a newspaper man.” tt a tt Doctor* Do All High! “T"\OCTORS do all right.” replied Connie. “The JL/ man got 850 for snatching Patricia's tonsils.” "But this high school pupil who wants to hear about journalism may be the Walter Winchell of tomorrow. It is even possible that the timid little fellow with the shining face and the trusting eyes may grow up to be another Walter Lippmann, and much can be done with Lippmanns if you catch them young.” “But it isn’t a little boy. This high school pupil that wants to know about journalism is a little gir'.” “But that’s all the more reason why she shouldn’t be snubbed. Think of chivalry. What would Galahad have done, or Robert Fulton?” “I don’t care,” insisted Connie. “She’s too fresh.” “But think of the persistence of the wee lass. She will make her mark in the days to come as a journalist or a member of the Canadian rural police force. I like her force of character. I wish I had some. I should have started my column an hour ago. Here goes, and I don't want to be disturbed for 20 minutes. Remember, I'm out to everybody except Chief Justice Hughes.” a a a Slarlinfi an Ugli) Scandal COOING to the far end of the suite in one bound, T 1 began to type a column—in fact, this very one. I heard the tinkle of the phone, and before I could interfere Connie was saying, “I told you only 10 minutes ago he isn’t in.” It was the wee lass again, and in the excitement of composition I had forgotten to note her as an exception along with Mr. Hughes. I signaled frantically for a recount, but Connie was committed. “No, I can’t tell you when he’ll be back. He isn’t in Washington any more; he's gone to Richmond. No, I’m not related to him.” “What was all that?” I inquired. “She wanted to know was I your wife, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” “It’s no satisfaction,” I objected mildly; “it’s a pleasure. But do you see what you’ve done? You’ve created a public scandal. After all. that girl is a budding journalist. Is it fair to me? Is it fair to the Hotel Willard? We must flee at once, and to Richmond, in order to make you an honest telephone conversationalist. But what made you pick Richmond?” “I've got a cousin there.” “How is your uncle in Sacramento?” “He’s dead.” "How very fortunate!” I answered. And so this column is being written on a train heading toward historic Richmond. (Copyright. 1935)

Your Health -BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

THE many peculiar ideas about diet do not stop with these notions alone. They go on, in many cases, to what are termed "courses” on dieting, actual training regimens that are being advertised widely and sold to people who are still unaware of what diet can actually do in the body. Most of these courses consist of anywhere from 12 to 24 lessons which are mailed to the purchaser with the understanding that he is getting some real secrets about what diet can do for him. The courses contain a great deal of material about autointoxication. This is a misnomer, if ever there was one. because scientific doctors no longer even use the word. They also say a great deal about the fact that the body becomes congested with a great deal of undigested and decaying food material and that this is exceedingly poisonous. This statement also is untrue. One of these writers goes so far as to say that grapefruit and tomatoes will dissolve tumors, gallstones and blood clots when, of course, everybody who gives the matter a moment’s thought knows that neither grapefruit nor tomatoes, singly or together, will do any such thing. tt n a There is a health school out West which promotes the idea that there is no such thing as infectious disease and that all disease comes from wrong eating. The promoters of this school say that toxemia is the most dangerous disease, that it is established by wrong life, impairs digestion and results in all of the infectious diseases. People who believe these notions will believe anything that is told to them. It is significant that all of the promoters of health schools related to the diet have something to sell in the way of special foods, special apparatus, special syringes or other materials which are guaranteed to wash out the intestines, stop the autotoxemia and in that way prevent disease. If people only had a little better knowledge of the way in which foods are digested and absorbed by the body, they would not so readily fall victim to the claims of these dietary system promoters.

Today s Science BY DAVID DIETZ

EACH year, with the arrival of December, it is my pleasant and self-imposed duty to serve as scientific adviser to Santa Claus. For two decades, I have struggled to keep abreast the tide of scientific literature. A considerable portion of my task has been to evaluate those books on science meant for popular consumption. I shall begin this year by calling attention to an event of the first magnitude in the publishing of books of popular science. Dr. Forest Ray Moulton's ‘ Consider the Heavens. - ’ Here is a book which every person interested ir. astronomy will want upon his bookshelves. a a a DR. MOULTON is one of the world’s great astronomers and mathematicians, the author of a score of scholarly treatises. In collaboration with the late Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, he made one of the major contributions to modern cosmogony, the planetismal hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, for many years he was head of the department of astronomy at the University of Chicago. Forced to retire because of the age rule, he was too young in spirit to be inactive. He became one of the guiding spirits and important executives in Chicago’s Century of Progress fair, an exposition which glorified the importance of science in the modern world.

Fn!] Leased Wire Service of the United Press Association.

LISTENING TO HITLER’S GERMANY

Nazis Turn to Old-Fashioned Bartering to Get Needed Imports

That awesome rumbling: sound beyond the Rhine is a great war machine in the making. The desperate energy and cold efficiency with which Hitler’s "New Germany" is building up its depleted military strength is vividly described below by Frazier Hunt in another of his uncensored dispatches. BY FRAZIER HUNT (Copyright, 1935. NEA Service. Inc.) B ERI .IN (via London), Dec. 10.—Today everything in Germany is secondary to the army. It is the soul of the new Germany. It is the true reason for the revolution and the dictatorship.

To gain time to build a great army Germany will do anything to keep the peace of the world. She will make any internal sacrifice necessary. She is ready to pay the price. It will take at least another year to build even a peacetime army of from 550,000 to 600,000 men. It will take from five to eight years to build up and properly equip a real war army. To build her war machine, Germany has the potential soldiers and the highly skilled workmen and the great factory equipment-and a discipline and spirit possibly not equaled by any fighting man in the world. It is raw materials and food that she needs. A lack of these last two lost her the first World War. She is determined that when the second World War breaks over the earth she is goiipg to be on th winning side.

Frazier Hunt

EVEN in the building of anew war army Germany feels the desperate pinch of the lack of raw materials and even food. Her world trade has been cut to a third of its 1928 proportions. She has no credits and her gold reserve is one-half of one per cent of that

of the United States—a pitiful $20,000,000 against our own $lO,000,000,000. But to keep cannon rolling out of the great Krupp works, and war planes zooming from factories in strategically placed centers in middle and eastern Germany, she must somehow of other import the needed copper and rubber and cotton and oil and a hundred and one other items that she lacks in her land that is so inadequate to her great dreams. So it is that in order to build her war machine she must have two great general staffs. One is the army general staff, whose duty it is to build and train and inspire an army, and lay out its grand strategy. But almost equally important is the economic general staff. Its duty is to build the guns and barracks and motor roads and fast tanks and 218-mile-an-hour bombers. a o a GERMANY now has both these general staffs beautifully

Mountaineers in Wise, Va., Where Edith Maxwell Sits in Jail, Are Like Poor People in Any Small Town, Ernie Finds

BY ERNIE PYLE WISE, Va., Dec. 10.—When Edith Maxwell went on trial here for kiling her father, the Washington newspapers sent reporters down to cover it. They sent reporters because Wise is in Virginia, and Virginia is in their territory, because everybody knows Virginia is just across the Potomac from Washington. But listen to this! Toronto, Canada, is closer to Washington

than Wise is. You don’t believe it? All right, get out your map and look. Wise is nearly 450 miles from Washington. It's way down in that southwes tern neck of Virginia that by rights should be Kentucky or Ten-

Si*' M:

Ernie Pyle

nessee. Wise is closer to five other state capitals than it is to Richmond. You can drive from here to Kentucky in 20 minutes. "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” was written about the road that runs through Wise. You remember how it goes: “In the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, on the trail of ... ” etc. The Blue Ridge mountains aren’t anywhere near here. These mountains are the Appalachians. Even the song-writers don’t get things straight. This is mountain country all right. The last 60 miles in here is so crooked it makes you dizzy. The mountains are good-sized. Not long straight ridges, like the Blue Ridge, but a terrific splatter of sharp peaks. Just a conglomerate upheaval. I came through in a blizzard. The hills and valleys were just taking on their coat of white. Through the snowy haze, they were beautiful. Today there is an inch of snow in Wise, and last night it was 8 above.

DOUBLING SEVEN CONTRACT SELDOM PAYS

Today’s Contract Problem The bidding was as follows South, two clubs. North, two spades. South, three diamonds. North, three hearts. South, four no trump, North, five no trump. South, seven no trump. Should East, holding the following hand, double? EAST *KJ 9 5 V K Q 10 5 4 10 S 2 * 5 3 Solution in next issue. *

Solution to Previous Contract Problein BY W. E. M’KENNEY Secretary American Rririee Leatue yvo you know that it seldom pays to double a seven contract? Do you also know that quite often, when you are doubled at a contract of seven in a suit which can be defeated, yoii can make seven no trump? 5

The Indianapolis Times

organized and smoothly working under Dictator and Supreme Commander Hitler. It is the economic general staff which is by all odds most interesting. One would have to go to Soviet Russia to find anything that equaled it in power. The economic chief of staff is Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, whose formal title is minister of economics and head of the Reichsbank. But he is in fact super-commander of the ministries of agriculture, labor and finances—with a finger in the foreign office and every other branch of government. The army general staff tells him what it must have, and somehow or other he gets it for them —while the foreign office keeps Germany out of war. At the very top stands Hitler. a a u UNDER the economic general staff, all the industrial life and trade of Germany must toe

e'y'HE roadside all along is well populated. You meet truck after truck hauling tobacco to market. You see tobacco hanging in barns. You see nice farm houses—not as nice as in lowa, but nice. As you get closer to Wise, things get poorer. One and tworoom cabins and shacks are frequent. There is no level place, and they are perched on hillsides, and down in valleys. You see poor-looking, coldlooking men on the road. You see women in red calico chopping wood. I saw a cow caught on top of a board fence. She couldn’t get over, and she couldn’t get back. I stopped and told the mountaineer chopping wood in his yard. He said “Sir?” I told him again. He smiled and nodded, and said "Oh yes, thank you,” and started back to release her. I picked up a mountain boy, still of school age but not in school. He was humped over, walking without hat or overcoat in the blizzard. He looked poor and ignorant. He talked like anybody else. When he got out he said, "I’m certainly thankful to you.” a tt u WISE is a town of about 1100. It looks even smaller than that. You can stand in the center, and see open country only two blocks away in any direction. There are just two blocks of stores, forming the main street. All the buildings are old. There is one three-story brick building. Most of them are one-story. Houses are scattered back from the main street. There is a small old-fashioned hotel, and a large and fairly nice high school. The school is out in the country, yet only a few blocks from downtown. The county buildings take up one side of one block in the heart of town. The courthouse is in the center It is three-story, of light brick. On its right is a two-story annex, connected with it. On the left, sitting alone, is the red brick jail. It was once a home. Edith

Most good players figure that, when their opponents arrive at a seven bid and they can defeat the contract, they will get a very good score, because it is certainly unwise to surrender a smalf slam contract for a doubled grand slam contract. . Earl Bryan of Cleveland, recently selected three grand slam hands from various duplicate games there. Today's hand is the first of the series. A word about the bidding. North’s jump bid of two spades over one diamond is a slam demand bid, provided the original bidder had a sound opening bid. As soon as South goes to three diamonds, it means that the hand is going to be played for at least six odd. Now. of course. North is interested in getting to a grand slam. Naturally North, with his long string of spades, thinks the hand should be played at seven spades. East has a right to figure that he can defeat seven spades, but he should not double, for fear that the opponents will go to seven no trump, against which he has absolutely no defense.

INDIANAPOLIS, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1935

t l .T !? * %

“Germany dreams of anew day of might—on land and sea and in the air.”

the mark. A maker of radio sets can put only so much copper in his sets; motor tires can have only a certain per cent of real rubber; cloth must contain only so much wool and cotton. Bakers are told how much wheat and potatoes and dried skimmed milk they can use in their bread. Housewives can buy

Maxwell is in there now. A low stone fence surrounds the courthouse lawn. There is no railroad through Wise. Small busses come through several times a day. Cars are parked on both sides of the street. Most of them are new and shiny. Very few Model T’s. I saw a cow

War Talk in Air, but Europe Does Not Believe Hostilities Near, Baillie Finds

in response to requests from publishers Hugh Baillie, United Press president, prepared the following dispatch: BY HUGH BAILLIE President of the United Press LONDON, Dec. 10. —While war talk is in the air throughout Europe, there is no feeling that hostilities are imminent. This impression is based on information gathered in the last three months in Rome. Moscow, Berlin, Madrid, Geneva, Paris and London, including conversations with Hitler, Mussolini, Litvinoff, Laval and many other statesmen, diplomats and persons in a position to know what is going on behind the scenes. I do not think that any high government official expects war now. However, if war should come it would be a fantastic nightmare, with machine-gunners dropping out of the clouds in parachutes, airplanes depositing baby tanks in the back areas of the enemy, and many other modern gadgets of which the general public has only the slightest knowledge. The most immediate w’ar threat still centers in the Italian operations in Ethiopia, although at this writing fresh efforts are being made by the British and the French to come to terms with Mussolini and have him call off his enterprise. MUSSOLINI said, however, in a recent interview, that he was going forward in Ethiopia with or without the League of

4 A K Q 10 7 63 y a K 4 J 6 + A 7 4 Void 4 J 9 8 6 yJBS 4 N 2 3 2 yy g y i 7 495 c 41032 *j 10 H Dealer l* 842 4 f VQ 9 8 4AKQ 8 7 4 4K Q 5 Duplicate—E. & W. vul. South Meet North East 1 4 Pass 2 4 Pass 3 4 Pass 4 4 Pass 5 4 Pass 5 y Pas3 6 4 Pass 7 4 Pass Opening lead — *.J. 3

Now, if East passes the .=cven spade bid. South, in a good many cases, will also pass. However, according to the bidding, South should go to seven no trump. (Copyright. 1935. iTCA Service. Inc.) j

so much butter and fats each week. From the farm to the table, and from the mine to the factory and store, everything is regimented and marked out. In the matter of foreign trade, the regulations are even more strict. Government “clearing agencies” have placed all trade on a barter basis. Germany ex-

walking down the street. I have seen cows on main streets in Illinois, too. The school children are dressed as well as they are in Washington. The people on the streets are dressed in fashion, not rube-like at all. The country men loaf in the

Nations. This he still is doing, although Premier Laval is making frequent efforts to effect a settlement. Meanwhile, the British fleet is still concentrated in the Mediterranean and Italy blames Great Britain for the League’s action in voting sanctions against the Fascist state. Thus, a war hazard exists constantly in that situation, just as it did in 1898 in Cuba when the battleship Maine was anchored in Havana harbor. I was in Rome when Premier Mussolini announced from his balcony on the Palazzo Venezia that the Ethiopian advance was about L start despite the opposition of the League. Therefore, I have a keen appreciation of the fervor and impetuosity of the Italians. If the Italian crisis passes Europe can go ahead arranging alliances for the "next war” without this present danger of a premature explosion. a o tt THREE big European nations today are "on the march”— Russia, Germany and Italy. In those countries an atmosphere of "going places” prevails. Those three countries have lusty postwar governments run by energetic, comparatively young men. Their nationalistic sensibilities are of the sharpest and their people, at least those who dominate the scene, are aggressively patriotic. To put it in plain American, it wouldn’t take much shoving to "start something” but the situation is still far, from being "fiveminutes to tw r elve.” While Italy at the moment occupies the spotlight, Germany is the country w’hich Europe chiefly is watching. As every one knows, the Germans are now engaged in reconstructing their army, and military observers believe that in two years Germany will have the most formidable fighting force in Europe, with the possible exception of Russia. Much emphasis is being placed on aviation. Vast new airdromes are appearing throughout Germany. New classes are being called into military training. In Moscow*. I found the Russians to be acutely "Nazi conscious.” The Soviet army maneuvers were held in the Ukraine around Kiev Sept. 9 to 12. Some strategists think the Ukraine would be the objective in event of a Russo-Ger-man war. a 1 WITNESSED a review of the Russian troops in Moscow on Nov. 7 when infantry, artillery, cavalry and tanks passed before Josef Stalin. One of the most vivid sights I saw was huge tanks roaring into Red Square ai high speed, one at a time cata-

changes machinery for Rumanian oil; engines for Argentine meat; coal for Italian lemons. a a a TITHEN it comes to trade with ’ America, old-fashioned barter is raised to almost ridiculous absurdities. An American film company took a live rhinoceros as pay for a Hollywood picture. For American lumber Germany trades moth balls and dry-clean-ing chemicals; for oil it gives tank ships and steel pipe; for cotton it exchanges the steel baling ties that goes around the bales. The boycott by Jewish-American importers and merchants has disorganized this whole trade. German factories are told just what they can have, how much they shall pay for it, and how much they shall receive. But it is all a desperate game Germany and Hitler are playing. It is a game with time and with the morale of a people. If Germany can have peace and the raw materials to build her great machine, she will emerge once again as a dominant, driving power. She dreams of anew day of might—on land 'and sea and in the air. a a tt SHE would gain her ends by peaceful conquest if it is possible. She believes supremely in her own superiority and in her ultimate destiny. She hopes that internal conditions in France will force France to abandon her military alliance with Soviet Russia and Czechoslovakia and Rumania and Yugoslavia, and that she will be content with the domination of Western Europe and Northern Africa. Germany will give the seas to England. She wants only to turn to the East. She sees in the vast lands of Western Soviet Russia the ultimate new lands that it will take to fulfill her destiny. She would like France and England to understand that she wants no more trouble with Western Europe, and that if they will only let her alone she will eventually crush Communistic Russia. But neither England nor France can quite make up their minds whether they prefer a great Russia, again nationalistic and imperial in size, or a Germany mightier than ever before in its history.

courthouse corridors. They look very poor. They wear overalls, and thin old scraps of clothing. They are unshaven and look pretty mountainy. But they talk about the price of grain seed, and about work in the coal mines. They look and talk the same as poor people in small towns everywhere.

pulting into the historic square from side streets and tearing across it while the tank commander saluted, his head and shoulders thrust up through the turret manhole. Civilians who paraded through Red Square by tens of thousands after the military had finished carried banners and effigies devoted to the Nazis One was a huge red fist and arm which kept; thumping a huge Nazi head with trip hammer blows. Another was a colossal red figure of a Communist holding a midget Nazi in its palm. People paraded with these and similar objects in high glee. The Russians are quite open about their military preparations, or at least they give the impression of being open. They make motion pictures of their maneuvers and thus invite attention to their mass parachute descents with every parachute carrying a machine gunner, and to their war planes which carry baby tanks under tneir bellies. One thing which strikes an American abroad these days is the large number of individuals w’ho are uniformed members of army organizations or auxiliaries. Uniforms are especially noticeable in the streets of Moscow, Berlin and Rome. Swords, fancy-hilted daggers, bayonets and pistols are worn freely by men in uniform. The vastly impressive demonstrations w'hich I saw in Rome, for instance, w T ere organized on short notice ana consisted of great parades of uniformed men—not all soldiers, ol course. The departure of actual troops for the front was never carried out ostentatiously. On the contrary, these departures were dominated by a distinctly business-like note. a a IN Berlin, the guard goose steps daily in Unter Den Linden, usually watched and followed by a crowd, and there are many uniforms to be seen in the streets and theaters. France and Britain do not have such a display of uniforms. In London theie is a more noticeable surface interest in wars and rumors of w T ar than in New York. There are no more uniforms in Piccadilly and the Strand than on Broadway. In fact, even in Gibraltar, which is a town built around a fortress with Scotch Highlanders and other British troops constantly in view and warships docked just at the foot of the street, the inhabitants seemed to accept the situation with calm detachment.

Second Section

Entired a Seeond Clns* Matter at Postoffice. Indianapolis. Inl.

Fair Enough WESItOOKHM "D OME, Dec. 10.—There Is no more beautiful sight this world than a European army officer of the rank of major and better permitting himself to be gazed upon and appreciated by lovely ladies in the lobby or bar of a stylish hotel. Young lieutenants and captains are beautiful, too, but generally they have not yet reached full bloom, so to speak. Their epaulets are just as pretty in pale blue, rose or yellow, edged with gold tape and fringe, and the stripes down the trousers or breeches are exactly the same as those

which are worn by their superiors. But junior officers, save in exceptional cases, are too young to have accumulated bouquets of decorations and campaign ribbons which are the guaranty of a military man. A perfect specimen will have at least two and possibly four rows of medals arrayed on his chest. The effect is not unlike that of a color chart in the house pain: department of an American hardware store. Each half-inch denotes some stirring exploit against savage Jimoolics of Jimooliland or some service of less strenuous

character in the drawing room of an embassy in a foreign country. European officers have an advantage over Americans because the sun seldom sets on campaigns which are open to them, in which the odds are 1000 to 1 in their favor. a o Perhaps They're Only Dross IN breaking down a row of ribbons into its component parts it might be discovered that some of them were only nominal dross. The pretty yellow’ one with purple stripes might have been awarded to a dashing officei merely because he didn't forget to wash his neck and polish his buttons for an entire semester when l e w’as a cadet in a military academy a quarter of a century ago. The red one with diagonal white bars could be nothing more important than a souvenir badge given by a king to those who marched in his coronation parade. Another might mean that our hero, with great devotion and skill, successfully carried out a raid by a well-armed fighting squad and seized a village police station up in the mountains 20 years back. War for liberty and justice! All wars are wars for liberty and justice. A decoration may drop out of the mail to remind an officer that a grateful sultan of a sandy patch somewhere east of Suez enjoyed his visit to his palace the time he passed through on a vacation cruise. They add up in time. On a continent whose troops, away off in far places, are always burning down cluster grass huts somewhere and chasing natives up trees —with possibly the support of gunboats lying in the river—new medals are constantly being devised. a a British Officers Get Their Share AND in addition to all these opportunities the British offer their distinguished orders by special decree of His Majesty the King, a proportion of which inevitably falls to any officer w’ho arrives at the rank of colonel. They have their Order of the Garter, their Victorian Order, their Indian orders and their orders of the British Empire. * In conversation with Capt. Davey. assistant attache of the British embassy in Rome, I discovered he had served at a military academy in Canada and had visited West Point with their hockey team. He therefore knew Maj. Phil Fleming of the American Corps Engineers, now in charge of the Passamaquoddy job in Maine. Capt. Davey said that, even in brief acquaintance with Maj. Fleming, he had to realize that he was an uncommonly fine Army officer. Yet Maj. Fleming had no initials behind his name, and he wears only a few ribbons. If ribbons denote the ability and ferocity to perform patriotic services American Army and Navy officers must be an inferior corps, as compared with their colleagues in Europe. A second lieutenant in a European army likely will wear more colors on his chest than 20 colonels—not necessarily grizzled—of American forces. And certainly a European major with no regalia behind his name and no more ribbons than Maj. Fleming would consider himself a tragic failure and go out and shoot himself.

Times Books

YOU may have had low moments in which you have wondered what on earth that handsome sea dog. Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, was up to down there in Antarctica. You may even have known moments of wonder whether the w'hole business was not a publicity stunt. If you have, I advise you to read "Discovery,” the book in which Admiral Byrd tells all about his last expedition. You will find it highly enlightening—and durned interesting, to boot. <Putnam; $3.75.) Byrd was after what every other explorer is after: new* light on the earth’s dark places. The earth’s dark p.aces are few, now, and the settlement of new empires no longer follow’s the explorer s discoveries; but the urge is the same, and the knowledge obtained is of equal importance to science. a tt n ADMIRAL BYRD has added a good deal to the race’s knowledge of the earth it inhabits. That is important, even If it lacks a direct cash value. The actual work of exploration, too, is still a man-killer, even if the explorers have tractors, movies, fresh milk and radios to make life more pleasant. The Byrd expedition was on the verge of utter disaster, at one time, with the ice threatening to move out from under its camp; and a tractor can be a headache, when you have to use a blowtorch to thaw out the transmission grease before you can start it. All in all, Admiral Byrd has written a valuable and fascinating book, well designed to rid his work of the floss which sometimes seems to cover it. (By Bruce Catton.)

Literary Notes

Somerset Maugham has left New York for a visit to Nelson Doubleday’s Dlantation in South Carolina. Anew collection of his short stories will be published by DouDleday-Doran in February under the title, “Cosmopolitans.” Ben Hecht and Charles Mac Arthur are working on a story and movie scenario to be called “Murder in Twenty-One.” The background will be Jack and Charlie’s famous restaurant on 52d-st. J. P. McEvoy will start the first of the year from Shanghai to go by trans-Siberian railway to Russia, where he will stay until April, writing a series of articles for a national weekly, which will later be gathered into a book. He is also working on a novel about Americans in the Orient. In the film “Mutiny on the Bounty" one of the leading characters is named Roger Byam. a part played by Franchot Tone. Readers of "The Saga of the Bounty," the actual history as related by those involved in the mutiny, have searched in vain for the name Byam, and several of them have written in to the publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons, about it. Roger Byam. the publishers say, is the fictional counterpart of Peter Heywood, midshipman on the Bounty and later a captain in the British navy, whoso own account of the mutiny and of subsequent eveijJl Is in “The Saga of the Bounty."

Westbrook Pegier