Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 June 1937 — Page 9
pl. 19!
-Vagabonc From Indiana—Ernie Pyle
Ernie Finds Pair of Fellow Hoosiers ‘In Alaska and Learns Graduation Exercises Are Similar Everywhere.
\A/RANGELL, Alaska, June 21.—Dick Suratt and 1 decided we'd go to the Wrangell High School commencement. He hadn’t been for several years, and 1 thought 1 might get an interesting column on how they graduate their children up here in “the wilds.” . We got up there a little late. Somebody was just finishing a speech as we tiptoed into the auditorium. I never did see the speaker but I heard his last words. They were “. . . the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.” So you see they graduate them here just as they do everywhere else. : , The Wrangell schoolhouse is a nige-looking two-story building of yellow stucco. It sits on a rise, a block from the main street.” A strong-armed boy could stand on the school grounds and throw a rock into the forest primeval. About 200 people were in the ; auditorium. Everybody was dressed .up. Except for an occasional brown halfbreed face you couldn't have told it from any commencement audience in the States.
The five graduates sat bashfully on the stage
Mr. Pyle
ae among the speakers and school board members. Four
boys and a girl. half-breed. adopted him,
One of the speakers was a man from the Indian ‘Bureau, up from Ketchikan. In ringing tones he told the graduates that never before in history were there such opportunities as today ... and so on.
Talk Brief—and Human
Superintendent Rasmussen's talk was brief and human. He said it was his graduation, too. He is stepping out after 11 years. He didn’t paint any glowing pictures for the graduates, but he took them one at a time, and touched on their good points, and on some of their bad points, too, and said he wasn't ashamed of a one of them. After .the ceremonies we went up and met Mr. Rasmussen. He and Suratt and I stood around and talked a while. Suratt is U. S. Commissioner for this territory. He has been in Alaska more than 20 years. It turned out we were all three from Indiana—Rasmussen from Logansport, Suratt from Terre Haute. The wo wouldn't run without us Hoosiers. ~ As Suratt and NI were walking down the board street on our way home, Frank Barnes pulled up in his car.and asked if:I wanted to take a ride.
Opportunities of Frontier
Barnes is head of the Wrangell Packing Co. He has been in Alaska 30 years. He takes a trip “outside” every year or so. His children go to the States to college.
As we rode I asked him about this business we're hearing about lately in the States—about Alaska being our last frontier, and the land -where opportunities for young men abound. I've asked several people about that, and I'm going to ask a lot more.
I was thinking about these five kids I'd just seen graduate. If opportunities up here are so great for ambitious youngsters from the States, wouldn't they be even greater for these boys, right here on home ground? What will they do? Well, they'll do about the same as five hoys and girls in any Midwest town. Those who can afford it will go to college—“outside” to the States. When they finish, - some of them will look on to bigger things. They'll buck the tide of America’s big cities —they’ll leave Alaska for thé big time, just as boys leave the farm for the city. Others will finish college and .come back to Alaska, and settle into their routine. Not many will find a big opportunity and seize it. They'll get along —but theyll’ wind up 30 years from now about like any five high school graduates in Missouri. ,,
Mrs.Roosevelt's Day
By Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the boys was a fine-looking Superintendent Axel Rasmussen has
Appeal to Join Memorial Board for
Poet Turned Down, but With Regret.
YDE PARK, N. Y., Sunday.—An appeal came in my mail yesterday which almost made we weaken in my firm | decision that under no circumstances would’ I say|“yes” to the suggestion of joining any board or .any worthy group for any purpose whatsoever! The decision was made because it seemed to me that not| only was I asked to join a new group every day, but I actually belonged to so many I justified the statement which somebody made: - “Americans are the world’s’ greatest joiners.” :
I am refusing to join this group, but I can't help telling you that out in Missouri they are planning to erect a national Eugene Field memorial on Lovers’ Lane, Saint Jo. The. last two verses of his poem about this spot have always stuck in my memory:
| In the Union Bank of London | Are forty pounds or more, i Which I'd like to spend, ere the month shall end, : In an antiquarian store; But I'd give it all and gladly, If for an hour or so I could feel the grace of a distant place—| of Lovers’ Lane, Saint Jo. - Let us sit awhile, beloved, And dream of the good old days— | Of the kindly shade which the maples mad Round the, stanch but squeaky chaise; | With your head upon my shoulder, And my arm about you so, Though exiles, we shall seem to be In Lovers’ Lane, Saint Jo.
How curious that even Eugene Field should find compensation for the loss of personal romance in the acquiring of some particular bit of antiquity around which a romance of the imagination could be woven! The real lure of the “antique” is the fact you can dream about it. . You know the gentleman who is selling it to you is probably none too truthful, that perhaps the chair or bit of china or lace did not belong to the Emperor Napoleon or Mary, Queen of Scots, but that doesn’t really matter. As long as you own that antique you will be thinking of Napoelon or Mary, Queen of Scots, and their Jives will become your romances What most of us lose in life as we grow older is the power to enjoy romance. Lucky the man or woman who keeps it throughout his or her days. Of course, my favorite of all Eugene Field's poems is “Little Boy Blue,” even: though I cannot read it aloud even now without tears.
Walter O'Keefe —
N Saturday those three Russian aviators were flying over the arctic wastes, and now I know why Stalin left that handful of Reds at the North Pole. They. were parked up at the pole just so that there would be someone to wave at the plane as it passed. They say as it flew by that the gallant crew on the ground stood at strict attention. Attention my eye! Those guys were frozen stiff. I The Communists have dressed up the penguins in red flannels, according to some reports. It annoyed
them to see a penguin strutting around looking like !
a capitalist in evening clothes. The Russians are certainly doing a lot of flying these days and it’s not. limited to airplanes. Recently a bunch of generals were given wings and sent back to visit their ancestors.
~The India
napolis
fo en
Times
cid ai Second Section
MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1937
Entered as BSecond-Class Matter Indianapolis,
at Postoffice,
Ind.
PAGE 9
Experts of Oriental Institute Dig Up Man's
Past in Fertile Crescent; Lessons May Guide Future.
2m
(Last of a Series)
ROM the Nile in Egypt, northward and eastward, around the end of the Mediterranean up toward the Black Sea and then southward and eastward, across Assyria .and Babylonia to the Persian Gulf, lies the Fertile
Crescent.
In this region, marked by the Nile on one side and the Tigris and Euphrates on the other, the first acts in the drama of civilization were played. Here lies the records of man’s beginnings, his first gropings toward the intellectual
light, the beginnings of his religion, his social ethics, his sciences and his engineering.
And it is in this Fertile .
Crescent that a great group of archeological expeditions
are at work digging up
man’s ancient history. These + expeditions have been sent into the field by the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago, an organization whose work has been made possible by a number of gifts, the majority of which came from Rockefeller . philanthropies. The institute occupies a magnificent museum building upon the Chicago campus, built at a cost of $1,500,000 with a gift from the International Education Board, one of the boards endowed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. “A laboratory for the study of man,” was the way Dr. James H. Breasted. the famous Egyptologist,
. characterized the Oriental Insti-
tute. Until his death in 1935, Dr. Breasted was its director.
” ” a
HEN John D. Rockefeller Jr. built the Oriental Institute, he made a magnificent dream of Dr. Breasted’s come true. The building was completed in 1931. Forty years previously, Dr. Breasted had begun his study of ancient history. It was in 1894 that Dr. Breasted headed his first expedition into Egypt. That trip, incidentally, was also ‘his honeymoon. His entire equipment consisted of a donkey and a pocket camera. His budget consisted of $50. Today, the Oriental Institute has a budget 1000 times as large. It spends about $500,000 a year on the work of its dozen or so expeditions, employing scores of highly trained investigators and several thousand native diggers at strategic sites along the 3500-mile Fertile Crescent. One of its most interesting expeditions has been the one at work upon the site of Megiddo or Armageddon. Megiddo is the older Hebrew name for Armageddon. Armies have struggled at this site from the dawn of written history until the World War. For Megiddo is in Palestine, which lies in the center of the Fertile Crescent, between Egypt on the one hand and Assyria and Babylon on the other. When Egypt marched on As-
| syria and Babylon, it had to pass
through Palestine and when the armies of Assyria or Babylon
attacked Egypt, they, too, went °
through Palestine. Thus it was that much of the fighting in those days took place in Palestine and
that land. became known as the “cockpit of Asia.” Megiddo is situated at the pass through the transverse ridge of mountains across Palestine, the seaward end of swhich is marked by Mt. Carmel. Megiddo, therefore, became the key fortress guarding the highway between Africa and Asia.
8 &® 8
ISTORY. repeated itself once .
more in the World War. Lord Allenby, leading the Allied armies from Egypt into Palestine, ‘pushed back the Turks from one position + to another until he reached the ridge at Carmel. Pushing his cavalry through the pass at Megiddo, he won the last of the battles at Armageddon.
It is generally believed that the first battle of Armageddon was fought in the middle of the 15th Century, B. C., between the Canaanites and the Egyptian armies of Thutmose III. The Egyptian records describe the rich spoil of the allied Asiatic kings
which Thutmose captured in the
city. The great mound at Armageddon is a series of civilizations going back to the time of the cave man. One by one, the
‘Megiddo Expedition of the Ori-
ental Institute is uncovering these. In March of this year, Dr. John
A. . Wilson, the present director of
the Oriental Institute, announced °
that this expedition had uncovered a magnificent hoard of E ian gold in a Palestinian palace of about 1400 B. C. Because of this treasure, it seemed probable that the palace had belonged to the ruling prince of Megiddo at that period.
In 1936, Dr. Erich F. Schmidt,
field director of the Institute's expedition at Persepolis, Iran, reported the discovery of remarkable wall reliefs, believed to be among the finest examples of ancient art yet unearthed. Hs ERSEPOLIS was the Versaillés vr : 3 of ancient Persia. It was here that Darius the Great, and his son; Xerxes, had ‘their palaces. Twenty-four hundred years ago these two ruled over the greatest empire the world had ever known. Their palaces stood upon a great artificial" terrace a quarter of a mile long. These buildings were destroyed in 330 B. C. when Alexander the Great and his Greek warriors conquered and burned Persepolis. During the last 10 years the Rockefeller Foundation, the General Education Board and the International Education Board have contributed about 10 million dollars to the Oriental Institution. A final appropriation of two million dollars was made in 1936 by the
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In the Fertile Crescent a great group of archeological expeditions, sent into the field
by the Oriental Institute, are digging up man’s ancient history,
Rockefeller Foundation to the Institute. ; At the time of the dedication o the Oriental Institute building in 1931, Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, resident of the Rockefeller Founation, discussed the importance* f archeology and the lessons hich were to be learned By unovering ancient history. | “Archeology shows us the debris f civilizations that stretch from the dawn of history up to our own threshold—civilizations that dreamed of immortality and that are now dead,” he said. “What archeology tells us is that nothing external is permanent. Sooner or later there comes to all human institutions the final rap on the door. Archeology looks to the past and it deals with death. And yet, of course, in another sense, it deals with life, too. The spark is never extinguished. “Civilizations perish and are forgotten. Institutions are buried under hundreds of cubic feet of earth but somehow or other the spirit remains te manifest itself in other forms.”
EFERRING to the exhibits within the Oriental Institute, Dr. Fosdick added, “Here in this building we can see the records of ancient wisdom and old mistakes and lessons that were not learned in time. Out of this building can come, if we use it wisely, knowledge and inspiration by which our generation can find its way with surer footsteps to a fairer future.” Dr. Fosdick spoke those words six years ago and with reference only to the Oriental Institute, yet that final phrase might well be used to summarize all the work of ‘the Rockefeller Foundation. For it is all designed to help “our generation find its way with surer footsteps to a fairer future.” ° In the field are the experts of the International Health Division, risking their lives to conquer contagious diseases. In laboratories in all parts of the world are scientists studying the problems of medicine, and related problems
which may throw light upon the needs of medicine. In the field of the social sciences, the Foundation is financing studies in social security, international relations and public administration, hoping to find ways by which the methods of the natural sciences may be made useful in the field of the social sciencess. In the humanities, the Foundation is studying ways and means of making knowledge more available to all those who wish it. It is. a magnificent program, ably designed to achieve the purpose of the Rockefeller Foundation “to promote the well-being of mankind.” :
“John D. Jr. Gives. Away Millions," a series on John-D. Rockefeller Jr. begins tomor-
row on this page.
Experts Figure Shell's Speed by Firing Projectile Through Beams of Light
' By Robert D. Potter
Science Service Staff Writer N artillery shell crashing through invisible curtains of light is the newest means of determining the speed of projectiles developed by scientists at the National Research Laboratories of Canada in Ottawa. Particular merit of the system is its portability which enables it to be used in the field and bring added accuracy to computations. of range in actual combat. Light beams, mirrors, photoelectric cells and sensitive recording mechanism are the equipment which makes possible the new development of Dr. D. C. Rose, physicist in the division of physics’ and electrical engineering of the Canadian N. R. L. In effect the artillery shell passes down’ a narrow tunnel and every 50 feet intersects a beam of light falling on a photocell. Momentarily the shell blocks off the light beam and this decrease’ in light intensity cuts down the electrical output of the
cell. By an amplifying system this |
electrical change produces a permanent record on photographic film.
” N. field tests
up metal frames whose upper and iower surfaces consisted of mirrors. A beam of light started from the bottom and was reflected back and
forth across the space between the
mirrors until its ray finally fell on a photoelectric cell concealed in a small box attached to the upper part of the frame. Thus the entire
space within the. frame was filled | | with a light beam which could be blocked out by the onrushing shell. |
A -series of four of these frames were carefully fined up before an
‘| artillery piece which at a known,
and automatically registered, instant fired its shell through the frames. Initial firing was merely through paper screens to test the alignment of the gun for its “jump” characteristics. and .to demonstrate that the automatic firing mechanism was working accurately. In subsequent tests the light beams and photocell frames were employed. : ” 2 = ! HE timing of the speeding shells which were found to be moving with a velocity of 1585 to 1600 feet a second—was accomplished by having the weakened pHotocell current swing a sensitive galvanometer. small mirror on this instrument was then reflected back to a moving motion picture film, 2 Ever since man fired his first gun determinations of the bullet or shell velocity have been a major research of military officials. A rough average velocity from the time the shell leit the gun until it struck its target
could, of .course, be ohtained.by:a
i ® 3 at the military camp at Petawawa, Dr. Rose set
A beam of light striking a
stop watch and a measurement of the range along the ground. From these facts it was easily possible to compute the length of the idealized parabolic path of the shell through its arc, and hence determine the average velocity. But the effect of air resistance during flight and other factors quickly showed that this was a theoretical answer which has only a fair resemblance to the real facts of speed.
" n ” IONEERS in the problem of projectile speed were Robins, 1742, Hutton in 1775-88 and Woolwich Didion in 1839-40. All these men worked with the so-called ballistic pendulum invented by Robins. Hutton’s method, for example, consisted in measuring the velocity of the cannon ball at the muzzle of the gun and at a known distance. The muzzle velocity was obtained by measurements on the recoil of the gun and the velocity at a distance by having the cannon bal
strike a heavy suspended pendulum and raise it a measurable height. American experiments late in the 1920s consisted of firing a magnetized shell through a. series of solenoid cells thereby generating a slight electric current in the coils. Recording instrument was an oscillograph. * #2». « NOTHER method, used widely through the civilized world to determine air resistance of a shell, if not its speed, is by means of wind tunnel tests. The shell, or a model of it, is placed in a wind tunnel and air is driven by at high speeds approaching or equaling those attained in actual flight. Dr. Rose’s new method, because of its semi-portable character and freedom from the need of an actual testing laboratory, can be carried into a combat zone if necessary and attain an accuracy comparable with more elaborate equipment operated in. peacetime surroundings.
HE USED TO BE THE CHAMP! -
SPEAKING OF SAFETY
FIGHTER WHO DISREGARDS TRAIN— ING RULES SOON PASSES OUT OF THE PICTURE
-—— AND DAMPHOOL DRIVING CAUSES MGTOR- MORONS TO
0
ITODOESN'T TAKE "LONG FOR SCANDAL TO FORCE A MOVIE STAR OUT OF THE PICTURE
GREECE ROME EGYPT
WARS CALSE WHOLE NATIONS TO PASS OUT OF THE PICTURE
PASS OUT of __ THE PICTURE!
Our Town
By Anton Scherrer
Chicken Dinner Expert Has Corner On Tobacco Shop Indians in Indiana; Life-Size Model Weighs 500 Pounds. Tr Page 12) : Y dint of playing my cards right, I have succeeded in meeting Mr. V. D. Vincent, who runs Hollyhock Hill out on College Ave. ' Last year, with the help of his wife and 18 servants, Mr. Vincent served 30,000
chicken dinners at his place. + There's no telling what his business will amount to this year. Mr. Vincent says he has seen so many chickens in the course of the last few years that very often he and his wife sneak off to eat a meal of hamburgers, just to get away from it ail. : That's not what I want to tell about, though. - Mr. Vincent gets in today’s column because he's the only man I know around here who ‘owns a tobacco shop Indian. Of course, you remember them. No cigar store in the Nineties, and even later, was complete withous one. Goodness only knows where they are today. ' Mr. Vincent's Indian is the one that used to stand in front of Andrew Steffen’s (Elmer's father) cigar store at the northeast corner of Washington and New Jersey Sts. It was one of the best in town, and maybe the only one of its kind around here. ig: 1 Most of the cigar store Indians, you remember, were made of wood, Well," Mr. Vincent’s Indian isn’t, It’s made of pewter and weighs over 500 pounds, That’s because it includes a mountain lion under the warrior’s foot. The fact, too, that Mr. Vincent's Ine dian is life size adds considerable to his weight.
Has Wooden Indian, Too
Mr. Vincent also has a wooden Indian that he picked up in Hagerstown. Looks like he has the market cornered. I can tell you about that, too. .A couple of years ago Mr. Vincent was seized with an urge to own an Indian. He put an ad in the paper but didn’t get a nibble. He found one in a neighboring town that he liked ‘pretty well. When he got down to business, he learned that the owner wanted $1000 cash for it. Mr. Vincent came right back and asked whether that included the store and stock. ‘It didn’t, and for all I know, it's still where it was when Mr. Vincent found it. As near as Mr. Vincent knows, there are about a half a dozen Indians left in Indiana, including the two he owns. There's one in front- of Sam Bern= stein’s place in Goshen, for instance. And Mr. Burgett down in Martinsville has one, and so have the Biel boys in Terre Haute.
Arrived About 1898
Mr. Vincent's pewter Indian. as far as anybody knows, came to Indianapolis in 1898 when Mr. Steffen put up his new building. It was moved about 12 vears ago when the building was turned into something else. After that, it landed in Carmel, and that’s where Mr. Vincent picked it up. : Cigar store Indians were known in Indianapolis long before that, however. At least as far back as 1858, because if you go through a directory of that time, you'll learn that Charles Raschig, 15 E. Washington St., advertised. “snuff, chewing and smoking tobacco at the sign of the Indian.” And J. A. Heidinger did business in the Bates Blockg“at the sign of the wooden Indian.” : Mr. Vincent calls his wooden Indian “Tischimingo,” his big one. “Big Chief Hollyhock.” It’s a dandy ad for his place.
Mr. Scherrer °
A Woman's View
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Most Powerful Weapon for Peace
Is Seen in Possession of Mothers.
“B: what can we do? We housewives who are raising our families, guarding their health, keeping them clean, making homes for them and trying to teach them to obey God’s commandments? What can we do who have no time for clubs and no ability to write or make speeches? What can we do for the cause of peace?” Letters like this make my heart sing. They mean that the motherhood of America is aroused on a question of paramount importance, That. is to say, the women who are rearing the children are moved by their responsibility about war. For a long time other women have said the same thing: Clubs abound over the land and their meme bers pass resolutions and listen to countless discourses on the subject. But in many cases they are matrons whose children are grown, or spinsters with out families, or just average organization types: who belong to movements because they are born joiners. The best these women can accomplish is to awaken
"the real mothers to an awarsness of the danger threat-
ening their homes. And what can these mothers do —all these millions of busy women who dress and fee and care for their babies all day and tuck them into bed ap night breathing prayers to God for their protection? “0 They can do everything. And they are the only ones whe can do much. By training their children to abhor war from the cradle, rand to question its effectiveness in gaining national lobjectives, the foun= dations for a peaceful earth can be laid. Do we not say now tc one anather that the shame . of Germany and Italy and Russia is great ‘because there the babies are trained to military regimentation? But what are we doing to teach our own to believe in peace? . * Women who mold the child mind have a Weapon in their hands that is more powerful than bayonets, They can turn future generations away from cone flict by proving from history, and from every sign God has set in Heaven, that war is bad for man and peace is his only salvation.
New Books Today.
Public Library Presents—-
I" the Eighties when James Russell Lowell was Ame bassador to England he was invited to become g0d= father to the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a lovely child
who was destined to bear out the omen in the usual porridge bowl: closed with
“I simply wish the child to be “A sample of heredity.”
This hope came beautifull true, says rapher. Virginia Woolf, ct of a ay et biog ronment of highest excellence, is done of | 's most distinguished writers. Seiwlarship, a deep love of and 8 Fretccupation with its ir table i ransla y her rhythmic prose into unigue ments with the English novel which sovereign in her art. : Virginia Woolf's latest rovel is court, Brace). She begins her ing in London in the last years of Edw gn continues with it and its rami down to oday! rt 2
of Conventions} plo ai incident there is a minimum, but by a masterly high-light f\significan detail, she imbues the reader to pry AB wii ness of personality .and. background, of an effortless sweep of time. Consciousness: persists that one has not merely witnessed a spectecle, but has been present, rather, in the procession, jouching shoulders and ex= periencing acutely with humanity, knowing no one character or situation intimately, yet possessing g Joins Dae ssed by a rich sense of the very stuff of e itself, “2 :