Tlie

ARTICLES OF LASTING INTEREST • 24«> YEAR OF PUBLICATION

What the Dumbarton Oaks Peace Plan Means By Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. 1

Scrub Team at Tacloban Liberty 8 Get the Children Out of the Jails!

W o m a n ' s Home Companion 12 Why Is Labor Unrest at the Danger Point? American IS Here's a Banker with Imagination! . . Advertising & Sealing 19 H o w We Blockaded Germany Harper's 22 " H e Loved M e Truly"

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31, The READER'S DIGEST An article a day of enduring significance, in condensed permanent booklet form

February i

\J(/hat the Dumbarton Oaks Peace Plan Means M

By Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. + Secretary of State

The experts framed a plan. Here we as citizens are challenged to understand it, discuss it — and do something about it

THE S T A K E of the American peo-ple in the maintenance of peace after this war could not be

greater. We hate war. Yet twice in a generation we have been forced to fight to defend our freedom and our vital interests against powerful ag-gressors.

Our young men are giving their lives daily because we and other peace-loving nations did not succeed after the last war in organizing and maintaining peace. It is up to us to see that their sons — and ours — are not forced to give their lives in an-other great war 25 years from now.

In this war we were attacked last by the aggressors and we have been able to fight them far from our own soil. The range of the airplane and the new weapons already developed make certain that next time — if we permit a next time — the devastation of war will be brought to our own

homes and our own soil. Next time — if we permit a next time —• it is likely that the United States will be attacked first, not last, by an ag-gressor nation.

After we have won this war we shall have only one alternative to preparing for the next war. T h a t is to prevent the next war. It is imperative that we start now. We can do it only-by planning and developing, in co-operation with the other peace-loving peoples of the world, an organized peace that will really work.

A sound peace plan must lie based on the facts as they are and aimed at the realization of our ideals for a peaceful world. Both of these re-quirements, I think, are met by the proposals which were drafted last summer and fall at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China. I wish here to state what I believe to be the plan's animating spirit and its practical operating value.

4

These proposals did not spring from thin air. They were preceded by long and careful studies among many sorts of people in each of the four countries. In the United States advice was sought not only of tech-nical experts in the Department of State but of political leaders of both parties in Congress, of qualified high officers of our Army and Navy, and of notable private citizens of varying views. The proposals are the out-come of patient research and of broad consultation. Every effort is now being made to submit them to the thoughts and suggestions of all the people of America.

There are four corners to the plan proposed at Dumbarton Oaks.

The first is this: peace can be maintained only if the peace-loving nations of the world band together for that purpose. In doing so, they must recognize the sovereign prin-ciple of the equality of all of them and, at +he same time, the fact of the inequality of their power to prevent war.

The phrase "sovereign equality" is enshrined in Principle Number One of the Dumbarton Oaks Propo-sals. It means that every peace-lov-ing state, however small, has the same supreme authority over its own territory as any other state, however large. Each such state, irrespective of size, is an international individu-ality. Each, therefore, has both a right to a voice in the affairs of the family of nations and a responsi-bility to share in the task of creating a peaceful world order.

Conforming to this principle, the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals provide that membership in the new Interna-

February

tional Organization shall be open to all "peace-loving" states large and small. The proposals provide for a General Assembly in which all mem-ber states will be represented on an equal footing. They also provide for a smaller body of 11 members —• the Security Council — in which the five most powerful nations will be per-manent members.

All members of the Organization undertake to settle their disputes peacefully and to fulfill the other ob-ligations to maintain and strengthen peace which would be assumed by them under the proposed Charter of the Organization. Within the limits of these undertakings the represent-atives of the member nations will cast their votes on any international issue in the manner that their own countries may direct; and each of them will be chosen by his own country in any way that his own country may prefer. National sov-ereignty remains unimpaired.

The aim of the Organization is twofold. It is to prevent and suppress wars. It is also to make peace con-stantly stronger by developing closer, more friendly and mutually profita-ble relations among the member states.

The primary responsibility for the prevention and suppression of war rests with the Security Council. This is because it is a task that can be performed effectively only by a small body, which must include the five great powers as permanent members. In this function the Assembly also has an important secondary role to play.

The primary responsibility for cre-ation of the international political,

T H E R E A D E R ' S DIGEST

'945 economic and social conditions favor-able to peace rests with the As-sembly. This is a responsibility that can be carried out successfully only by continuing and developing agree-ment among all member nations, large and small.

II This war has shown that small

states in an era of mechanized warfare are unable to defend themselves against great aggressors. Only the great powers possess the industrial capacity and other military resources required by the United Nations to de-feat the Axis aggressors. Similarly, wars can be prevented and suppressed in the future only if the great pow-ers employ their dominant physical power justly and in unity of purpose to that end. Hence the place that the Dumbarton Oaks Plan gives to a Security Council. Hence, too, the position assigned to the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France as permanent mem-bers of the Council. In addition, the Security Council is to have six non-permanent members, elected for two-year terms by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. The supreme duty of the Security Council is to "take any measures necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security in accordance with the purposes and principles" set down in the Charter of the new International Organization.

These measures constitute the sec-ond corner of the peace plan. They fall into two groups — those neces-sary to prevent wars and those nec-essary to suppress them.

All member states undertake the

3

obligation to settle their disputes peacefully, by means of their own choice. They may do so by negotia-tion, mediation, arbitration, concilia-tion or judicial processes. Many local or regional differences can be settled by regional arrangements without reference to the Security Council.

If, however, means like these fail, then the nations are obligated to come to the Security Council, which also has the power, on its own initi-ative, to investigate any dispute anc! to recommend methods of adjust-ment. In this connection the General Assembly is empowered to consider any question relating to the main-tenance of peace and security and to make recommendations on it, pro-vided that the Security Council is not already actively engaged in deal-ing with it.

The Dumbarton Oaks Proposals also provide for an International Court of Justice to which any dispute that can be settled by rules of law shall be referred. Its statute — or constitution — will be the same as that of the present Permanent Couri of International Justice with minor necessary modifications, or based upon it. This Court will be the judicial organ of the new United Nations International Organization. The Se-curity Council may seek iti adv ice on all legal questions involved in inter-national disputes.

It is only after all means for the peaceful prevention of war have been exhausted that the Security Council will then turn to forceful means for the prevention or suppression of war.

As the first of these further steps the Security Council may call upon all members of the new International

WHAT THE DUMBARTON OAKS PEACE PLAN MEANS

4 Organization to apply pressure to any offending state by such non-military means as "the severance of diplomatic and economic relations" and "complete or partial interrup-tion of rail, sea, air, postal, tele-graphic, radio and other means of communication."

If these further means are not enough, the Security Council is em-powered to take military action "by air, naval or land forces."

The members of the new Inter-national Organization would agree, in the Charter itself, that throughout these efforts the Security Council would be acting "on their behalf." They would also agree to assume the obligation to make "armed forces" and "facilities" and "assistance" available to the Security Council "on its call" and in accordance with special agreements previously con-cluded. To insure effective employ-ment of these forces the Security Council is to be provided with a Military Staff Committee composed of the Chiefs of Staff of the perma-nent member nations of the Council or their representatives.

The Security Council is thus given powers which the Council of the League of Nations did not possess. The League's powers proved too weak. I t is surely evident tha t stronger powers are necessary.

On the other hand, these stronger powers do not produce what some commentators have described as an "Irresponsible and Uncontrollable Great-Power Super-State." The Plan contains many checks to the contrary. For example:

(i) The Security Council cannot call upon any state for armed

February

forces except to an extent agreed upon beforehand by that state it-self. Each state will determine its own international contribution of armed forces through a special agreement or agreements signed by itself and ratified by its own constitutional processes. That is, the Dumbarton Oaks Plan leaves each state free to set its own limit upon the quantity and quality of the armed forces and other mili-tary facilities and assistance that it will furnish to the Security Council. The Security Council cannot require it to go beyond that limit. The Security Council does not in any way become the arbitrary master of the world's military resources. (2) The great powers who are to be the five per-manent members of the Security Council do not constitute a ma-jority of the Council. Any decision of the Council would therefore re-quire the affirmative votes of at least some of the six nonperma-nent members. (3) In the General Assembly the smaller powers, with their overwhelming majority of the membership, may adopt a recommendation on a question of peace before that question rises for action in the Security Council. The General Assembly is to meet at least once a year. It may meet oftener. It is to receive annual and special reports from the Security Council and has the power to con-sider them and to express either its approval or dissent.

Agreement among the great pow-ers is an essential condition of peace. At the same time, the opportunity of the smaller powers, under the Dum-

T H E R E A D E R ' S DIGEST

'945 W H A T T H E D U M B A R T O N OAKS PEACE P L A N MEANS 5 barton Oaks Plan, to stand sentinel over the behavior of the great powers is surely far greater than it ever could be in a world left unorganized and planlessly open to predatory aggres-sion.

I l l The third corner of the peace plan

is the essential complement of the second. To prevent and suppress wars is not enough, just as winning this war will not of itself bring us lasting peace. If we are to have last-ing peace, we have to build peace. We have to build it stone by stone con-tinuously over the years within the framework of such an Organization as that proposed at Dumbarton Oaks. We have to make peace with the same strong purpose and the same united effort which we have given to making war.

In this field the General Assembly of all the member states of the pro-posed United Nations International Organization will be the highest representative body in the world. It will represent the ideal of a common world humanity, and a common world purpose to promote interna-tional cooperation, extend the rule of law in international relations and advance the material and cultural welfare of all men.

The function of the Assembly as a free forum of all peace-loving nations and its wide powers of investigation and recommendation are in them-selves powerful weapons for peace in an age when public opinion can be instantaneously mobilized by press and radio.

But the Assembly will also have at its command an effective instrument

of continuous action in building peace. This is the Economic and So-cial Council to be created under the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals.

This arm of the General Assembly is provided for in recognition of a great fact which increasingly charac-terizes the international life of our times. It is the fact that the whole world is more and more one single area of interdependent technological inventions, industrial methods, mar-keting problems and their related so-cial effects. This interdependence destroy^ any equilibrium that may ever have existed between so-called "advanced" countries and "back-ward" countries. It means either uni-versal economic friction which will disrupt the world toward war or uni-versal economic cooperation which will harmonize the world toward peace. Failure to recognize this fact after the last war was one of the rea-sons why this war got started.

The Economic and Social Council is to be elected, without help of the Security Council, by the General As-sembly of all states. It is to consist of representatives of 18 states, holding their posts for three-year terms. It has no power of compulsion. By vol-untary means it is, under the direc-tion of the Assembly, to "facilitate solutions of international economic, social and other humanitarian prob-lems" and to "promote respect for human rights and fundamental free-doms."

It will create commissions in all fields of economic and social activity that it may consider appropriate. The members of these commissions will not be political or diplomatic delegates. They will be technical ex-

6 T H E R E A D E R ' S DIGEST February

perts. They will furnish professional advice to the Economic and Social Council and to the Assembly. There will be a secretariat and research staff lor all projects.

The Assembly and its Economic and Social Council will also provide a center for coordinating the numer-ous separate specialized international organizations now or hereafter op-erating for economic and social pro-gressive purposes.

There is the International Labor Organization with its long record of successful service to sound labor causes. There is the proposed United Nations Food and Agriculture Or-ganization with its heavy duty of service both to the food-producers of agricultural countries and to the food-consumers of all countries. There is the proposed International Mon-etary "Fund and the proposed In-ternational Bank for Reconstruction and Development with their highly difficult and delicate responsibilities toward the world's currencies and the world's investment funds. Under discussion also are new international "specialized" organizations in avia-tion, in cartel control, in health, in education, in wire and wireless com-munications, in foreign trade, and in many individual agricultural and in-dustrial commodities.

All these organizations, clearly, are but so many spokes to the interna-tional wheel. They need a hub. The Dumbarton Oaks Plan authorizes the Assembly to act as that hub with the Economic and Social Council as its principal operating mecha-nism. It provides that all specialized international organizations shall be brought into relationship with the

new general International Organiza-tion through agreements with the Eco-nomic and Social Council under the approval of the General Assembly. It provides further that the Economic and Social Council shall receive re-ports from the specialized interna-tional organizations and shall, under the General Assembly's authority, co-ordinate their policies and activities.

Here for the first time we see the possible emergence of an advisory Economic General Staff of the World.

It can be soundly hoped that the recommendations of the General As-sembly and its Economic and Social Council, proceeding from what will be the concentrated headquarters of the world's economic and social thought, will promptly reach the form of widely ratified treaties and agreements making for fuller em-ployment and higher standards of living in all countries. The attain-ment of these objectives is indis-pensable to building a peace that will last.

IV I now come to the fourth corner of

the square on which the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals would erect an edi-fice of peaceful international rela-tions.

This is the progressive reduction of armaments, which in the modern world have become a crushing burden on the resources of all nations. If we, in this country, for example, could have used for productive peacetime purposes only one half of what we have devoted to arms for this war, we would have advanced beyond meas-ure the standard of living of the American people. And after this war

1945

is won, the rate of economic advance-ment for ourselves and for all peoples will be determined in important measure by the rate of armaments reduction that the nations of the world are able to achieve.

The General Assembly of the new Internat ional Organizat ion is to "consider the general principles gov-erning disarmament and the regula-tion of armaments." The Security Council is to go further. In order to achieve "the least diversion of the world's human and economic re-sources for armaments," it is to for-mulate "plans for the establishment of a system of regulation of arma-ments" and it is to submit those plans to all members of the new Interna-tional Organization.

It is not proposed this time that the United States or any other members of the new International Organiza-tion shall disarm as an example. It is proposed that all members of the Organization shall travel the road to-gether and at the fastest possible joint pace.

No nation, however, is likely to travel either fast or far on this road until it feels able to place full reli-ance for its security on the Interna-tional Organization. The nations of the world will give up guns only in so far as they make the new Organiza-tion work, as they gradually build up a living body of international law, as they create and operate effective joint instrumentalities to keep the peace, and as they develop strong and sure means of economic and social cooperation to their mutual benefit.

7 Thus the fourth corner of the peace

plan is dependent upon the other three.

V Such is the plan. I think it takes

into account both the world's stub-born realities and the world's un-quenchable aspirations. Nor is it deficient, I am certain, in what the authors of the Declaration of In-dependence rightly called " a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." No other peace plan in history has been so fully exposed to the impact of those opinions.

The proposals emerged from their Dumbarton Oaks stage on October 9 of last year. They were disseminated to the whole world. For months now they have been the subject of study by all governments, by the press and radio and by individuals and groups in all countries. They will go in due course to a conference of the nations which are fighting this war to build a world of freedom and peace. They will then go to their home coun-tries for approval by their legislatures or other appropriate governmental bodies.

We seek a calm and considered and complete popular judgment upon this plan and then, if it is approved and ratified, a solid effective support for it not merely by governments but by peoples. In the end it is they, and only they, who by their determined purpose, their understanding and their continuing loyalty can bring to the world peace, security and prog-ress.

W H A T THE DUMBARTON OAKS PEACE PLAN MEANS

STAGING an invasion, like cooking a dinner, is largely a matter of timing. Someone has to figure it

all out in advance, and start things at various precise moments in order to come out even.

In cooking, let us say, everything is timed to the turkey; in an invasion, such as that of Leyte, to the air strip. Until you have a landing field from which you can operate combat planes, you have not established an invasion.

The Leyte timetable called for the air strip on Calaisan Peninsula, five miles from the capital city of Taclo-ban, to be ready on A Day plus five — five days after the first assault troops went ashore. It was A-plus-four when I arrived at Calaisan from Red Beach. I wanted to see how an airdrome could be established in enemy territory in five days. I could not know that I was settling into a

LUCIEN HUBBARD, writer and motion pic-ture producer, was in Australia and N e w Guinea with our early contingents and wrote two notable articles which appeared in The Reader's Digest: "The Fighters at Humpty Doo," December, '42, and "Yan-kee Machine Shop in the Bush," January, '43. While producing the movie Gung Ho! Mr. Hubbard acquired great ad-miration for Colonel Evans Carlson, and wrote an article on that fabulous officer and his raiders which appeared in the Digest in December, '43. Mr. Hubbard landed with the assault troops in the Philippines on A-Day, on an official mission.

ringside seat at one of the most dramatic and crucial episodes of the entire Pacific war — an action which might have meant disaster to the whole Philippine adventure.

Calaisan Peninsula is practically level, and the water table lies only 18 inches below the surface, so that if you dig a two-foot foxhole you soon have a six-inch well. An air strip there could at best be a thin slice of coral or metal laid upon a jelly mold. At its worst it could be the jelly.

I found an Engineers Construction Battalion wrestling with the problem of making a military airdrome out of what had been a small civilian air-port, only partly improved by the Japs. Into a sea of thin black mud, trucks were pouring endless loads of crushed coral which disappeared like chunks of vanilla ice cream into a sarsaparilla soda.

Major Richard P. Davidson and his outfit are competent and ex-perienced. Since February 1942 the outfit had built 13 strips in Australia, then moved northward, dropping air-fields here and there as if sowing them out of a sack.

Specifications for the Tacloban field called for a fairly long strip that could handle transports and fighter planes. Later it was to have another strip, 1000 feet longer, suitable for medium bombers. The first strip

Copyright 194s, Liberty Magazine, Inc., 205 W. 42 St., New York, 17, N. Y. (Liberty, January 27,'4s)

Scrub Team atjacloban Condensed from Liberty + Lucien Hubbard

T u n y o u n g Helitrnftnt*. AM N a v y , tlie o ther \ r miv. wilt, no th ing to tl<t, found nRjrily t«• <!«• anil

l»v t l iwr rot i rape arid inn<fuiitV «rot. M* psitft a cr i t ical m o m e n t in t he invasion of il«» IMtili|»|»iiu*r-

'945 would be in operation while the sec-ond was being built.

The Engineers' unit landed soon after the assault troops, and by ten o'clock that night had all its equip-ment safely ashore. Shortly after day-light on A-plus-one, bulldozers, trucks and rollers were at work, sometimes stopping and sometimes not when J ap planes came over. The night shift worked under lights whenever a raid was not in progress.

Then late in the afternoon of A-plus-three an order came to hold everything. The longer strip was wanted at once.

It was impossible to extend the runway on which the Battalion had done all its work, because it ended in a swamp. Davidson's superiors cut through this difficulty by directing that a long strip be put catty-cornered across the field.

"You realize, of course," said Da-vidson quietly, " that you have thrown away practically everything we've done to date. This way you won't have any strip by A-plus-five. It'll take five days, starting from now. A-plus-eight."

"Well, Air Forces wants it." And that was that.

The trucks changed from hauling coral to hauling sand. They con-tinued all night, next day switched back to coral. A hard surface was rolled over about half the track. During the night of A-plus-four they began bringing in more sand for the other end. By morning of A-plus-five about 3000 feet of runway had been rolled. The north end was six inches deep in loose black sand. From the air, it must have looked smooth and safe to land on.

9 Suddenly a nondescript aggrega-

tion of planes appeared out of no-where and began circling the area.

We thought this was it — the Japs' first mass air attack. Tentative ack-ack reached long, graceful fingers upward, then stopped. The gunners saw what we all saw now. These were American Navy planes, and they wanted to land. They had to land — on that strip, or in the swamps, or in the sea.

For the great naval battle of the Philippines was on. These planes, from four small carriers, had been attacking the J a p fleet. They had no more gas. One of their carriers had been sunk, and the others were under attack by a vastly superior J ap force. They were coming down somewhere in a very few minutes! The pilots wanted to refuel, grab some bombs and go back. They knew Tacloban field had not been opened, but there was no choice.

Now planes can't just settle down on a military airdrome like ducks on a pond, and take off again. They must have communications to guide them in; and service squadrons to refuel them, reload machine guns and bomb racks, make repairs, give liisi aid to the wounded; and an airdrome squadron to operate a control tower and designate where planes are to park. None of these had liecn set up.

T h e planes ove rhead quickly formed a landing pattern and the first in line came in to land. It touched its wheels daintily to the hard portion of the runway and sped toward the soft end. Watchers on the field ran out and tried to flag it down. The pilot gave his plane the brakes, but it tore into the soft stretch, somer-

SCRUB TEAM A T T A C L O B A N

10

saulted heavily and came to rest upside down with wheels spinning.

The next plane, already dropping for a landing, buzzed the field instead and with roaring motor zoomed out of harm's way. Then the whole land-ing pattern broke up, like a flight of birds at the first crack of a shotgun. There was a babble of questions over the radio. Whether to chance landing despite the wrecked plane now block-ing the runway, or hit the drink, or make a last desperate effort to find a carrier — the choices were all bad.

Suddenly a new voice cut in on the pilots' wave length.

"Navy planes. Navy planes. This is Tacloban air strip, beneath you. Can you hear me? Come in, please."

"Yes, yes. Go on. Over." "Continue circling field. Identify

yourselves as you pass over." The deliberate voice went on with

technical landing instructions, warn-ing of the soft sand, laying out the best course. A C2 wrecker dragged the damaged plane from the runway. The pattern quickly re-formed and the first plane was called in. Before this new arrival had cleared the run-way, the next was hitting the ground. Others followed in swift succession, the voice over the radio guiding them in.

The voice belonged to a young Air Forces officer, Lt. Edward Worrad, of Sayville, Long Island, whose pres-ence on the field at that time — in a radio jeep — was sheer good luck. Worrad was attached to the Fighter Control. Later, when Army fighter planes were operating at Tacloban, it would be his job to help direct by radio their interception of the enemy. On this morning he was just hanging

February

around to see how the field was get-ting on. Lt. Russell Forrester of the Navy, from Austin, Texas, also just happened to be there with a radio jeep.

A radio liaison officer who was waiting for the field communications to be set up, Forrester had been biting his fingernails for three days and cursing his luck at being marooned ashore when things were happening on the water. He had come over from the landing area just to take a wistful look at the transport fleet dotting San Pedro bay and maybe to see a J ap plane or two get dunked by ack-ack fire.

Now Worrad and Forrester put their jeeps and their heads together. Between them they converted what might have been a disaster into a major factor in the ultimate rout of the J ap fleet. Worrad, on his radio, took the planes in the air. Forrester got the Fleet Control Ship on his. A sergeant they had never seen be-fore ran up — Sam Halpern, Service Squadron, from Brooklyn. He had been to Air Operations School and knew the ropes. They took him into the firm. Halpern checked the planes as Worrad guided them in.

In all, several score planes came down. Some crashed, some burned, some banged into wrecks already on the field. But most of them got down safely. Only eight were completely wrecked. Not a pilot was killed, and only one was injured at all badly.

Meanwhile an impromptu organ-ization had sprung up, no one knew just how. When a plane turned over, men rushed to lift the tail and get the pilot out. When a plane caught fire they dashed in to put out the flames.

THE READER'S DIGEST

'945 SCRUB TEAM A T TACLOBAN II

But the planes did not come to stay. As fast as a quickly improvised service squadron could gas thein up and hang bombs on them they took off. There were no bombs ashore when the planes came in, but within two hours an LST brought in a load. Halpern lost all count of take-offs and landings as the planes made trip after trip to continue pounding the J a p fleet. These were Navy planes, serv-iced off the cuff by Army units utterly unfamiliar with them, put into the air by an Army officer, then directed by Navy Fighter Control through Lieutenant Forrester.

By now the Japs' fleet was heading back through the Sibuyan Sea. And it was these planes from Tacloban that kept on their tail and guided other striking forces to them. A battleship and a cruiser were reported in sinking condition, and others were damaged — the work solely of the planes from Tacloban.

In their haste to be in at the kill, planes took off upwind or downwind, depending on which end of the field happened to have a wreck on it at the time. Once a torpedo bomber landed from one direction just as a fighter zoomed over it in a take-off from the opposite end of the field.

Gas and oil trucks and ambulances kept up a steady grind, the drivers leaping out to hit the dirt when J a p strafers and bombers came over. Dur-ing the day there were a dozen enemy raids. Once three J a p fighters came in so low that Halpern gave them the green light from his improvised tower, thinking they were ours.

For a breathless half hour just be-fore noon, all planes were flagged off and an echelon of tractors — eight

graders and four rollers — stalked slowly down the field, flattening out the furrows plowed up by crashing planes. Then they wheeled off with parade-ground precision, and the planes whizzed again.

Through it all, Forrester and Wor-rad never left their jeeps. As the day wore on, a lot of Army rank wanted to take over. Forrester radioed the Admiral's aide about it, and asked for orders. By now his jeep had been officially christened "Base Forrester" and there wasn't a plane or ship within 50 miles that had not picked up some of the "ho t " messages be-tween "Base Forrester" and "Her-cules," the Control Ship station.

A little later Hercules gave the Admiral's reply:

"Calling Base Forrester. This is Hercules. You are in control. Repeat, you are——in——control. That is all."

"Sorry, sir," Worrad, the young Army lieutenant, told an indignant colonel. " I ' m just working for the Navy. They're Navy planes, sir."

The firm of Worrad, Forrester & Halpern kept shop until midnight, opened up again at daybreak, and stayed in business until 4:30 the next afternoon. Then the First Train took over at Tacloban, witli standard air-drome staff and equipment, and Base Forrester folded up forever. And this was the last message that camc over the loudspeaker:

"Calling Base Forrester. This is Hercules speaking. Lieutenant For-rester, the Admiral sends his com-mendation. You and those with you have undoubtedly saved many lives and many planes. That is all."

It was enough.

In more than 2000 c i t y and c o u n t y jails , condemned b y the Federal Bu-reau of Prisons, chi ldren are being detained ainid physical and moral filth

Get the Children 0utqf theJails! Condensed from

Woman's Home Companion Vera Connolly

V IF NJHE city jail was a small brick building, covered with ivy, rather attractive from the out-

side. But as the federal inspector and I stepped inside, a nauseating stench struck us.

A rheumy-eyed old turnkey stum-bled to his feet. "Whaddya want?"

"We'd like to see your juvenile sec-tion."

"Upstairs." We entered a barred dark corridor

onto which four tiny pitch-black cells opened. The place reeked from a toilet which had overflowed into the corridor. Standing in the overflow, clinging to the bars and blinking at us in desperate hope, were two boys. One, a cripple, was charged with petty theft and awaiting court action. The other, a tall handsome boy, had been in jail for 31 days. He couldn't pay a fine for a petty offense.

The beam of my flashlight revealed the boys' bunks. On them were only bare mattresses, indescribably filthy, crawling with vermin. The boys' faces and necks were covered with bites.

"What kind of food do you get?" I asked.

"Mostly fried potatoes or boiled beans," said the older boy.

He gestured toward two plates of

untouched food. Cockroaches were swarming over them.

The women's cell block, a flight farther up, was even smaller and more suffocating. Mattresses were • caked with dirt and stained. Girls whose only offense may have been playing hooky share this hole with prostitutes and other hardened fe-male offenders, and the insane. On one wall a recent inmate, a girl of 16, had scrawled over and over: "If I don't get out of here I'll go nuts."

This county, like hundreds of oth-ers all over the country, has no ju-venile detention home where chil-dren awaiting court action may be held. In many states this is because of the vicious fee system, under which a justice of the peace must try cases to make profits and the sheriff must have prisoners in jail to make money feeding them. So into the reeking county jail the children go, a vicious crime school in which they must stay for days, sometimes months — their fate postponed by courts, welfare agencies and an indifferent public.

I have traveled hundreds of miles visiting jails with an inspector of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In Wash-ington, D. C., I studied the reports of other inspectors. Almost every-where the story is the same.

Copyright 1944, Crowell-Collier Pub. Co., 250 Park. Ave., New York. '7> N. Y. (Woman s Home Companion, November, '44)

'945 g e t t h e c h i l d r e n o u t o f t h e j a i l s ! 13 Some of the children are serious

lawbreakers awaiting transfer to re-formatories. But they too should be held in clean, cheerful places of de-tention. Many are runaways, curfew violators, school truants. Some arc simply witnesses. Others are thrown in by their own shiftless parents as "difficult." Still others, deserted by their parents, bewildered and home-less, arc forced to wait in jail for foster-home placement.

Few jails have separate quarters for children. I remember Billy, blond, clean-cut, blue-eyed, who was sitting on the top bunk of a gloomy cell in a tier with men prisoners. He had pushed the grime-caked mattress off and was desperately swatting bugs as they crawled up the wall. His un-touched dinner of cabbage and stewed tomatoes in a tin dish stood on the floor.

"He's been like that a whole day," the jailer said. "Ain't et, ain't slept. Came from a clean home."

"Don't his parents know?" I asked. "Sure, his dad put him in. He says

the kid forged a small check on him. Wouldn't you think he'd bail him out, keep him at home till court sits? The kid needs a reformatory term, sure. But there ain't no cure in this so far as I can see."

And there was Jim, a freckle-faced boy in another city jail. He had helped to steal an auto and was awaiting transfer to a reformatory. His cell-block mate was a prostitute with whom he was playing cards. A rear door was open into another cell block full of staring men prisoners, one of whom was sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary. The boy was in peril not only from the woman

but also from possible attacks by the men. The jailer had turned all these prisoners loose in the corridors, locked the jail and gone out to work in his garden.

Reports from federal jail inspectors all over the country tell of boys as young as eight locked in jails. One boy of ten, found by an inspector, beseeched pitifully: "Mister, please get me out of here. I'll be a good boy." The child was a chronic school truant. The jailor referred to him as an "habitual criminal." The inspec-tors tell, too, of frightened little girls of ten or 12 locked in cells opposite hardened men from whose eyes, voices and gestures there was no escape.

I've seen young girls locked in on top floors of partly wooden fire-hazard jails that had no night jailer, no matron, and only intermittent day service. One such girl, 15, had been entirely alone for more than a month in the silent choking dimness of her cell. When we entered she sprang up and burst into tears. "Don' t go, talk to me," she begged.

A girl prisoner in the West was mentally unbalanced and proved ob-streperous. The sheriff, not realizing the girl's mental condition, disci-plined her. Her arms were crossed and strapped, her clothes were taken from her and she was left in her cell nude, exposed to the view of male employes.

Why doesn't the Federal Bureau of Prisoners do something to clean up these filthy, degrading jails? I put the question to Miss Nina Kin-sclla, executive assistant to the direc-tor of the Bureau and supervisor of jail inspection.

16 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

"The bureau doesn't because it hasn't the authority," she replied. "Only the people of each state can do that. All we can do is inspect the jails regularly to determine which are fit to be used temporarily for federal prisoners."

In the year ending last May 31, Miss Kinsella said, the Bureau in-spected more than 3000 city and county jails and workhouses. Of these it approved only 448, listed a few others for restricted use, and flatly condemned the rest as unfit.

"What is the answer to the chil-dren-in-jail problem?" I asked James V. Bennett, Director of the U. S. Bureau of Prisons.

"First," he said, "the total police must be trained to take child delin-quents directly home whenever pos-sible.

"Second, for those who cannot safely be taken home and for homeless children, provide a juvenile deten-tion home, operated on a budget and not on a fee system.

"Third, for tougher older boys awaiting transfer to a reformatory, provide special regional quarters in cooperation with other counties; or

pass a state law to send them to the big city jails, which are cleaner and better able to hold them.

"Fourth, set up effective machin-ery for foster-home placement of the homeless. And in the meantime make sure that children now in jail are not being held unnecessarily or treated inhumanely.

"Every state should frame a bill like that passed recently in Virginia centering authority for all jails in one state official. This will pin down the job to one man on whom the taxpayer can put his finger at any moment. If things go wrong he won't be able to pass the buck."

After every war there is a wave of lawbreaking, especially among boys and girls. There was one after the last war and it caught us unprepared. Now is the time for the American people to wake up, tackle this jail problem, get it into their postwar program. Women's organizations could launch a crusade. County pol-iticians are afraid of them. We can't dodge it much longer. Jail conditions are horrible all across the country. After the war, things will be even worse unless we act now.

Just What They Needed WHEN a girl appl ies for admiss ion to Vassar , a ques t ionnaire is sent

to her parents . A father in a Boston suburb, filling out one of these blanks, c a m e to the ques t ion , " I s she a leader?" H e hes i tated, then wrote , " I a m not sure a b o u t this, b u t I k n o w she is a n exce l l ent fo l lower ."

A few d a y s la ter he rece ived this let ter f rom the pres ident of the co l lege: " A s our f r e s h m a n g r o u p next Fal l is to conta in several h u n d r e d leaders, w e c o n g r a t u l a t e ourselves that your d a u g h t e r wil l also b e a m e m b e r of the class. W e shal l thus be assured of o n e g o o d fo l lower ."

— The Journal of Education

W/hy Is Labor Unrest at the Danger Point? La

Condensed from T h e American Magaz ine William M. Leiserson

V/'ith Beverly Smith

T o o inauy • g e m n » and n o t any po l i cy ; the cause of these \» ar-t i m e s t r i k e s — an i l

h a t should b e d o n e a b o u t i t

T y w labor situation in this coun-has drifted to the danger

point. Strikes are increasing. Labor disputes are piling up faster than they can be settled. Workers are resentful. Employers are angry. T h e public is puzzled and alarmed.

It will not do to call names — to denounce workers and unions as "un-patriotic," employers as "war profit-eers," and Government people as "bungling bureaucrats." These groups are as patriotic as any other group of citizens. They too have sons and brothers dying on the fighting fronts; they too long for the speediest pos-sible victory, and for a peaceful and prosperous America after the war.

Why, then, do we have this ever-growing turmoil, bitterness and dis-pute? I believe it is because, three years after Pearl Harbor, we still have no definite policy toward labor during the war, or plan for labor after

IN THE last 35 years Dr. Leiserson has served as a mediator and arbitrator of labor disputes in many industries. In addition to being chairman of the National Mediation Board, he has served as chairman of the Petroleum Labor Policy Board, member of the National Labor Relations Board, and chairman of the National Railway L a b o r Panel. He is now Visiting Professor of Eco-nomics at Johns Hopkins University.

the war. We have met each crisis with an improvisation which, while patch-ing the immediate breach, has gen-erated new misunderstandings.

Is it possible to have a definite labor policy in wartime? Yes.

We had one in the last war. Presi-dent Wilson called a War Labor Conference, made up of representa-tives of labor and employers, with ex-President Taf t and Frank Walsh as joint impartial chairmen. This con-ference, in several weeks of hard work, patient negotiation and pa-triotic compromise, thrashed out the main differences between labor and employers. It recommended the cre-ation of a War Labor Board to settle disputes. It also — and this is the im-portant thing — laid down ilffwitt principles for the Board to follow.

Thus we obtained a specific pro-gram, mutually agreed U|>on by la-bor and industry, backed by Govern-ment authority, and endorsed by public opinion. It worked, and car-ried us up through the Armistice, not without strikes but with remarkably little opposition to the Board or its policies Real labor strife came only in 1919, after the Board was discon-tinued and nothing put in its place.

Let us see what happened as the present war came upon us:

Copyright 1944, The Crowetl-Collier Pith. Co., ifn Park Ave., New York 17, N. Y. (The American Magaitne, January, '45) '5

i6

Our Defense Program started in 1940. Arms factories began to hum. At such times labor disputes always increase, because the worker, in greater demand, sees a chance for a raise. The long-established U. S. Conciliation Service of the Depart-ment of Labor could not keep up with the growing flow of disputes.

Then Sidney Hillman, of the Office of Production Management, took a hand. Hillman established an OPM Labor Division to mediate labor dis-putes. Unfortunately, this duplicated and conflicted with the work of the U. S. Conciliation Service.

Next the President, without any general agreement on policy between labor and employers, created the National Defense Mediation Board. This Board not only duplicated the work of the other two agencies but made the fatal error of confusing mediation with arbitration.

This difference is fundamental. A Mediation Board acts as a mutual friend of the parties in dispute, help-ing them to reach an agreement. A voluntary Arbitration Board acts as a judge, before whom the parties bring their dispute voluntarily, agreeing to be bound by his decision. A compul-sory Arbitration Board is also a judge, but this time a judge before whom the parties have been dragged by the scruff of the neck, and whose decision is backed by force.

If any board tries to be now a mu-tual friend, now a judge-by-agree-ment, and now a judge-by-force, it is going to get into trouble.

The National Defense Mediation Board started out to be a mediator. But when disputes could not be set-tled by agreement, the Board ap-

February

pealed to Mr. Roosevelt to use his emergency powers. In the Federal Shipbuilding case, for instance, Mr. Roosevelt had the Navy take over the company. A settlement by force.

In this way the Board drifted into compulsory arbitration. First, it lost the confidence of employers. Then, as its decisions seemed to follow no set policy, it lost the confidence of labor. Finally, the Board died, destroyed by its own confusion.

Now the mineworkers struck and other disputes accumulated. Pearl Harbor was just around the corner. The public and Congress were aroused over labor unrest. The House of Rep-resentatives passed the Smith Bill, providing for drastic legal controls of unions and labor relations. The Sen-ate seemed about to go along with the House.

To head off this legislation, high Government officials induced Presi-dent Roosevelt to call a War Labor Conference to arrange by voluntary agreement the elimination of strikes and lockouts, and the establishment of policies and machinery for peace-ful settlement of labor controversies.

Meeting just after Pearl Harbor, this conference had a great oppor-tunity. What happened? It was in session for only two or three days. True, it agreed promptly that there should be no strikes or lockouts in war industries, and that there should be "a Board" to settle labor disputes. It did not consider the kind of media-tion machinery needed. It evaded the two basic issues, wages and the union shop, which have bedeviled the labor situation ever since. The great oppor-tunity was lost.

The conference failed because no

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 w h y i s l a b o r u n r e s t a t t h e d a n g e r p o i n t ?

serious preparations were made to insure its success. It was hurriedly called to head off hasty legislation.

Consequently the new War Labor Board had no set policy, it "decided each case on its merits." This meant that workers and employers could not know just what their rights were, unless they took cases to the WLB. Unions and employers, instead of pa-tiently settling their disputes by the old-fashioned method of collective bargaining, ran to the WLB with their troubles. And since you had to have a dispute in order to get a de-cision, disputes were often drummed up artificially. With disputes piling up faster than they could be settled, exasperating delays ensued.

A new confusion was introduced in October 1942, with the passage of laws stabilizing wages and prices, and making the WLB responsible for ad-ministering wage controls. Thus, to its already split personality of mutual friend and judge, the WLB added the character of cop. And this authority was tangled up with that of the Di-rector of Economic Stabilization, who might or might not grant a wage raise approved by the WLB.

As a "wage stabilizer," the WLB might grant raises up to 15 percent, according to the Little Steel formula. But the workers alone could not ap-ply for this raise and even if the em-ployer added his plea, the WLB might deny it. The best way to get a raise, organized workers soon learned, was to make a rumpus, perhaps even pull a "wildcat" strike, under the principle of "the squeaking wheel gets the grease." And some of them have learned that if they make enough of a rumpus they can get even

more than 15 percent, hidden under such euphemisms as travel time or reduced meal periods.

The WLB did not intend any such policy. It just drifted into it. But the result was a positive invitation to labor unrest. Also, it was unjust to white-collar workers, to unorganized workers, and to all the quieter type of men who in wartime work hard and keep their mouths shut.

The railroads of the United States have their own system for settling labor disputes, as set up in the Rail-way Labor Act. This provides defi-nite procedures for a step-by-step process of collective bargaining, con-ciliation, mediation and arbitration. It has worked well for many years.

In 1943 the railroad workers, not-ing that other unions were getting pay raises to remove gross inequities, asked for a raise. This demand passed through the regular railroad channels of negotiation, resulting in a recom-mendation for a raise of eight cents an hour. Then the Director of Economic Stabilization intervened, and vetoed the raise. The railway workers, sur-prised and aggrieved, patiently tried for six months to get their case ad-justed peacefully. Then they pave up and prepared to strike. The Pie iilent had the Army take over the 1 ail roads. The wage question was reopened and new issues were injected in the case. The upshot was that the railroad workers were given raises of from nine to 11 cents an hour, and this was approved by the Director as proper under the Stabilization Program, although he had vetoed the eight cents.

1 n this case lack of a coherent labor policy almost produced a serious

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t 18 transportation tie-up, placed an un-necessary extra burden on the Army, re-enacted earlier negotiations, and ended up about where it had started.

Let me emphasize here that the men involved in this mess are not " b a d " men. Most of them are very good men. The members of the WLB are serving, often at a personal sacri-fice, in a perplexing, ungrateful job. At the same time American industry and workers, despite the labor tangles, have performed up to now a miracle of war production. And most of the top labor leaders have tried hard to live up to their no-strike pledges.

It is the system which is impossible. Most of our current strikes are di-rected not against the employer but against confusions and delay in the Government machinery for settling disputes. Sometimes these strikes are directed against the workers' own leaders, for "failure to get action" from the Government agencies. Polit-ical bargaining is too often replacing collective bargaining.

Clearly, haphazard, unprepared methods of meeting labor problems do not work. We must have another joint labor conference as soon as possible, to decide on a cooperative national labor policy both for the war and after it. To succeed, such a conference cannot be a hasty affair. Representatives of labor and industry must come prepared to work hard and long, to negotiate patiently, to plan wisely, and to compromise whenever possible in the public in-terest. Every issue settled at the con-ference will avoid a thousand dis-putes later on.

The conference might well agree on some such policies as these:

That workers and employers, in any labor dispute, first make a serious effort to resolve their dif-ferences by collective bargaining and mutual agreement within a fixed time limit.

That Government mediation machinery, now scattered through many agencies, be centralized in the Department of Labor; and that voluntary arbitration be rec-ognized as a separate function to be encouraged if mediation fails.

That the administration of Eco-nomic Stabilization be made en-tirely separate from that of settling labor disputes, so that workers will get what they are entitled to under Stabilization without having to drum up an argument.

Above all, clear-cut policies must be laid down on those is-sues which most frequently cause strikes, such as wages and the union shop. The area of disagreement at the

conference may well be surprisingly small. The leaders of both labor and industry look forward with dread to what may happen when the war ends. If strikes then get out of control it will not merely cripple industry. It will damage the labor movement itself. It will disgust our returning soldiers and sailors. It will do harm to every one of us.

There is thus a great power of public opinion which can be invoked to bring labor and management to agree on the fundamentals of a co-herent national policy. If the Presi-dent of the United States will put this squarely up to such a Labor Confer-ence of 1945, I believe it can perform an historic service for our country.

fjere's a Banker with Imagination! T h e F r a n k l i n S q u a r e N a t i o n a l renders a d o z e n u n i q u e s e r v i c e s t o i t s c u s t o m e r s a n d p e p s u p t l ie c o m m u n i t y

Condensed from Advertising & Selling

Roger William Riis

MANY a motorist has driven through Franklin Square's business section, and never

noticed it. It's only a place along a highway on Long Island, 20 miles east of the center of New York City; a few traffic lights, 30 stores, a dozen truck farms. Not much material there for postwar planning, apparendy.

But Franklin Square has a bank, and the bank has an executive vice-president, 38-year-old Arthur T . Roth. Through his efforts Franklin Square is widely known and closely watched in banking circles. Says the eastern representative of a bank sta-tionery firm who calls on hundreds of banks: "Everywhere I go, the first question bankers ask me is, 'What 's Franklin Square up to now?' "

Most recent of the bank's actions was a community face-lifting project. Roth obtained a photographic pan-orama of the somewhat dismal stores along the main street. Then he had an architect sketch the street with every store front done over in a uniform early American motif. Calling the businessmen together, he showed them the picture of today, pointing out a lack of paint here, a torn awning there, narrow shop windows, cramped doors. Suddenly he flashed the pan-orama of tomorrow, each store mod-ernized and in harmony — white,

trim, neat, with its name lettered on the front.

"To make our town look like this," Roth told the merchants, "will cost $500 for each 15 feet of frontage. The bank will lend the money on a five-year basis. Who will sign up?"

Everybody signed up. So far, so good. But Roth sees things through. A committee went to the big manu-facturers. A glass company agreed to handle the job as a unit, at low rates. Companies making building mate-rials and store fixtures sent experts to a series of discussions.

"And there's no use sewing a clean collar on a dirty shirt," said banker Roth, pointing out that a handsome front deserves a handsome interior.

That was last summer. The effort was aimed at postwar days, and as such won the approval of the Com-mittee for Economic Development. But one shopkeeper had a fire, and re-built on the new lines. Another couldn't wait, and decked out his store accordingly. Both agree that the change has been good for busi-ness.

This is only one of a score of re-freshing deeds of the bank. The Pur-chase Club, for example — "Your personal postwar plan," the bank calls it — actually displays the things peo-ple might want to buy after the war.

Copyright 1944, Rohhim Pub. Co., Inc., 9 E. 38 St., New York, 16, N. Y. (Advertising Gr Selling, January, '45) '9

i20

Depositors open accounts either at the bank or through the store where they intend to make the eventual pur-chase. The Purchase Club figures out the necessary weekly deposit on a 100-week basis, and members re-ceive two percent interest on their deposits. Some 600 citizens have signed up for $180,000 worth of post-war goods.

The Purchase Club has won mem-bers around the nation. A doctor in South Dakota mails his weekly de-posit to get a new set of instruments. An upstate New Yorker is saving for a television set, a New Jersey man for an air-conditioned home. Radio and television sets lead in popularity, with automobiles, electric washing ma-chines, refrigerators, ranges and vac-uum cleaners the next five items. Al-ready 250 other banks have started similar projects.

Franklin Square isn't even on a railroad. Its 10,000 citizens earn an average of $2500 a year per family. But the bank has made the com-munity important. When Roth joined it in 1934, deposits were under $500,-000 — the lowest since its founding. Today they are over $13,000,000. Its employes have increased from five to 58. Seventy percent of its business comes from other towns.

One reason for this growth is that Roth has unorthodox ideas of a bank's function. A bank, he thinks, should be the useful personal friend of every citizen of the community.

Many scoffcd when he planned his "Garden Bank." But Roth had no-ticed that his customers needed more parking space. So he acquired an area behind the bank and landscaped it with flowers and shrubs.

February

"People said landscaping wasn't any part of banking," Roth recalls. "But it pleased our customers."

In the garden he built a pergola to shelter the writing table where cus-tomers make out deposit slips or sign checks. Three windows of the bank open on the pergola. Twenty-five percent of the bank's summer busi-ness is done among the flowers. In winter the pergola is enclosed in glass and heated.

While the hurricane of last Sep-tember was still howling along the coast, the Franklin Square bank ran this advertisement:

Notice! The 3000 families on Long Island who have their mortgages with us are insured, with very few excep-tions, against hurricane losses. Money is available to home owners who have to make property repairs as a result of the hurricane. FHA terms, up to three years to pay. We have available con-tractors and suppliers for immediate work. Alert business, yes, but true com-

munity service too. "We devise the services to meet our

customers' needs," says Roth, "and then we merchandise the services, just as a department store merchan-dises its goods."

There was a time when the bus service of the region fell off badly. The bank delegated one of its officers to work with bus companies and civic organizations, and saw to it that the service was built up.

Roth and other officials of the bank make personal calls on every home in the town to discuss financial problems. The bank has a Financial Secretar^ service, which pays, on be-half of customers, such recurring bills

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 h e r e ' s a b a n k e r w i t h i m a g i n a t i o n ! at

as taxes, insurance, interest and fuel. Even bills for medical expenses are handled by this secretarial service. It carries on constant and chatty per-sonal correspondence with customers who deposit by mail. It operates a student training service, taking star students from the high school, 20 each year, for five weeks' training in banking. This provides a practical business course and also helps handle the bank's personnel problem.

Over the Christmas holidays the bank is the center of community life. Officers' desks give place to a marion-ette stage; the Purchase Club's dis-play of furniture becomes a living room with fireplace, stockings on the chimney, a decorated tree, a live Santa Claus and a large scene of the Nativity, showing people of 23 na-tions. Children from miles away bring their parents, who thus learn for the first time about this friendly bank; many open accounts. On the bank's expense sheets appears, among other surprising items, an annual charge for 4000 lollipops.

Perhaps this attitude toward chil-dren explains why one 12-year-old newsboy applied for a formal loan of $29 to buy a bicycle. He wanted to extend his paper route. It was a sound business loan, and the bank made it. Interest ($1.74) and principal were duly and promptly paid.

There is a comfortable home feel-

ing about the bank's "Community Room," a big air-conditioned lounge beautifully decorated with murals and equipped with ping-pong tables, radio, phonograph and a modern kitchen. All community groups use it for meetings — Civilian Defense, Red Cross, Boy Scouts and business clubs.

Bankers of the old school protest that you can't give away so much and make money. But Franklin Square National Bank shows a higher rate of earnings than any bank of its class in the Second Federal Reserve District, which includes New York City. It also publishes a complete statement of its finances, showing every source of income and all expenses. Its report for 1942, with color photos, was hailed by The American Banker as " the year's handsomest annual statement."

As soon as conditions permit, the bank will triple its present size. In the new space will be display rooms and windows for Franklin Square mer-chants. After all, this is their bank, for it was started by Arthur Phillips and Fred Schilling, local businessmen who are chairman of its board and presi-dent. A Buyers' Advisory Service al-ready brings together the customer, the retailer, the bank and even the manufacturer, in special forums.

Its bank has made Franklin Square grow, and Franklin Square repays its bank in kind. They serve each other, and thereby they profit.

O N THE front of the mantel in the ancient Hind's I lead Hotel at Bray, England, is the legend:

"Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was.there." It was lettered at the time of Dunkirk. — Major Donald W. Dresden in Gourmet

Allied economic warfare specialists slowly strangled the Nazi war machine with a paper noose

ow We Blockaded Germany Condensed from Harper 's Magazine

David Gordon Acting Chief of Blockade Division, Foreign Economic Administrat ion

FOR the past four years Germany has been strangled by a paper blockade. It was the first block-

ade in history carried out virtually without ships — and it was one of the most effective.

This unseen blockade not only cut off German supplies of food and oil and metals from overseas; it also reached inside Fortress Europe and rigidly limited the amount of war materials the Nazis have been able to get from neutral countries. Finally, our economic warfare specialists have procured for the United Nations a small but critically important ton-nage of vitally needed goods. Some items have been smuggled through the German lines. Others have been shipped to us openly, through enemy ports, with official German permits — part of a fantastic trade across enemy borders.

When the war broke out, Great Britain immediately threw into gear an old-fashioned blockade, like that used against Napoleon and the Kai-ser. After Norway and France had been overrun, however, that kind of blockade would no longer work. The British Navy could not patrol 7000 miles of coast line, from Hammerfest to Beirut. It was still possible, how-

ever, to keep most of Germany's ship-ping off the seas. The really serious gap in the blockade was the European neutrals — Sweden, Switzer land, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. How could they be prevented from carry-ing on unrestricted trade with the out-side world, and passing on to Ger-many all the goods most needed by the Nazi war machine?

Britain turned to weapons rela-tively new to warfare: the War Trade Agreements, the ship's warrant, the navicert and the black list.

The War Trade Agreements were informal treaties negotiated by Eng-land's Ministry of Economic Warfare with neutral countries. The typical agreement provided that the neutral would not import any more than it needed of a long list of commodities, and that none of these items would be re-exported to the enemy. In re-turn, England promised to permit goods up to this ceiling to flow into the neutral country without inter-ruption.

Throughout the war — and espe-cially after the entrance of the United States — these agreements have been continuously revised and tightened. As the Allies' military position grew stronger we steadily increased our de-mands. Frequently neutrals were asked to limit or halt completely their exports of certain strategic items to G e r m a n y , even when these goods were

Copyright 1944, Harper & Brothers, 49 E. 33 St., New York. N. Y. (Harper's Magazine, December, '44)

h o w w e b l o c k a d e d g e r m a n y 23 produced entirely within their own borders. For example, Sweden agreed first to restrict and finally to cut off her ship-ments of strategic types of ball bear-ings to the Luftwaffe's aircraft plants.

The Germans, of course, also knew how to use the weapons of economic warfare. If Sweden reduced ball-bear-ing shipments too sharply, Germany would threaten to cut off its vital sup-plies of coal.

The neutrals were never quite crushed in the pressure of this eco-nomic struggle, because they held strong weapons of their own. Ger-many might have rolled ris;ht over Sweden, but such an assault would have tied up perhaps 30 divisions. An even stronger restraint was the para-doxical fact that Germany probably would have got less from a conquered than from a neutral Sweden, since the Swedes would have burned their factories or turned to sabotage.

Even Switzerland — entirely sur-rounded by German-held territory — managed to carry on trade with the outside world. For if her access to the seas through Genoa were cut off, she could blow up the great railway tun-nels through the Alps. The explosives were laid; the switches were guarded by Swiss officers 24 hours a day. Through those tunnels ran the life line between Germany and Italy. They carried a million tons of coal a month, which Italian industry had to have to survive.

One curious result of this situation was that Switzerland was able to buy Italian silk and make it into a special kind of bolting cloth badly needed in one of America's chemical industries. This cloth was then moved in sealed trains over Italian railways, under a

German permit, to Genoa, whence it was shipped by way of Lisbon to the United States. There were a good many such deals.

Such bargaining would have been impossible if the United Nations had not had some means for imposing a tipht control on the sea traffic of the neutrals, and punishing any violation of the trade agreements. At this point the other weapons in the armory of economic warfare were brought into action.

The sharpest was the ship's war-rant. This is simply a piece of paper, issued by United Nations authorities, which certifies that S.S. Neutral Trader is a well-behaved vessel car-rying only those cargos approved by Allied officials. Without such a war-rant, no neutral ship could get fuel or supplies in any port under Allied con-trol. Neither the ship nor its cargo could be insured, since practically all maritime insurance is dominated by London and New York. Moreover, every time an unwarranted vessel hove within sight of an Allied war-ship or patrol plane, it was liable to be stopped, shepherded into a con-trol port and searched. These searches might take days — especially if the blockade authorities were a little un-sympathetic — and often involved the unloading of every ton of cargo, the opening of hundreds of boxes and bales. This tedious process was likely to prove ruinously expensive. Though theoretically possible, it was ex-tremely hazardous for a ship to try to fuel at a complacent neutral port and slip home through waters where Al-lied patrols dared not venture. The British economic intelligence service made a special point of finding out

i24 about such uncooperative ships and setting Allied navies to watch for them. Before the end of 1940 virtually every neutral captain decided it was good business to get a ship's warrant and submit his cargos and routes to Allied approval.

A companion weapon was the navicert, another piece of paper which certifies that an individual shipment — whether 10,000 tons of wheat or a half ounce of platinum — has been approved by a United Na-tions official. It was granted only if the shipment came within the quar-terly quota for that particular com-modity.

All these devices were strengthened by the black list. Every business firm or individual in a neutral country who sold goods to the enemy or served as cloak for Axis financial transac-tions was likely to be black-listed. Such a firm became an economic leper. It could not deal with any Al-lied firm, or move goods across an Allied boundary, or use Allied trans-port or communications. If it had funds in a United Nations bank or business enterprise they were frozen. Any person — even in a neutral country — who dealt with a black-listed firm might be put on the list himself. Most discouraging of all, the black lists may not be torn up at the end of the war; neutral businessmen who have been flagrantly friendly to the Axis may find it difficult to deal with Allied countries for years to come.

With these paper tools, the United Nations wove around Germany a blockade far tighter than anything achieved in World War I. And in lieu of expensive squadrons of warships,

February

the noose was drawn tight by a few hundred economists and statisticians in the London headquarters of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and in the Washington offices of three agencies — the Board of Economic Warfare (later incorporated into the Foreign Economic Administration), the State Department and the Treas-ury. The nerve center of their opera-tion was the Anglo-American Block-ade Committee, sitting in London.

Halting the smuggling of small items was one of the toughest jobs. Fortunately there were only a few such items valuable enough to make the risk of smuggling worth while. The most important were industrial dia-monds, essential for jewel bearings in aircraft instruments and for grinding precision machinery; and platinum, which serves as a catalyst in making synthetic oil and is irreplaceable in certain chemical and electrical equip-ment.

The enemy's need for these pre-cious goods could be gauged by the fantastic prices paid to smugglers. Industrial diamonds of a grade worth less than Si a carat on the London market were fetching prices of $30 to $60 a carat in Tangier. The nor-mal commercial price of platinum is about $1000 a kilogram, but at one time in Lisbon the black market price rose to $11,000.

To stop this smuggling, the eco-nomic warfare agencies tried to get hold of the entire supply of platinum, industrial diamonds, quartz crystals, and a few similar items at the source. Agreements were negotiated with the producing countries under which they pledged themselves to sell their entire output to the United Nations.

t h e reader's d i g e s t

i q 4 5 h o w w e b l o c k

To make doubly sure, American pur-chasing agents often hunted up the original producers and bought their output directly. In the wild Choco region of Colombia, for example, FEA representatives established trad-ing posts on the banks ef the little streams where platinum is washed out of the sands.

The second step was to plant in-telligence operatives inside the smug-gling and black market rings. This led to a few of those rare situations in which the intelligence industry— usually as dull and prosaic as double-entry bookkeeping — actually began to resemble popular spy thrillers. One American agent, for instance, became a key figure in an important smug-gling gang. On the basis of his re-ports, the blockade authorities picked up a shabby fiberboard trunk which was being shipped by a Latin-Ameri-can dock worker to a relative in Spain. It looked innocent enough but the trunk was reinforced with what appeared to be ordinary black-painted iron straps. When the paint was scraped off, these straps turned out to be pure platinum — enough to run a German synthetic oil refinery for months.

In the early years of the war, we could not stop the flow from the neu-trals inside Europe entirely, because no neutral dared slam the door in Germany's face until Allied victory became certain. However, we could wage an economic offensive with our one superior weapon — money. We could buy up the chief strategic com-modities regardless of price.

Consequently both England and America set up corporations to en-gage in preclusive buying in direct

i d e d g e r m a n y

competition with German agents. They divided up the market and split the expense of their joint programs.

Most important was the battle for wolfram, the tungsten ore. Tungsten is an indispensable alloy for harden-ing cutting tools, armor plate and gun barrels. More than 90 percent of the enemy's supply had to come from Spain and Portugal. So American and British businessmen, selected for go-get-it aggressiveness rather than the diplomatic graces, moved in and started buying. Almost at once they cut into the flow of wolfram to Ger-many — and they shoved the Span-ish and Portuguese economies into one of the gaudiest sprees since the days of Cortez. Before the war the normal price of wolfram was under $200 a ton, and Spain produced about 250 tons a year. By 1943 Ger-man and Allied buyers had bid the price up to more than $20,000 a ton, and production had skyrocketed to 4500 tons a year. Incidentally, one reason the Allied governments con-tinued to sell oil to Spain was the necessity of getting Spanish currency to finance the preclusive-buying pro-gram.

It cost us a lot of money, but the cost to the Germans, in proportion to their resources, was even greater. By the end of 1943, they were forced out of the open market completely be-cause they had used up all their sup-ply of Spanish currency, and we were able to cut our purchases sharply.

Similar preclusive operations were undertaken in Turkey, where we went after copper and chrome; and in Sweden, where we cut into the enemy's supply of specialized steels and machinery.

26 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

These campaigns were child's play, however, in comparison with another sort of purchasing program. Before the war certain British aircraft fac-tories had been equipped with Swed-ish machine tools, for which replace-ment parts could be obtained only in Sweden. Swedish ball bearings were also needed. Most urgently of all, we needed jewel bearings from Switzer-land. The cutting of these tiny dia-monds had been a Swiss specialty for many years. Dozens of war products — ranging from torpedoes to chro-nometers — could not be made with-out them.

Germany, of course, had no inten-tion of letting such indispensable items out of Sweden and Switzerland, so the economic warfare agencies built up a smuggling service. A few British ships, crammed to the hatches with priceless machinery, managed to slip out of Swedish ports on a stormy night, after a Gestapo water-front spy had been lured into a drunken party. Fast planes took off at night from Swedish airports for the hazardous flight across German-oc-cupied Norway to Scotland. Deliver-ies by such means were small and un-certain; but they replaced enough worn and bombed-out machinery to keep England's plane factories going.

Getting jewel bearings out of Switzerland was a more difficult problem, because the raw material — bort, or rough diamonds about the size of coarse sand — first had to be smuggled in. By a variety of secret methods, the bort went into Switzer-land regularly, in packets just large enough to cover pending Allied or-

ders. The disguised finished product came out through France, Italy and Germany — sometimes carried as priority cargo on German air lines — on its way to Allied war plants. Ma-chinery for boring the jewels also was smuggled out, along with a few skilled craftsmen; and in time an adequate jewel bearing industry was established on United Nations soil.

The effects of the economic weap-ons are indirect, long delayed, and frequently disguised. Germany started the war with big stock-piles of im-ported raw materials, and developed the use of substitutes to new ex-tremes. Yet in the end blockade-born shortages inevitably occurred; and because of the Allies' carefully inte-grated economic and military plan-ning, they often have appeared at disastrous times. The economic pres-sure which finally choked off the sup-ply of Swedish ball bearings, for example, was synchronized with the bombings of Germany's own ball bearing plants. A shortage first of lubricants and later of gasoline grad-ually hobbled the Nazi mechanized divisions, and eventually the Luft-waffe itself. Blockade operations were dovetai led with a i r ra ids on the Ploesti refineries and a score of syn-thetic oil plants to hit the enemy's economy with maximum impact at just the time of the Normandy inva-sion.

In these and countless other fields economic warfare has served the Al-lied armed forces as a silent but effec-tive junior partner. Its contribution has been indispensable to the final victory.

"He Loved MeTruly" By

Bernadine Bailey and Dorothy Walworth

THE BRIDE rode with her husband on the high front seat of the jolting wagon. She was 31 years

old, and, in 1819, that was middle-aged, for most pioneer women died early. It was a December day, cold for Kentucky, and they were headed north toward forest country. " I reckon it'll be fine weather," she said, for she was the sort to make the best of things.

Yesterday Tom had arrived on horseback, all the way from his In-diana farm, at her house in Elizabeth-town. He had comc straight to the point: "Miss Sally, I have no wife and you no husband. I came a-purpose to marry you. I knowed you from a girl and you knowed me from a boy. I've no time to lose. If you're willin', let it be done straight off."

That morning they had been mar-ried at the Methodist parsonage. The preacher wrote down that she, Sarah Bush Johnston, had been three years a widow and Tom's wife had died last winter. The horses and wagon Tom had borrowed waited outside. The wagon was piled high with her 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

BERNADINE BAILEY i s t h e a u t h o r o f Abe Lincoln's Other Mother, based in part on her interviews with old settlers in the county near T o m Lincoln's Illinois home where she grew up. DOROTHY WALWORTH, free-lance writer, wrote the memorable article " A Woman to Warm Your Heart By," in The Reader's Digest, April, '44.

household goods, so that there was scarcely room for her three children. Tom had two children of his own; he hadn't told them he was bringing back a new mother. There was a shadow in Sarah's steady blue-gray eyes when she thought about that. Maybe they'd feel she didn't belong.

A raft ferried the wagon across the half-frozen Ohio River. The air sharpened; the wheels sank to their hubs in snow. After five days they came to a log cabin in a small clear-ing on Little Pigeon River. It had no windows, and the door was only a deerskin-covered opening. A stick chimney plastered with clay ran up the outside.

Tom hallooed and a little boy ran out of the door. He was thin as a scarecrow, and wore a ragged shirt and tattered deerskin pants. But it was the look in his eyes that went to Sarah's heart, although it was a look she couldn't put a name to. She got down from the wagon, opened her arms like a couple of wings, and folded him close.

" I reckon we'll be good friends," she said. "Howdy, Abe Lincoln."

She had never been in the wilder-ness before; she had known small-town comfort. This was a one-room cabin, with no real floor, only packed dirt. The bedstead was a makeshift of boards laid on sticks against the wall, with a mattress of loose corn-

i28

husks. The bedcovers were skins and cast-off clothing. Ten-year-old Abe and his 12-year-old sister had always slept on piles of leaves up in the loft, to which they climbed by pegs fas-tened to the wall. The furniture was some three-legged stools and a table axed smooth on top, bark side under. Dennis Hanks, an 18-year-old cousin of Tom's first wife, Nancy Hanks, was living with the family and had been trying to cook with the help of a Dutch oven, one battered pot, and a couple of iron spoons. Although she must have expected a place far better than this, all Sarah said was, "Tom, fetch me a load of firewood. I aim to heat some water."

This new stepmother with the rosy face and the bright curly hair wasted no time. As soon as the water steamed, she brought out of her own belongings a gourd full of homemade soap. Then, in front of the hot fire, she scrubbed Abe and his sister and combed their matted hair with her own clean shell comb. When the wagon was un-packed, little Abe, who had not said a word, ran his bony fingers over such wonderful things as a walnut bureau, a clothes chest, a loom and real chairs. And that night, when he went to bed in the loft, he did not find the leaves; she had thrown them out-doors. He had a feather mattress and a feather pillow, and enough blankets so he was warm all night.

In a couple of weeks, a body wouldn ' t have known the place. Sarah had what folks called "fac-ulty"; she worked hard and she could make other people work, too. Even Tom, who meant well but was likely to let things slide. She never said he must do thus and so; she was too wise

February

and too gentle. But somehow Tom found himself making a real door for the cabin and cutting a window, like she wanted. He put down a floor, chinked up the cracks between the logs, whitewashed the inside walls. Abe couldn't get over how sightly it was. And she wove Abe shirts out of homespun cloth, coloring them with d.ye she steeped out of roots and barks. She made him deerskin breeches that really fitted, and moccasins, and a coonskin cap. She had a mirror and she rubbed it bright and held it up so's he could see himself— it was the first time he had ever seen himself — and he said, "Land o' Goshen, is that me?"

Sometimes, in the early mornings, when Sarah laid a new fire in the ashes, she got to thinking it was queer how things come about. When Tom Lincoln had courted her, 14 years ago, she had turned him down for Daniel Johnston. Tom had been 12 years married to Nancy Hanks, who died so sudden from the "milk sick." And now, after all these years, Tom and she were together again, with his children and her children to feed and do for.

The cabin was 18 feet square and there were eight people under its flimsy roof. Sarah was taking what was left of two households, along with the orphan boy, Dennis Hanks. Some-how she must make them into a fam-ily of folks who loved each other; she wanted them to feel like they had al-ways been together. There was plenty of chance for trouble, what with the two sets of young'uns who had never laid eyes on each other till now, and all the stories Abe and his sister had heard folks tell about stepmoth-

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 ers. Those first weeks, Sarah felt mighty anxious. Especially about Abe, though he did what she said and never answered her back. Once she saw him looking at her real serious when she was putting some johnny-cake into the oven. "All my life I 'm goin' to like johnnycake best," he said suddenly, and then scooted through the door. You couldn't figure Abe out. As Dennis said, "There's somethin' peculiarsome about Abe."

Maybe, if it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't have lived to be a man. He had always grown so fast and never had enough to eat. But now, when he had eaten enough johnnycake and meat and potatoes that were cooked through and not just burned on top, he stopped looking so pinchcd and putty-color. And he wasn't so quiet any more. Now he had some flesh on his bones, he wasn't solemn. Why, he was fuller of fun than anybody. He learned to tell yarns, like his father, but he tried them out on Sarah first, and she laughed in the right places. She stood up for him, too, when he'd laugh out loud, all of a sudden, at things nobody else could understand, and Tom thought he was being sassy. "Abe's got a right to his own jokes," Sarah said.

Sometimes Sarah thought, all to herself, that she loved Abe more than her own children. But she didn't really. It was just that she knew, deep down in her heart where she told nobody but God, that Abe was some-body special, who didn't belong to her but was hers to keep for a while.

When Abe was little, Tom hadn't minded his walking nine miles to the "blab school" where the scholars learned their letters by saying them

29 over and over out loud. But now A!>e was older and stronger, Tom didn't see why he shouldn't stay home and chop down trees and cradle wheat or hire out to the neighbors for husking corn at 30 cents a day. Of course, he felt kind of proud when the neighbors came to have Abe write their letters with the pen he had made out of a buzzard's quill and the brier-root ink. But Abe was "reachin' too fur" when he kept reading books instead of clearing swamps; Tom told Abe you didn't need to know so almighty much to get along.

If Sarah hadn't taken Abe's part against his father, Abe wouldn't have got as much schooling as he did, though goodness knows it wasn't much. He learned, as the folks said, "by littles." But through the years she held out against Tom, no matter if Tom said she was plumb crazy.

Abe would rather read than eat. He'd read in the morning, soon's it was light enough to see; he'd read in the evening when the chores were done; he'd read when he plowed, while the horse was resting at the end of the row. He walked 17 miles to borrow books from Lawyer Pitcher at Rockport. Aesop's Fables. Robinson Crusoe. Pilgrim's Progress. Shakespeare. The Statutes of Indiana. When his bor-rowed Weems' Life of Washington got rained on, he worked three full days to pay for it. Once he gave a man 50 cents for an old barrel and found Blackstone's Commentaries at the bot-tom of it, and you'd think he'd found a gold mine. He began reading late at night by the fire, and when Tom complained, Sarah said, "Leave the boy be." She always let him read until he quit of his own accord, and if he fell

" h e l o v e d m e t r u l y "

i30

asleep there on the floor she would get a quilt and wrap it gently around him.

He did his ciphering on a board, and when the board got too black, he'd plane it off and start again. If he read something he liked a lot, he'd write it down. He was always writing, and was most always out of paper. He'd put charcoal marks on a board, for a sign of what he wanted to write, and when he got paper he'd copy it all down. And he'd read it out loud to Sarah by the fire, after Tom and the rest had gone to bed. "Did I make it plain?" he always asked her. It made her real proud when he asked her about his writing, and she answered him as well as any-body could who didn't know how to read or write.

They told each other things they told nobody else. He had dark spells when nobody but her could make him hear. Spells when he thought it was no use to hope and to plan. Abe needed a lot of encouraging.

In 1830, Tom decided to look for better farm land in Illinois, and the family moved to Coles County on Goose Nest Prairie. There Abe helped his father build the two-room cabin where Sarah and Tom were to spend the rest of their lives. The place was hardly built when the day came that Sarah had foreseen, the day when Abe would leave home. He was a man grown, 22 years old, and he had a chance to clerk in Denton Offut's store over in New Salem. There was nothing more she could do for Abe; for the last time she had braved out Tom so's Abe could learn; for the last time she had kept the cabin quiet so's Abe could do his reading.

February

At first he came back often, and, later on, after he got to be a lawyer, he visited Goose Nest Prairie twice a year. Every time Sarah saw him, it seemed like his mind was bigger. Other folks' minds got to a place and then stopped, but Abe's kept on growing. He told her about his law cases, and, as time went on, he told her about his going to the state legis-lature and his marrying Mary Todd. After Tom died, in 1851, Abe saw to it that she didn't want for anything.

When she heard Abe was going to Charleston for his fourth debate with Stephen A. Douglas, she went there, too, without saying a word to Abe. It would be enough — it had always been enough—just to watch him. She was one of the crowd on the street as the parade went by. There was a big float drawn by a yoke of oxen, carrying three men splitting rails, and a big sign, "Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, the Ox Driver, the Giant Killer." Was that her Abe? And now here he came, riding in a shiny black carriage, and tipping his tall black hat right and left. Was that her Abe? She tried to make herself small, but he saw her and made the carriage stop. Then, right in front of everybody, he got out of the carriage and came over and put his arms around her and kissed her. Yes, that was her Abe.

She wasn't the crying kind, but she cried when he was elected President. Alone, where nobody could see her. In the winter of 1861, before he went to Washington, he crossed the state to see her, coming by train and car-riage in the mud and slush to say good-bye. He brought her a present, a length of black alpaca for a dress;

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

1945 it was really too beautiful to put the scissors into; after Abe went, she'd just take itout and feel of it once in a while.

Abe looked tired, and he had a lot on his mind, but they had a fine talk. Even when they were silent, they still said things to each other, and he still set store by what she thought. When he kissed her good-bye, he said he'd see her soon, but she knew somehow that she would not see him again.

Four years later, they came and told her he was dead. The newspapers wrote the longest pieces about his real mother, and that was like it should be, but some folks came and asked her what sort of boy Abe had been. And she wanted to tell them, but it was hard to find the words.

31 "Abe was a good boy," she said. " H e never gave me a cross word or look. His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together." And then she added, "He loved me truly, I think."

Often, during the four years that remained to her, she would sit of an evening and think of Abe. Being a mother, she did not think about him as President, as the man about whom they sang, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong." She remembered him as a little boy. She was baking johnny-cake for him; she was weaving him a shirt; she was covering him with a blanket when he had fallen asleep over his books, trying, as long as she could, to keep him safe from the cold.

" H E L O V E D ME T R U L Y "

Sarah Bush Lincoln was buried beside her husband in Shiloh Cemetery. Her death, on December 10, 1869, passed unnoticed by the nation. For manv years she was not even mentioned by historians and biographers. Not until 1924 were the graves of Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln marked with a suitable stone. More recently, their Goose Nest Prairie home site has been made into a state park, with a reproduction of the two-room cabin which Abraham Lincoln helped to build. And only in the last few years have Americans come to know that, when Abraham Lincoln said, " All that I am I owe to my angel mother," he was speaking of his stepmother.

The Truth Will Out » I T WAS o n e o f t h o s e b l i s t er ing A l a b a m a d a y s . I h a d c a l l e d o n a s t u d e n t t o

r e a d a l o u d a br ie f p a r a g r a p h f r o m a n es say . T h i s h e d i d , l a b o r i o u s l y . W h e n h e f in i shed , I a s k e d h i m t o c o m m e n t o n t h e s i g n i f i c a n c e o f t h e p a s s a g e w h i c h h e h a d j u s t r e a d . H i s e a r n e s t r e p l y b r o u g h t e v e n t h e s l eep ies t s t u d e n t to a n h i l a r i -o u s a w a k e n i n g . F o r h e sa id , " I a m sorry , s ir , b u i 1 w a s n ' t l i s t e n i n g . "

— Contributed by John Newton Baker

» T H E l a t e S e n a t o r W i l l i a m A l d e n S m i t h o f M i c h i g a n u s e d t o tel l a b o u t t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n h e w a s a c c o r d e d a t a farmers ' p i c n i c i n h is h o m e s ta te . " S e n a t o r S m i t h wi l l n o w talk for a n h o u r , " t h e c h a i r m a n said, " a f t e r w h i c h t h e b a n d w i l l c a l l y o u t o g e t h e r a g a i n . " — G . Lynn Sumner, We Have With Us Tonight (Harper)

Returns to High School C o n d e n s e d f r o m T h e S a t u r d a y E v e n i n g Post

Kenneth H. Merrill as to ld t o Oren Arnold

THE EDITORS of the Post write: Publi-cation of this article does not constitute endorsement hy the Post of all the author's criticisms. We feel, however, that Mr. Merrill is entitled to a hearing and that the state of mind his article manifests is a matter of general concern.

IAST SPRING i n h i g h s c h o o l , I w a t c h e d a fe l low s tudent t ie a s tr ing across an aisle, so t h a t

w h e n the t eacher c a m e a l o n g s h e tr ipped. M o n t h s before, a n o t h e r k id of 17 used t h a t s a m e trick o n a G u a -d a l c a n a l j u n g l e p a t h w i t h the s tr ing t ied to h a n d grenades . T h e m a n w h o tr ipped w a s l e a d i n g a J a p patrol against Car lson's R a i d e r s , * a n d the A m e r i c a n y o u n g s t e r s a w y e l l o w b o d -ies b l o w n u p w a r d in vo l can ic fury.

I w a s t h a t youngs ter o n G u a d a l -canal . T o g e t i n the Mar ines , I h a d stretched m y a g e . I w a n t e d a d v e n -ture, a n d I sure f o u n d it. I exper i -e n c e d a l m o s t e v e r y t h i n g in the w a y of f ight ing . S e n t h o m e because of c o m b a t fa t igue , I c a n testify t h a t c o m i n g b a c k to h i g h school w a s a terrific l e t d o w n . I t w a s a relief to graduate . T h e n I marr ied E l a i n e a n d w e b o t h w o r k e d so that I cou ld h a v e

* See "Colone l Carlson and His Gung H o Raiders," T h e Reader's Digest, D e c e m -ber, '43.

m o n e y to enter the A r i z o n a S ta te T e a c h e r ' s C o l l e g e at F lagstaf f .

S o m e t i m e s I a m a m a z e d a t the c iv i l ian life a r o u n d m e , in w h i c h I a m e x p e c t e d to resume m y part . A t recess in h i g h school , kids w o u l d s w a r m a r o u n d for tales of m y exper i -ences, bu t u n d e r facul ty orders I was no t a l l o w e d to be too realistic. I w a s not a l l o w e d t o da te s o m e of the girls, because I h a d bashed in the brains of Tojo ' s gangsters w i t h a rifle but t , a n d also because of m y d isorder ly c o n -d u c t at a p ic ture show.

O n the screen that n i g h t t w o M a -rines d y i n g o n a b l o o d y b e a c h h e a d were ca l l ing o n A l m i g h t y G o d in their a g o n y . Perhaps the p layers were overact ing , b u t w h e n t w o m e n d o w n front l a u g h e d , s o m e t h i n g s tood m e u p a n d I f o u n d mysel f w a l k i n g d o w n there. "I t ' s n o t f u n n y , bro ther ," I said, a n d I k n o c k e d t h e m b o t h out . I a m n o t p r o u d of that ep i sode , bu t it's the w a y I felt, and still fee l ; it's part of the gul f b e t w e e n m e a n d other civi l ians.

M a y b e I w a s n ' t readjust ing prop-erly; m a y b e I should h a v e s l ipped back i n t o the o ld n i che of b e i n g a g e n t l e m a n l y h i g h schoo l l ad . B u t I h a v e s o m e n e w ideas a b o u t w h a t a g e n t l e m a n is a n d a b o u t w h a t school

Copyright 1944, The Curtis Pub. Co., Independence Square, Philadelphia 5, Pa. (The Saturday Evening Post, December pf *44)

A Ex-Marine Have our schools anything t o offer returned veterans? A challenging ques-tion for educators and parents

a n e x - m a r i n e r e t u r n s t o h i g h s c h o o l

should be. This process they call ed-ucation is not what I want or need; and I represent hundreds of thou-sands of youths who will soon be streaming back to resume their stud-ies, fellows who are hardened adven-turers before their time. We are far too many and, I hope, too valuable to ignore. What is America going to do with us?

LT. COL. Evans F. Carlson had sent 25 of us volunteers to "investi-gate" Pistol Pete, a well-concealed cannon which had been shelling Henderson Field with devastating ef-fect. By careful scouting, we learned that Pete's lair was a cave high up a mountain canyon, approached through a narrow pass. From dawn till near dusk we inched toward it on our bellies, then sprang on the Japa-nese. We gunned and slashed in a nightmarish orgy, whipping the Japs in their own technique.

On another mission we lived on rice and salt pork and danger for 36 days behind the J a p lines, slaying them by the hundreds, seeing our own wounded die, suffering every privation while we crept through the brush like animals.

After I got back in school some study work assigned me included this:

Merr i ly s w i n g i n g o n brier a n d w e e d , N e a r to the nest o f his l itt le d a m e ,

O v e r the m o u n t a i n s i d e or m e a d , R o b e r t o f L i n c o l n is te l l ing his n a m e ;

Bob-o' - l ink, bob-o ' - l ink , Sp ink , spank , sp ink . . ;

Fur the r ass ignments inc luded themes on topics such as "The Eng-lish Essayist I Like Best," and prim

little talks on current events. Mm h of the curriculum was pointless and stuffy. The whole atmosphere w is often like that of a kindergarten. Yet the school ranks among the best In the nation.

I was the first ex-fighter to re-enter high school in my home state of Ari-zona, but I have since talked, in sev-eral states, with nearly 100 other re-turned Marines and sailors and G l Joes. They agree in the opinions I express here.

We believe that schools, especially high schools, have not advanced suf-ficiently, but are tradition-bound.

We believe they are inefficient, wasting time and talent.

You say that young people are capable of learning only a little each day, and must have a four-year prep-school period. We Marine Raiders crowded that much learning into four months, and loved it. Young people are more intelligent than most teachers and parents like to admit ; they are capable of learning and of shouldering responsibility.

Education, as we ex-fighters i r r it, should serve two purposes. It should prepare us to earn a living, and prepare us for God-fearing citi-zenship.

For some boys and ijirls, the classics may be right on the beam. But why force a classical curriculum on those of us who arc not fitted for it and will not respond to it in high school or college or anywhere in life?

Many returning soldiers will want and need intensive courses in practi-cal trades. Arrangements for these courses should be made now, before the boys start pouring home in big numbers. Courses of six weeks' to six

34 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

months' duration in such trades as welding, farming, carpentering, ma-chine-shop work, clerking in stores — even landscaping, barbering should be offered. Then our men can fit into peacetime industry quickly, leaving Longfellow and Shakespeare elective for those who want them.

I recommend more manual classes for those of us who lean toward the ''physical" side of life; more direct, practical learning. Why isn't it sensi-ble for western high schools to offer short courses, for instance, in cattle ranching, applied farming and other vocational subjects? Returned sol-diers who learned superior warfare in a few months could also learn ranch-ing in a short season, and few of them can afford four years of college, or can tolerate it emotionally after years of war.

Why couldn't a high school offer store clerking and management in a store of its own where the students could actually sell? Why couldn't we operate a small school movie theater on a business basis; and a restaurant, drugstore, laundry and cleaning shop, bank, even beauty parlor?

Are these recommendations too ambitious? When we Raiders talked about life back home and how we hoped to improve it, we didn't think so.

You adults cry out about juvenile delinquency. Why then, in the name of common sense, may we not have religious teaching and leadership in public schools? Not sectarian, but on

general morals and conduct. In the Raiders, we had fellows with all kinds of religious faiths, and we swapped ideas. But we all prayed to the same God. Colonel Carlson would talk with us about religion and life as he saw it, and ask us to express our views. It did us more good than any-thing. Why can't we have these dis-cussion periods in high school? Why is God so unwelcome in our school-rooms?

It may be that I 'm beating my gums too much about these things, but I had several close friends die in my arms, and I made promises to them about what I'd work for back home. I remember my pal Chauncey.

We were finally coming out of the jungle on Guadalcanal. Chauncey and I were rear guards, staying back with a machine gun to cover our withdrawal. He and I had already talked things out, knowing the slim chance we had of staying alive.

"If you get back, Mudhole," he said, "don't you go home and be a PFC [that means 'poor frightened civilian']. You try to be a gung ho citizen. You be a leader in all the good things, like the Colonel said."

"Ditto for you, Chaunce," I said. I remember what Chauncey —

who can never come back — and all of us Raiders used to think and talk about. All we ask is that you home folk forgive us if we sometimes seem too cocky, and that you help us realize at least some part of our ideals.

'here is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final. — Phyllis Bottome, Strange Fruit (Houghton Mifflin)

Publ ic o p i n i o n — t h a t m e a n s y o u and m e — c a n he lp immeasurably i n s tepping-up Congressional efficiency

We Mus t Modernize CONGRESS if By George E. Outland

M e m b e r of the House of Representat ives f r o m California

CRITICISM of Congress by the peo-ple is not new, but of late Congress has begun to criticize

itself. Our national legislature has In-come sharply aware of the need of bringing its machinery up to date. More than 50 resolutions calling for reform were introduced in the 78th Congress, which ended in December, and reorganization along modern lines will be one of the chief concerns of the new Congress. The public thinks of Congress largely in terms of what happens on the floors of the Senate and the House. The real work, however, is done in commit-tees, and it is with the committee sys-tem that changes must start.

Frank Knox, late Secretary of the Navy, was an extremely busy man. Yet when Congress decided to inves-tigate a Navy contract, Secretary Knox was haled up to Capitol Hill not once but four different times to tell exactly the same story to four different Congressional committees! Jesse Jones is reported to have ap-y-s^flplwfra - f f f f i i - f - t t

LONC a s tudent of government problems, George E. O u t l a n d received his M . A . f rom Harvard and his Ph .D . in educat ion in gov-ernment from Yale . After teaching several years at Yale and at Santa Barbara (Calif . ) State College, he was e lected to Congress in 1942 as a D e m o c r a t from the 11 th Dis-trict of California; he was re-elected in 1944.

peared 18 different times before iB different Congressional committees -to deliver the same two-hour speech.

Today there are 47 standing com-mittees in the House and 33 in the Senate; moreover, there are many temporary committees. No wonder the New York Times refers to "our hydra-headed Congress." Senator I-a Foliette told the Senate last year that "hardly a day has gone by during the present long and arduous session of the Congress when I have not had to decide which one of several very im-portant committees I would a t tend."

The Maloney-Monroney resolution, adopted at the close of the latest ses-sion of Congress, creates a bipartisan committee composed of six ineml» i » from the Senate and six from the House to study the problems ol reor-ganization and make definite re< 0111-mendations at the end of 90 da v..

There are several possible solutions to the committee problem. One that will appeal to the common sense of the American peo;>lr calls for ten or a dozen joint or par.tllcl committees of both Houses. Much time now wasted could be saved and such an arrange-ment would enable the two chambers to work together with greater under-standing.

However, reform will make little progress until the American people as

3S

a whole demand greater efficiency of their Congress. Reducing the number of committees would mean reducing the number of committee chairman-ships. The prestige of a committee chairmanship is the climax in the career of a Congressman; there are few who will vote to reduce their own chances for such a position — and few chairmen who will vote to abol-ish the position already theirs. More-over, each committee chairman is allowed extra clerical help; short-handed as each Congressman is, to become a committee chairman is to obtain a more adequate staff.

This problem of staff is becoming increasingly serious. One of the keen-est students of Congress, Dr. George B. Galloway, chairman of the Com-mittee on Congress of the American Political Science Association, con-tends that of the 80 standing commit-tees not more than six have staffs sufficiently expert to cope with and to evaluate the testimony of either ad-ministrative officials or lobbyists. My own committee on Banking and Cur-rency must pass on all legislation concerning the Office of Price Ad-ministration, the Federal Deposit In-surance Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Credit Corporation, the Home Own-ers Loan Corporation, and the many aspects of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Yet our committee has no attorneys, no special consultants, no expert to whom we can turn for evaluation of testimony, preparation of material, or legal interpretation.

Congressman Monroney of Okla-homa points out that each of 145 federal departments and bureaus em-

February

ploys more people than there are on the entire Congressional staff. For example, the Office of Indian Affairs spends more than twice as much to supervise the nation's Indians as it costs to operate Congress.

To meet requirements it would not be necessary for committees to create permanent staff additions. There is now provided by the Library of Con-gress a little-known Legislative Ref-erence Service. This is composed of experts who are able to render re-search assistance on questions of im-portance that arise before various committees. Such a service could be greatly enlarged. Thus committees which from time to time needed greater staff help might turn to the Service, drawing from a pool of competent students of government problems maintained under impar-tial auspices.

Likewise a Constituents Inquiry Service under the Library of Con-gress would immediately remove from individual Representatives and Sena-tors the burden of handling endless trifling requests, and demands which overwhelm them in a mass of detail and prevent them from adequately performing their major duties.

One Representative hurried back to his office to find 96 letters awaiting him, among which were the follow-ing requests: A C h a m b e r of C o m m e r c e w a n t e d h i m t o g e t busy "right n o w to lift gasol ine a n d tire rat ioning ." A de termined y o u n g w o m a n d e m a n d e d that he instruct the Army to transfer her b o y fr iend f rom Afr ica to a service post she n a m e d back h o m e . A c l u b w o m a n w a n t e d " s o m e in forma-t ion o n wor ld p r o d u c t i o n . "

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945

A polit ician w a n t e d a portrait of the President personal ly autographed " f r o m Frank to Wi l l i e ."

T h e principal speaker at a polit ical m e e t -ing w a n t e d to k n o w h o w long the w a r would last a n d h o w m u c h it w o u l d cost.

" T a x p a y e r " w a n t e d h i m to put an e n d "to lend-lease gifts to foreigners a n d other immoral p e o p l e . "

"Amer ican m o t h e r " urged h i m not to vote for postwar cooperat ion "unless they d o w h a t w e say ." *

If y o u th ink th is list is a n e x a g g e r a -tion, I h a s t e n t o assure y o u t h a t it is not . M y o w n co l l ec t ion of s t r a n g e requests a l r e a d y fills several fo lders , a n d is g r o w i n g dai ly . L e g i t i m a t e re-quests a n y C o n g r e s s m a n is h a p p y to a t t e m p t to m e e t . T h o s e ask ing h i m to " p l e a s e s e n d m e a rock f r o m C h e s a p e a k e B a y to a d d to m y rock garden" o r d e m a n d i n g that h e "see that s l iced b r e a d is restored t o the A m e r i c a n p e o p l e or I shal l v o t e for your o p p o n e n t nex t t i m e " a r e t i m e -c o n s u m i n g , t o put it m i l d l y . A l l re-quests for i n f o r m a t i o n or a c c o m -m o d a t i o n s , i n c l u d i n g m a n y t h a t are reasonable , c o u l d we l l be referred to a C o n s t i t u e n t s I n q u i r y Service .

O t h e r s teps are n e e d e d , h o w e v e r , to r e d u c e t h e d e m a n d s n o w m a d e u p o n a C o n g r e s s m a n ' s t ime . P l a c i n g all post o f f i ces u n d e r Civ i l S e r v i c e w o u l d save t h e w o r r y a n d e n e r g y n o w spent o n n o m i n a t i n g postmasters . Further t i m e c o u l d be s a v e d b y the transfer of a l l A n n a p o l i s a n d W e s t Point a p p o i n t m e n t s to Civi l Serv i ce or to the A c a d e m i e s themse lves . T h e

* Associated Press article by Frank I. Weller in The Washington Post, March 19, 1 9 4 4 .

37 g r a n t i n g of s e l f - g o v e r n m e n t t o the Distr ic t of C o l u m b i a w o u l d r e m o v e ;t t h o r n f r o m t h e s ide of m a n y a h a r -assed C o n g r e s s m a n — a n d f r o m t h e s ide of the c i t y of W a s h i n g t o n t o o !

U n d e r ex i s t ing p r o c e d u r e t h e first a n d th ird T u e s d a y s of e a c h m o n t h a r e reserved b y the C l a i m s C o m m i t t e e s i n b o t h H o u s e a n d S e n a t e to h e a r pr ivate c l a i m s aga ins t the G o v e r n -m e n t . Persons w h o h a v e b e e n i n -j u r e d by a n A r m y truck or h a v e s o m e o t h e r persona l injury c l a i m a g a i n s t the G o v e r n m e n t present the ir cases . I n the o p i n i o n of m a n y C o n g r e s s m e n , the C l a i m s C o m m i t t e e s m i g h t w e l l b e a b o l i s h e d a n d a n a d m i n i s t r a t i v e a g e n c y t o d o its w o r k set u p . T h i s w o u l d take a w a y , as S e n a t o r L a Fo l l e t te p o i n t s out , " t h e b u r d e n s o m e task of inves t i ga t ing p e t t y c l a i m s a n d i n v o k i n g t h e c u m b e r s o m e p r o c e d u r e of pass ing p r i v a t e bil ls t h r o u g h t h e H o u s e a n d S e n a t e . "

A m o n g t h e cri t ic isms of C o n g r e s s h e a r d m o s t o f t e n is that there is t o o l i tt le c o o p e r a t i o n b e t w e e n o u r n a -t ional l eg i s la ture a n d the A d m i n i s t r a -t ion. S o m e t i m e s the b l a m e is p l a c e d o n the " b u r e a u c r a t s , " s o m e t i m e s o n the N e w D e a l ; less o f t en o n a w i l l f u l Congress itself. H e r e aga in C o n g r e s s is a w a r e o f a p r o b l e m to be s o l v e d w i t h i n its o w n ranks, a n d the s t i rr ings of so lut ion are a l ready n o t i c e a b l e .

Representat ive Kcfauvrr of T e n n e s -see suggests a m e n d i n g the rules of t h e H o u s e to provide for a quest ion p e r i o d a t w h i c h h e a d s of e x e c u t i v e d e p a r t -ments a n d independent agencies w o u l d b e requested to a p p e a r a n d a n s w e r ques t ions — s o m e w h a t l ike t h e q u e s -t ion h o u r in the H o u s e of C o m m o n s .

O n e pract ica l e x a m p l e of c o o p -erat ion b e t w e e n the leg is lat ive a n d

w e m u s t m o d e r n i z e c o n g r e s s

40 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

executive branches has already dem-onstrated its merit. T h e House Com-m i t t e e o n P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d Grounds supervises the vast public housing and federal works program in war-congested areas. T h e first Tuesday of each m o n t h there appear before it John Blandford, Jr., N H A administra-tor, General Fleming, F W A adminis-trator, and the key assistants on their respective staffs. A mutual give-and-take follows. Chairman L a n h a m asks questions about particular complaints or problems that have arisen, and he gets frank answers. Such meet ings have resulted in better understanding on the part of both Congressmen and administrators; potential friction has been averted and governmental effi-ciency has been increased. T h e exam-ple set by Fritz L a n h a m and his com-mittee might well be fol lowed by other committees in both Houses.

There are even plans afoot also by which Congress could improve its public appearance. Dr. Gal loway suggests that more frank recognition be given of the fact that the impor-tant work of Congress is done in committees. Therefore, let the bulk of the calendar be given over to commit -tee meetings, open to the public, and let Congress meet to vote only one night a week. Business could be cleared wi th dignity and decorum. Similarly Congressional debate, in Dr. Galloway's opinion, could be telescoped into one or two evenings a week, wi th Congressional leaders dis-cussing legislative issues before their o w n visible audience and the radio audience as well.

Neither the problems facing Con-gress nor the solutions are l imited to Congress; both are for the American people as a whole to face. W e shall never see our national legislative body modernized until the demand has reached the point where Repre-sentatives and Senators can no longer afford to ignore it. T o this end there is m u c h that w e as individual citizens can do.

W e can familiarize ourselves with the problems and proposed solutions. There is more fresh material available in books and publications. O n c e you have posted yourself, do not hesitate to let your Representative know that you are aware of needed changes, and that you are concerned with his awareness to them. It is easy to sit back and d a m n "bureaucracy"; the essential thing is to help bring about changes which will prevent bureau-cratic dominat ion in the first place.

Our Congress is not composed of supermen, armed wi th extraordinary powers of vision. Nor is it composed of "political panhandlers and trim-mers." It is made u p of ordinary m e n w h o are sincerely interested in do ing the j o b which you sent them there to do. T h e y work hard at that job. Your encouragement and your suggestions will help them to remodel Congress and enable it to function more efficiently.

Totalitarianism starts with the de-cline and neglect of the legislative body. T h e sensitiveness of the people to their Congress is one of the surest guarantees against the failure of democracy.

Triis Is My Problem"

W o m a n

"People tell m e ti l ings be-cause they know I ' m in-terested and won' t be shocked ," says America's leading conf idante

Condensed from Independent Hildegarde D olson

APRETTY young journalism stu-dent recently asked Dorothy Dix, dean of columnists, for

advice on how to become a famous newspaperwoman. When Miss Dix pointed out that it was usual to get a job as a reporter, work like an under-paid beaver for five or 20 years, and then hope for the best, her visitor protested, "But I'd be willing to write those simple little things you do i n your c o l u m n . "

"Those simple little things" appear daily in 215 newspapers on three continents and are read by approxi-mately 30,000,000 people. Now in its 49th year, her column is the oldest continuous newspaper feature in the United States. And Miss Dix, who has never missed a deadline, shows no sign of being winded.

Skeptics who never read the col-umn think of Dorothy Dix as an arch sentimentalist who ladles out advice to the not quite bright. Ac-tually her syndicated talks have touched on every emotional problem fit to print; her mail has included letters from prominent businessmen, thousands of everyday husbands and wives, even a Supreme Court judge.

Published by The National Federation of B t8rg Broadway, New York. 23, N.

Ministers send her copies of ser-mons based on her columns. A pro-fessor of mental therapy at Johns Hopkins advised women tortured by doubts and fears to read Dorothy Dix daily. In recognition of her tonic qualities, the Medical Women's Na-tional Association made her an hon-orary member.

In dealing with her vast public, Miss Dix is about as archly senti-mental as a mustard plaster. To bick-ering parents she has stated, "Your domestic spats aren't a parlor game — they're a crime against your chil-dren." When a girl wrote, " O n my first date with him I had two cocktails, then wine with dinner and brandy afterward. Did I do wrong?" Miss Dix answered: "Probably." She ad-vised the wife of an unfaithful sold ier to hold onto him until after the war. "In case he should be killed you would be entitled to his insurance money."

Even her most devout fans might be introduced to Mis. Elizabeth Gilmer of New Orleans without the foggiest notion that they were meeting Amer-ica's most famous confidante. She took the pen name of Dorothy Dix at a time when it was considered slightly indecent for a lady to sign her

1siness and Professional Women's Clubs, Inc., '. (Independent Woman, January, '45) 39

4P right name in print and winsome al-literations like Fanny Farthingale adorned every Woman's Page.

Now in her 70's, Miss Dix com-plains, with complete justice, that magazine and newspaper pictures make her look fat and stuffy. Actu-ally, she looks like somebody's favor-ite granny: four feet 11 inches small, with bright blackberry eyes, and a young, breathless way of talking. When she laughs, which is often, she throws back her head and enjoys herself. In conversation she has an eager listening quality. Most of her friends and relatives call her Dorothy, while to the people who write her some 2000 letters each week she is "Dear Miss Dix — This is my problem."

In a recent mail these were a few of the problems: A brother quarreling with his sister over an inheritance wrote, "We have agreed to abide by your decision, whatever it is." A 14-year-old boy who idolized his father had found a love letter sent to his mother by another man; should he talk it over with her or run away from home? A widow of 42 asked if she should marry a man of 34. (The an-swer: "Go ahead. A man of 34 is old enough to know his own mind, and I'd guess from your letter he's show-ing superior judgment.") A wife whose husband had been unfaithful for years asked if it would be better for the children's sake to stay with him or get a divorce. Often Miss Dix casts her vote for separation. She has blasted frequendy against rearing children in a home split by bitterness.

In letters from women, the two big-gest problems are mother-in-law trouble and "My husband never shows me any affection." Men com-

February

plain oftenest about nagging. Teen-agers are usually concerned with dates. One wrote: "Please send me your definition of a respectable wom-an. I must have it by next week-end."

Every mail contains touchingly grateful letters: "You saved me from making a horrible mess of my life," or " I thought you'd want to know how happily it all turned out, thanks to you." Only rarely does advice back-fire, as in the case of the husband who said: "You advised me to praise her cooking, but I can't rave indefi-nitely about canned soup." Or the woman who complained: " I followed your description of a perfect lady. As a result, I sit home every night."

Dorothy Dix was born Elizabeth Meriwether, in 1870. The Meriweth-ers had a 1500-acre horse-breeding farm on the Kentucky-Tennessee boundary, but like most landowning southern families during the Recon-struction period they were desper-ately poor. Schooling was casual — offered by genteel spinsters whose only educational qualifications were that their fathers had been colonels with Beauregard. Fortunately a neigh-bor with a library started Elizabeth off on a diet of Dickens, Fielding and Thackeray. "Made me distrust mushy writing," the columnist says. Her mother taught her "to speak the truth, fear God, and remember that gentlefolk don't whine."

At 18 Elizabeth put up her hair and married George Gilmer, a hand-some gallant-about-town. Within a year he was afflicted by an incurable mental disease, dying long afterward in an asylum. The shock of his illness and worry over how to support him cracked Elizabeth's health, and she

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

" d e a r m i s s d i x t h i s i s m y p r o b l e m "

went to a small resort on the Gulf. Here she worked on the theory: "When you're in great trouble get interested in something new," and set about writing short stories. The first consisted mostly of adjectives. But the fifth had nouns and a plot. When she showed it to her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Eliza Nicholson, pub-lisher of the New Orleans Picayune, her ears tingled to those exquisite words, "We'll buy it ."

Excited by the magnificent pay-ment of three silver dollars, she begged for a job on the Picayune. Starting at five dollars a week, Mrs. Gilmer jumped eagerly into collect-ing vital statistics. Gradually she got other assignments, and within three years she was writing a theater col-umn and editing the Woman's Page.

In 1896 the Picayune's managing editor, Major Nathaniel Burbank, de-cided it would be nice to have a signed column for women, and asked Mrs. Gilmer to write it. She chose the name Dorothy because it sounded sensible; the Dix came from an old servant named Dick, whose wife al-ways addressed him in the plural. The Dorothy Dix Talks first appeared April 6, 1896, headed by an illustra-tion of a prim Gibson girl with high boned collar and 19-inch waist, bear-ing no resemblance to Miss Dix.

Her earliest columns blasted the well-bred theory that tears are a woman's chief weapon. No such thing, Miss Dix announced stoudy; men found tears merely "damp and tiresome." Women had as much right as men to propose, she wrote, "be-cause ladies are even more inter-ested in marriage." She urged wives to have outside interests and warned

them against "expecting husbands to act like the heroes in absurd novels." Years later when someone asked her whether her readers had been shocked by this ultramodern counsel she said, "You know, I think women were just waiting for advice like that ."

In 1900 Bruno Lessing, of Hearst's New York American, asked her if she'd do some editorials on love and mar-riage. Miss Dix, who never sneezed at a chance to augment her income, hurriedly filled the order. A week later the American wired her an offer to come to New York. She declined: Major Burbank was ill, and depended on her. But after the Major's death, the next year, she was off to New York.

In addition to her three Talks a week, Hearst had expansive plans for her. He talked for an hour on the fascination of true-life murders. As he painted a picture of opportunities for a woman feature writer in this field, she fairly panted with anticipation.

The city editor assigned her to cover a murder in New Jersey, a child killed by its stepmother. Arriv-ing in Jersey City, she hired a gig and asked the driver to "just go around for awhile." In an hour's leisurely trot she learned plenty. The driver, it turned out, was a jilted swain of the murderess and was delighted to pro-vide the woman's life history. He also dug up a dandy set of the killer's family photographs. For a beginner it wasn't bad — the American scooped every other New York paper. In the next 15 years she became the most famous of the sob sisters, and Arthur Brisbane called her " the greatest living woman reporter."

She has said that those years of murder-reporting gave her a chance

42 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

to see human nature turned inside out. " I learned to keep my intuition pared down to the quick so that I could almost read a criminal's mind."

This talent came in handy during a sensational vice trial, when the most important witness, a member of the oldest profession, stubbornly refused to testify against her boss, head of the vice ring. The frantic district attorney sent out an S.O.S. for Dorothy Dix. "Do you think you could make her open up?" he asked. Three hours later Miss Dix had a confession that sent the vice heads up the river. "People tell me things because they know I 'm interested and won't be shocked," she explained.

By 1905, subject matter for the Dorothy Dix Talks was falling like manna in letters from readers. Men began to write her almost as many letters as women. Basically, readers' problems were the same then as now: mothers-in-law, stingy husbands, drab-ness in marriage, jealousy.

As the public showed an increasing tendency to lean on her, she felt a deeper responsibility and resented the gory assignments that took up so much of her time. In 1917, when the Wheeler Syndicate offered her a chance to do the Talks on a full-time basis, with no corpses attached, she grabbed it and went back to New Orleans to do her writing. Since then her columns, currently handled by Bell Syndicate, have appeared six times weekly.

Each morning she dictates columns and letters in her apartment over-looking New Orleans' Audubon Park. Her close friend and chief assistant, Mrs. Stanley Arthur, has been with her for 18 years. Routine inquiries —

such as "How can I be popular?" — are answered by printed forms. Only letters of general interest are used for the column. For example, if there are 30 "My husband leaves me alone every night" letters in a morning's mail, Miss Dix firmly takes up the subject of erring husbands. Letters that discuss problems too intimate to appear in print get a personal reply.

The war has brought its own new set of questions. When middle-aged women complain that "he is working in a war plant with lots of attractive young girls," Miss Dix answers: "Relax. Outside of a monastery he's bound to see pretty girls wherever he goes." Women who take advan-tage of service men make her splut-tering mad. To a soldier who had been tricked into an engagement, she issued this rousing command: "Don't let this girl make you marry her just because she's maneuvered you onto a hot spot. \ \ rite to her plainly that you never proposed, and don't worry any more about it." A soldier ad-vised like that could sleep like a baby.

Until the war Miss Dix traveled often, and her home is crowded with elaborately carved furniture, tapes-tries, Oriental screens, and statuary. Displaying a handsome bed reputedly dating back to lusty Louis XIV, Miss Dix said happily to a visitor, "I'll bet I 'm the only respectable woman who ever slept in this bed."

On a recent drive with a friend, Miss Dix waved cheerily to a passing truckload of soldiers. The soldiers all shouted back, "Hiya!"

"Dorothy," her companion chided her, "do you know those boys?"

"Well," said America's most fa-mous confidante, " I ought to."

They specialized in 'overcoming the impossible"

It Couldn't Be Done' -So the AAF Did It

Condensed from Skyways Air Marshal Sir William Welsh

K.C.B., D.S.C., R.A.F.

IITTLE by little, from September 1939 on, we of the Royal Air

^ Force have been finding out how to fight an air war. Starting vir-tually from scratch, from those first unrealistic days of showering leaflets through the autumn skies to the re-cent era of robot bombings, we have had to learn by trial and error. But just about the time you think you know it all, along comes a new idea. This happened to us when the Amer-ican Air Forces came over to join us.

American airmen have been gener-ous in saying that they have learned a lot about air fighting from the RAF. I would like to tell you of some of the things that we of the RAF have learned from them. We take our hats off to AAF performance in this war.

The Americans have shown a re-markable quality which, for lack of a precise word, I must call "overcom-ing the impossible." It is a combina-tion of imagination and resource that has helped to save hundreds of thou-sands of Allied lives. We have come to feel a healthy respect for the AAF at-titude toward that word "impossi-ble," which attitude, your fliers in-form us, stems strictly from Missouri.

Take daylight bombing — the Ger-mans had tried it and failed; so, briefly, had we. "Very well," the Americans told us, "you bomb by

night. We'll bomb by day. That way we can get round-the-clock conti-nuity !"

Their plan was to go directly after the industrial pinpoints representing vital links in German war industry. In cooperation with economists and the RAF, the Americans made up a list of these vital links, ranking priori-ties by an ingenious system that in-volved the "for want of a nail the battle was lost" principle. For exam-ple, they reasoned that German in-dustry could not be profitably bombed so long as German air power (desig-nated as objective No. 1) was there to defend it. German air power could not function without airframes, how-ever many engines they had. There-fore, if they could eliminate fighter airframe assembly factories, the de-fensive power of the Luftwaffe must rapidly be crippled and leave the whole of German industry exposed. Similarly, instead of going after indi-vidual concentrations of vehicles, they calculated that by eliminating fuel a creeping paralysis would be im-posed upon the whole of the enemy's fighting power. Therefore oil was posted as objective No. 2. And so on.

As an intellectual flight this was unassailable. But as a practical work-ing program we of the RAF viewed this American plan more with hope

Copyright 1945, Henry Pub. Co., 444 Madison Ave., New York. 22, N. Y. (Skyways, February, '4s)

44 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

than conviction. On both sides of the Atlantic, people filled with honest doubt were eager to point out the im-possibilities. How could day bombers hope to reach targets deep in Ger-many through successive belts of en-emy fighters? How could they, even if they reached the target and saw it through our misty European weather, hit it from 25,000 feet? And how, with every German fighter squadron sent to attack them, could they expect to run the gantlet home?

Yet they did. Never once was an American daylight mission turned back from its objective by enemy ac-tion. American airmen did fight their way successfully to the vital targets, they did hit them, and they did fight their way back.

In the course of this bombing of-fensive, the AAF overcame not only the obvious difficulties which people had been pointing out to them but countless others. When the Luftwaffe pilots, reflecting the alarm of the Nazi High Command, ganged up against the outnumbered "Forts" and sent American losses soaring, the AAF thought up answers faster than the Germans could raise question marks. They installed new turrets and new gun sights, they worked out new and baffling defense formations. They turned the tables on German rocket-carrying fighters by thinking up another "impossibility" — the long-range fighter plane, which has given Allied air power such an enor-mous advantage, and which, up to that time, had been regretfully dis-missed as a contradiction in terms.

It took time before these long-range jobs came streaming off the assembly lines. While they were waiting for

them the Americans accomplished another "impossibility" — installing detachable belly fuel tanks on short-range fighters that gave their bombers fighter-cover at least halfway to and from their targets.

This business of bomber escort brought up still another tough prob-lem. There had to be a way of as-sembling the complex aerial forma-tions. They could not assemble under the clouds because, with our tradi-tional European overcast, there is seldom room to maneuver air ar-madas sometimes 200 miles long con-verging from bases all over southern England. The technical difficulties involved in climbing through clouds to rendezvous at 25,000 feet could only be exceeded, perhaps, by going out in a London fog to find a street you didn't know from a map you didn't have. The Americans say that some credit for overcoming this one goes to Britain's radar inventions, but in RAF circles there is not much doubt where the lion's share of the credit belongs.

When you look today at the abun-dantly equipped AAF, that smoothly working machine which is helping to eviscerate Germany, don't lose sight of the price that was paid for it in the f 1 1 1 1 t 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

AIR MARSHAL WELSH, one of the top m e n in the Royal Air Force, was until recently Britain's air repre-sentative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washing-ton. Since 1914 he has flown over most of the world, and has served in the R A F

Fighter C o m m a n d , on the Air Council , and with General Eisenhower throughout the planning and execution of the N o r t h Afri-can campaign.

'945 " I T COULDN'T BE D O N E " SO THE AAF DID IT 45

blood, sweat and tears of the pioneer handful of American bomber crews. For 18 long, tough months these men were thwarted by lack of planes, lack of crews and lack of equipment. They wanted at least iooo heavy bombers for every operation, but their bomb-ers were perpetually diverted to other theaters. The crews flew themselves to the breaking point. At the end of one long offensive they were so bone-tired that they could hardly crawl into their bombers to face another 12 hours of incessant fighting five miles high. But they did. They outfought and outlasted the German fighter pi-lots. Their quality through these months of discouragement was so compelling that it moved Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Trench-ard, to say:

T h e y h a v e des troyed hundreds of v i tal factories. T h e y h a v e penetrated far in to G e r m a n y . T h e y h a v e fought great batt les , d a y af ter d a y , all the w a y to their targets, o v e r their targets, a n d back f r o m their targets , destroy-ing m a n y m o r e e n e m y aircraft than they h a v e lost themse lves . N o o n e w h o has seen the air p h o t o g r a p h s c a n d o u b t that this day l ight b o m b i n g is hav ing a most devas ta t ing ef fect o n vi tal work-shops. Were this Force doubled what would it not do?

Six months later the whole world found out what it could do. In Feb-ruary 1944 the AAF staged and won a battle that will go down in history. The outlook was grim, the weather at its worst, the air war dropping daily behind schedule. The invasion date, irrevocably committed, was rushing toward us. German plane production was rising. Then came the electrify-ing event. Without warning, there

arrived six days of good bombing weather in one week — a most un-usual sequence in winter — coupled with an unprecedented striking force of some 3000 heavy bombers, newly accumulated in England and Italy to prepare for D Day. After all the months of discouragement, the AAF had the planes, the plans, the weather. Here was Opportunity. It didn't have to knock twice.

General Spaatz sailed in with ev-erything he had, bombers, fighters, reserves. The RAF Bomber Com-mand simultaneously used the fine spell to make crushing attacks on German centers of production by night. And, as Virgil wrote in 30 B.C., "Germany heard a clashing of arms all over the sky; the Alps trem-bled with uncommon earthquakes, never did lightnings fall in greater quantities from a serene sky or dire thunders blaze so often."

When the weather broke, after six tremendous days, the back of the German air power had been broken too. Smashed all the way from the North Sea to Austria were the care-fully dispersed assembly complexes. Blown to pieces in the air, on the ground, wherever they could be found, were the best planes of the Luftwaffe, many of them baited out of their hiding places by one huge American daylight attack over Ber-lin. There were Americans over Ber-lin that day with bitter memories of comrades shot down in the outnum-bered raids of 1943. They had a score to settle — and they settled it. Ger-man planes were shot out of the sky at the rate of well over 100 a day, 642 for the whole six-day period.

German air power was so com-

46 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

pletely broken that by D Day, four months later, vast fleets of Allied ships were able to unload on the Nor-mandy beachheads with practically no air opposition. But for this aerial preparation, in the words of General Eisenhower, "the invasion could not logically have been undertaken."

The resultant saving of Allied lives seems to me far the most important contribution of air power to this war. It is all very well to say, "Victory shall be ours, whatever the cost!" — but what about the tragic cost in dead, mutilated and missing men? In World War I, the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele alone cost us i ,000,000 men in a few weeks, and the only visible result was the gain or loss of a few hundred yards of mud. In this war the total Allied

casualties in Western Europe from D Day to the fall of Aachen totaled less than 200,000 — sad enough, but far less than might have been ex-pected considering the enormous amount of death-dealing equipment invented since the last war. I am con-vinced that the new factor which has kept down our casualties is air power.

The whole air war has been a tre-mendous job, a long job. And it is not yet over. I should hate to have to think of it without the contribution of the USAAF.

Together we have sweated out what Thomas Paine called "times that try men's souls." And we in the RAF set a high value indeed on a partnership that was born in ad-versity and which, thank God, is maturing in victory.

The Gold 3adge of Courage One of the stories which crop up most frequently

these days in all sections of the country is that of the young man in civilian clothcs who offers a woman his seat on a crowded bus. She rudely refuses to take his seat, saying he ought to be fighting with her sons in France. "When you write them, madam," he retorts, "ask them to look for the arm I left over there." This tale typifies the embarrassment to which hun-dreds of our returning veterans are being subjected daily — and almost always un-necessarily.

For, upon receiving his final honorable discharge, every veteran is awarded the special gold lapel button illustrated above. This, badge of honor is recognized by all too few of us. One young veteran of 18

months of mud and blood in the European Theater continued to wear his uniform for two months after his discharge even though he knew it was illegal to do so. "I don't want to be called a slacker just be-cause people don't know what a discharge button looks like," he explained.

Since the beginning of the war, over 1,000,000 officers and enlisted men have been honorably discharged from the Army alone — and thousands more are returning to civilian life each month. These men deserve recognition for what they have done. It is not easy for them to readjust themselves to civilian life. We can help them by recognizing the Honorable Discharge Button when we see it. Remem-ber — any man who wears it has offered his life for his country.

-And tfie DeafSfiall Hear Condensed from Hygeia

Lois Alattox Miller

THE young woman in the hospital bed listened intently, fascinated by the commonplace sounds

that penetrated the heavy bandages swathing her head. The drip-drip-drip of the lavatory faucet, a murmur of distant voices, the clattering of the trolley car in the street — these sounds were more beguiling to her than music from another sphere. For the first time in almost 15 years she could hear. Skillful surgery had opened a tiny oval window in the bony cap-sule of her inner ear, readmitting all the magic of the world of sound.

The daring, delicate fenestration operation already has been performed in more than 2000 cases, some as long as seven years ago. These patients have continued under the surveil-lance of medical experts who doubted that the cure of deafness would last. For the trick is not only to cut the tiny window but also to prevent stub-born Nature from closing it again. Last year a committee of the Ameri-can Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology conducted an ex-haustive investigation of the fenestra-tion technique and its long-range re-sults. Dr. Marvin Jones reports: "My belief six years ago was that the re-sults of the fenestration operation, while dramatic, were not permanent. Recently I have seen patients whose hearing, before operation five years ago, was below the useful range, and

A miraculous operation holds prom-ise of deliverance from the lonely world of deafness

who now can hear low whispers." The human hearing apparatus is

extremely complex and surrounded by mystery. Entering sound waves strike the eardrum — a tiny mem-brane that separates the outer from the middle ear. Attached to the inside of the eardrum is one end of a chain of three tiny bones called (because of their shapes) the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup. They vibrate in sequence. The footplate of the stirrup fits into a window in the bony capsule which separates the middle ear from the inner ear. Through this window the vibrations of the stirrup are transmitted to the fluid of the inner ear. There, im-pulses touch off a harplike set of auditory nerves and are transmitted finally to the hearing area of the brain.

Things frequently go haywire some-where along the line, resulting in the tragedy of deafness. In young chil-dren, for instance, an excessive growth of adenoids may block the Eustachian tube. Removal of the adenoids usu-ally restores normal hearing. At the other end of the life span deafness may be caused by degeneration of the auditory nerve. For this there is no cure.

Between these extremes lies the larger percentage of the 15,000,000

Copyright 1945, American Medical Astn., 5 75 N. Dearborn St., Chicago 10, III. (Hygeia, February, '45) 47

48

deaf or partially deaf persons in this country. Their deafness is caused by a disease called otosclerosis. It involves no pain, no middle-ear infection, and produces no symptom more alarming than ringing or buzzing in the ears and progressive difficulty in hearing. What happens is that a bony growth slowly closes the tiny window around the stirrup until the footplate is held fast. Thus no vibra-tions reach the fluid of the inner ear. The auditory nerve inside may remain perfectly heal thy. But sound never gets through to the nerve for transmis-sion to the brain.

For the past century famous ear specialists have puzzled over this maddening situation. In 1876 a German surgeon, Kessel, made the first attempt to loosen the stirrup from the closed window: deaf-ness vanished immediately, but soon the bony window closed again. Holm-gren, a Swedish doctor, sought to keep the window open by inserting a plastic peg, but this set up a foreign body re-action which caused new cell growth and closed the window even more tightly. Surgeons in half a dozen countries tried and discarded one technique after another.

Sourdille, a Frenchman, achieved a surgical miracle by delicately folding a flap of skin, thin as a spiderweb, over the new window to carry vibra-tions from the eardrum to the inner ear, then operated repeatedly to keep the window open until the "regener-ating process of the bone becomes gradually exhausted."

February

Other surgeons discovered that the bone growth usually started around microscopic splinters made while drilling the window. Using micro-scopes and delicate swabs, they lo-cated and removed every splinter. Even then another factor defeated their efforts: the slightest trace of blood encouraged the growth of new tissue. So these pioneers developed a

virtually bloodless op-eration. But still the tiny window closed.

For all practical pur-poses the fenestration operation was a failure. Then the mystery of the ever-closing win-dow challenged the im-agination of a young New York ear surgeon, Dr. Julius Lempert. After 12 years of study

and clinical work, he was able to report in the July 1938 issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology a t echn ique t ha t sounded entirely too good to be true. Where Sourdille and others had oper-ated from behind the ear, Dr. Lempert made his approach directly into the aural cavity. Besides leading directly to the middle ear, this method in-volved the cutting of much less tis-sue. It not only reduced the chances of infection, but caused less inflam-iiKition, which was one of the chief causes of the tissue regrowth.

Upon reaching the bony capsule which contains the inner ear mecha-nism, Dr. Lempert used a tiny dental burr to carve an oval opening — slightly larger than a grain of rice — just above the old window. Then he used a fine gold burr to smooth and polish the opening — an important

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

. . . a n d t h e d e a f s h a l l h e a r 49 factor in preventing bone regenera-tion. Finally, he cleared away every last fragment of bone splinter.

Seeking a protective substance to line and cover the new opening, Lem-pert found the very thing he needed — right there along the path to the inner ear. It was a fine, smooth tissue called Shrapnell's membrane — a part of the eardrum. Lempert lifted up this membrane and fixed it in place so that it served both as a win-dowpane and frame for the new opening.

By 1941, Dr. Lempert had reported a new location for the little surgical window, and using this better tech-nique, by 1943 he had operated on 800 patients. In 70 percent of these cases practical hearing was restored. Other doctors trained under Lempert operated on approximately 600 more patients, and likewise cured deafness in about 70 percent of them.

But Lempert announced that 70 percent was not good enough. In-volved in the failures were complica-tions which he was sure he could re-move: inflammation of the labyrinth, damage to the hearing nerve, and the persistent closing of the window.

In the Archives of Otolaryngology for January 1945 he was able to an-nounce to the profession that the last complications had been eliminated. His report contained a startling fact: in order to keep the window open for hearing you must actually close it! To do so he has devised a method closely approximating Nature's own. A small piece of cartilage, taken from the outer ear, is shaped and inserted in the new opening, then the thin piece of Shrapnell's membrane is drawn over and made fast. The carti-

lage stopple serves as a new stirrup, capable of transmitting sound vibra-tions to the inner ear; it also prevents bone formation and possible damage to the auditory nerve.

The perfected fenestration tech-nique has been applied in about 50 cases, with practical hearing restored in all of them. The effects of bringing "stone deaf" people back into the world of sound are dramatic. The young woman whose story begins this article is typical. At 14 she be-came a problem child — sullen, in-attentive, disobedient. Her grades at school fell off. Examination by the family doctor disclosed that she was hard of hearing. The family sent her from specialist to specialist, until they were forced to accept the diagnosis: "Otosclerosis, with progressive deaf-ness. No effective treatment."

At 24 she was totally deaf in one ear, had only 60 percent hearing in the other. Lip reading helped. Then a hearing aid was fitted. But even these "crutches" failed to compen-sate for all the disadvantages of the lonely world of the deaf.

Then, last year, her doctor sug-gested the Lempert operation.

"You have no idea what a thrill it was to hear the first sound after that magic window was opened!" she ex-claims. "One doesn't realize what a noisy world we live in. Sounds in the night, which the normal person ac-cepts or ignores, would waken me terrified. Then, when I came to my senses, I would lie there gloating over each one.

"Out of the hospital, it was even more wonderful. At home I heard my little daughter's voice for the first time. Now I am waiting for an even

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t 5° greater experience: when my hus-band gets back from overseas I will hear him speak. Our life will be so much happier!"

During the past seven years, Dr. Lempert has trained about 30 sur-geons to do the basic operation. Re-cently many of them have returned to his New York clinic to learn the new technique. The operation now is being performed by skilled otolaryn-gologists at such medical centers as the Mayo Clinic, the Harvard Medi-cal School, Western Reserve Medical School, Cleveland's Crile Clinic, Presbyterian and Michael Reese hos-pitals in Chicago, Northwestern Uni-versity, University of Michigan, Uni-versity of Pittsburgh, the Lahey Clinic in Boston, the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Cen-ter in New York.

Dr. Lempert and his colleagues stress two important facts.

First, the fenestration operation is intended only for "properly selected cases." Careful preoperative exami-nation must determine that the hear-ing nerve itself is alive and intact. Only then will opening the window accomplish the miracle of restored

hearing. From the records of several thousand cases, they conclude that 98 percent of cases of deafness caused by otosclerosis can be cured.

Second, the operation must be per-formed only by a surgeon who has great natural surgical ability and who has spent months, even years, learn-ing and practicing the technique under competent instruction.

In the hands of the expert, how-ever, the fenestration operation is a blessing that has been practically purged of all incidental dangers. The chance of infection is negligible. The operation is bloodless and painless. Functional hearing is restored usually by the fenestration of one ear; thus the patient is left with a "spare" ear which need be opened only if abso-lutely necessary.

For the first time in medical history the doctor no longer needs to inform a patient suffering from otosclerosis that there is no cure, no hope but lip reading or a hearing aid. Just as cataracts no longer mean sightless eyes, so otosclerosis ceases to con-demn its victims to the world of si-lence. The medical profession thus has come a long way nearer to fulfill-ing the ancient promise that "the blind shall see, and the deaf shall hear."

Reverse Logic » ONE of our ne ighbors , instead of ca t ch ing u p o n his s leep on hol idays , a l w a y s arose at his usual t ime . M a n y of us t h o u g h t he was ted his oppor -tuni ty , b u t I reversed m y o p i n i o n after hear ing h i m greet one s l eepy-eyed la te riser, " A m a n w h o w o n ' t g e t u p to loaf is t o o lazy to enjoy i t ."

— Contributed by Margaret Westra

"Hello, Mom/ I'm Home/" Condensed from Coronet + Gerold Frank

AT AN East Coast debarkation £ \ point the kid in a soiled O.D.

-A- uniform comes out of the bar-racks-like building, and he's bawling. He is big, husky — and tough. Any-one can see that. He went through the terrors of assault landings, and fox-holes, and bombings; but here, today, he cried.

For that drab structure houses Tele-phone Exchange X — a secret center which never receives an incoming call, but from which pours day and night an endless stream of impas-sioned and delighted speech to par-ents and wives and sweethearts in every part of the United States.

In it now, jamming a square of 20 booths, are GIs like the kid, each gripping a telephone with terrific in-tensity, and talking, talking — mak-ing their first calls home after landing on American soil. And like him, they find it almost too much to take — the sheer joy of hearing the familiar voices, of saying at last, "Hello, Mom! Sure it's me. I 'm back. Yeah, Mom . . They can't disclose where they're calling from, but they can say that they'll be walking in the front door about suppertime tonight.

The telephone company admits discreetly that something like 1500 calls have been made during one Q4-hour period. No booth is out of use more than 45 seconds — the time it takes the chief operator to an-nounce over a public-address system,

"Corporal Smith calling Ashtabula, Ohio, please go to Booth 4," and Cor-poral Smith to crush the cigarette he's been nervously smoking and dash into Booth 4. Sometimes, because lines are busy, he may have been waiting for hours.

Corporal Smith sits down tensely, and glues the receiver to his ear. Then he hears the voice — mother, wife or girl friend — and his face lights up. He speaks with his lips almost touch-ing the mouthpiece, in an intimacy embarrassing to watch. He turns his back to the door and crowds himself into a corner of the booth — squirm-ing, chuckling, laughing aloud, shov-ing his battle helmet back on his head.

If he's like most GIs he won't talk himself out in less than seven min-utes, and when he finally emerges he'll appear slightly punch drunk. If not red-eyed, he'll grin at everyone he passes, or he'll mumble to himself; or he'll be silent and dreamy with the peace that comes when you know that everyone is all right at home and nothing has changed.

The switchboard girls are witness to all this, and sometimes a little choked-up themselves. But none of that comes through to those at the other end of the wire. All you hear is a calm "Is this Mrs. William Smith? We have a collect call for you from Corporal John Smith. Will you ac-cept the charges?"

Copyright 1944, Esquire, Inc., 919 .V Michigan Ave., Chicago 11, III. (1Coronet, December, '44)

54 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

There's a gasp and then a breath-less "Where is he? Where is he calling from?"

The regulation answer is a formal "Due to military regulations we are not permitted to give you that infor-mation." Then perhaps, because they are human too, the girls weaken and say, " I t is not an overseas call, madam," and with that the call goes through.

Nine times out of ten the boys are so flustered they don't remember their home telephone numbers. Al-though the girls warn them, please, not to talk more than three minutes — "Others are waiting, sir" — they will never break in on a soldier no matter how long he stays on the tele-phone. One taciturn sergeant sur-prised them by talking for 84 min-utes. Most calls are collect, but this was not, and it cost him $45.

The girls are particularly proud of their skill in finding a boy's sweet-heart or mother even if they must — to take two actual cases — trail her

to a corner grocery or pluck her off a train 2000 miles across the country. In this latter instance, the girl traced a boy's mother through a neighbor to the railway station, had a redcap search half a dozen coaches to find her, and had her at a telephone half an hour after her son had placed the call.

"We wouldn't change our jobs for anything," the girls tell you. "You see, we always bring good news." One likes to tell her,, favorite story. She placed a call, and reeled off the customary announcement giving the soldier's name, adding, "Will you ac-cept the charges?"

A voice, dull, hopeless and uncom-prehending, replied slowly:

" I wish I could, but I received word two months ago that he was killed in action."

"But he wasn't," the girl spoke up. "Why, he's standing right here beside me now."

And then there was silence, for the woman at the other end had fainted.

Marry-Go-Round 0 » W H E N air lines were young and people were wary of flying, a promotion man suggested to one of the lines that they permit wives of businessmen to accompany their husbands free, just to prove that flying was safe. The idea was quickly adopted, and a record kept of the names of those who accepted the proposition. In due time the air line sent a letter to those wives, asking how they enjoyed the trip. From 90 percent of them came back a baffled reply, " What airplane trip?"

— Marguerite Lyon, And So to Bedlam (Bobbs-Merrill)

» A COMMITTEE was appointed by the magazine Redbook to study the question of how best to hold a wife, and a selected list of husbands was written to. The only reply received was from a certain western peniten-tiary. It stated briefly: "I found the best way was around the neck, but it should not be overdone. Please note change of address."

— Edward Strecter in Redbook, Magazine

I t bends , i t bounces , i t floats, i t resists bu l l e t s — and wi l l h a v e m y r i a d uses i n t h e pos twar wor ld

fiat Won't Tfieypo}Jext with Glass! Condensed from Science News Letter

Lloyd Stouffer + Editor of Modern Packaging

FOR 4000 years, glass has been holding out on us. It is one of the strongest and hardest ma-

terials known to man, yet, because it has also been so brittle, we have not realized its possibilities.

But today, as the result of wartime research, it is doing jobs no other ma-terial could do. And tomorrow it will add immeasurably to the conven-iences and comfort of living.

In the laboratories and shops of the big glass companies, I have seen glass that can be sawed and nailed like lumber; glass that will float; glass that bounces; glass that can be bent like rubber, twisted into yarn, tied into knots and woven like silk.

At Wright Field I saw Air Techni-cal Service Command experts flying an airplane partly made of glass — not window glass, you can't see through it. In fact, it looks just like any other BT-15 trainer. But the fuselage and tail section are made of glass cloth — twice as strong and half as heavy as the conventional aluminum-skinned fuselage. Pound for pound, it's the toughest airplane ever built — faster, cheaper to produce and longer lived.*

Cloth woven of gossamer-fine, bendable glass fibers, and formed

* Technical data on the glass plane is taken from articles in the M a y 1944 issue of Modern Plastics and is copyright 1944, Modern Plastics, Inc., 122 E. 42 St., N. Y. C.

with plastic, is one of the most resist-ant of all materials to penetration by bullets. It is capable of such flexure that it will actually "give" to a bullet, taking the sting out of it. In firing tests it was found that many high-explosive shells which did pierce the glass plane's fuselage passed through it without exploding.

Already plans are under way to use glass-plastic for crumple-proof automobile fenders, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, streamlined trains and buses; for furniture, luggage and prefabricated houses. One of its newer experimental uses is for artificial legs. The advantages: ease of molding to the exact contour of the natural leg and lifetime resistance to wear.

Surgeons are experimenting with a surgical suture made of glass fibers, because it is nonabsorbent and does not irritate the tissues. Strands of special glass yarn have been incorpo-rated in surgical sponges that, if in-advertently left in the wound, may be detected by X ray.

Owens-Corning has produced a glass wool made of fibers .00002-inch in diameter. White, fluffy, glass wool, which is 99 percent entrapped air, is used to insulate B-29 Superfortresses, just as it may be used in the walls of homes after the war.

In a Toledo office I was offered a chair with an ordinary-looking cush-

Copyright 1944, Science Service, Inc., 77* 9 .V Sr., jW. IV,, Washington 6, D. C. (Science News Letter, January /?, 5) S3

54 ion which was made, nonetheless, of glass wool. Only about an inch and a half thick, there seemed to be no end to its softness and resilience. Glass wool is now being used for seat cush-ions and mattresses in warplanes, and later may be used in passenger planes, trains and buses.

Glass comes nearer perfect elastic-ity than any other known substance; up to the point at which it breaks, it will return instantly to its original shape. At Owens-Corning I was given a sheet of glass cloth, not woven but matted of very fine fibers. It felt like the soft paper padding at the bottom of a candy box. I wadded it up tightly in my fist, then dropped it on the desk. It was uncanny to see it straighten out, not even wrinkled.

A coarser, standard form of glass wool, when compressed and faced with smooth, plasticized glass cloth, makes a lightweight insulating "board" which is now specified by the Navy for instrument boards and interior partitions on all ships. Unaffected by sea water and completely fireproof, it absorbs vibration and the noise of gunfire.

Glass in this form may be sawed and nailed or bolted. After the war it may be used in soundproof and heat-proof automobile floorboards and dashboards, and as insulating walls in prefabricated houses.

Portable Army shelters designed for use in remote outposts are heavily insulated with glass wool to save fuel. In Iceland, for instance, where there is no wood or fuel of any kind, the fiber glass in a typical shelter saves more than 20,000 pounds a winter in fuel that would otherwise have to be shipped in.

February

Foamglas, made by the Pittsburgh-Corning Corporation, looks like an extremely porous, coal-black brick. One third lighter than cork and far more buoyant, Foamglas can be used in lifebelts, life rafts and submarine net floats, and, in slabs two inches thick, as insulation for the roofs of war plants.

The Corning Glass Works, at Corn-ing, N. Y., is a fountainhead of re-search from which most of these mod-ern miracles have come. In each case, Corning has merged its knowledge with the knowledge and facilities of another company which could con-tribute to rapid production and dis-tribution. This accounts for Owens-Corning, formed with the Owens-Illinois Glass Co., which shares the credit for Fiberglas; Dow-Corning, in association with the Dow Chemical Co.; and Pittsburgh-Corning, with the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.

Corning researchers, who discov-ered Pyrex, now have a kind of super-Pyrex ware. Trade-named Vycor, it is as far beyond Pyrex as Pyrex was beyond common glass. Because it will resist heat up to 1650 degrees Fahren-heit and will contain chemicals that would destroy most other materials, it is opening up a new world of elec-tronics and chemistry. Without it some of our secret war weapons would have been impossible of achievement.

Glass piping was tried several years ago as an answer to the problem of corrosion in food and chemical plants. A new tempered glass pipe is resistant to breakage, and new methods of electric welding make it possible for a mechanic to make joints as easily as he would with metal. In one chem-ical plant, pumps with stainless steel

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 w h a t w o n ' t t h e y d o n e x t w i t h g l a s s ! 55 surfaces used to last only 60 days. Six glass pumps installed three years ago are still in use, with no signs of wear.

Corning researchers now have glass ball bearings which will withstand a pressure at which metal would flow like putty. I saw a coil spring made of glass that had been tested by being compressed several million times — with no hint of the fatigue which eventually afflicts all metals. I was shown a radiant heater — a slab of tempered glass about 18 inches square with a continuous strip of thin metal foil on its back surface. It uses ordi-nary house current. Something like it may provide the ideal radiant house heating — glass panels in the floors and walls of every room.

The new glasses are tough. At Owens-I l l inois ' Libbey p lan t I dropped a newly made glass to the cement floor. Instead of shattering, it bounced crazily from side to side, and I picked it up on the fourth bounce, still whole and unscratched.

Even before the war, Libbey-Owens-Ford produced a tempered glass which, in three-quarter-inch slabs, was tough enough to be hung on hinges and used as doors. Further toughened through multiple lamina-tions, such glass is being used today as transparent armor plate in air-planes. It will stop armor-piercing bullets up to .50 caliber.

The new glass is equally striking in its resistance to extremes of heat and cold. At Libbey-Owens-Ford they put a pane of Tuf-flex on a cake of ice and poured molten lead over it, with-out effect. The Army uses this glass

as the facing for its 8oo-million-candle-power searchlight; it won't crack even though the thermometer may register below zero.

To meet another war need, physi-cists discovered a way to curve glass with virtually no distortion of vision — something never done before on a mass-production basis. Today curved sections of glass are replacing plastic in bomber noses where maximum vi-sion is required. Tomorrow this glass can be used to streamline automobile windshields.

We think of glass as a brittle ma-terial that will have a sharp, cutting edge wherever it is broken. But at Corning I thrust my hand deep into a large box of broken bits of glass and didn't get a scratch. This new type of glass is being used in the globes of runway lights at Army air-ports, so that if broken and scattered it doesn't cut the tires of planes. Think what this will mean to motorists after the war when headlights may be made of it.

Because of their reputation for do-ing the impossible with glass, the Corning laboratories have more than their share of freak ideas from volun-teer correspondents. At various times it was suggested that they make glass mousetraps, a glass dirigible, glass razor blades, and a glass freight car — this last to permit green oranges, for example, to be ripened in transit by the sunlight.

Yet no idea, however farfetched, is dismissed lightly. All are investigated and reported upon. Some of the war-time pipe dreams may one day be-come realities.

Another vital postwar problem:

By

Thomas M. Johnson

THIS NATION faces a grave decision — whether or not to continue in peacetime the drafting of its

young men for military training. The proposal concerns not only every boy and parent but every citizen of this country. It involves our national post-war security and the world's postwar peace.

Bills proposing universal training are before Congress now. Behind them are leading military and naval authorities. More than two thirds of the GIs, voting in secret polls, approve the idea. All polls show the general public approves it. But some impor-tant educational and religious bodies oppose it, or at least favor postponing the decision until after the war. The Army and Navy want action now — while the people are alert to our de-fense needs and before we backslide into postwar apathy.

A right decision is so important to us all that we should know, without embellishment, just what the Ariny and Navy propose.

They do not propose, at the soft ex-treme, to draft all young men and women for training in a mere glorified CCC.

Nor do they propose that every young man shall "serve his time in the Army," like the conscripts of Eu-

T h e essent ials for America ' s pos twar armed secur i ty , as our h ighes t mil i tary author i t ies see t h e m , were s t a t e d in a wide ly d iscussed article b y M r . J o h n s o n in las t D e c e m b e r ' s D i g e s t .

Universa l mil i tary tra ining is t h e corner-s t o n e in t h e plans of these experts . M r . J o h n s o n here tel ls au thor i ta t i ve ly t h e pre-cise f o r m of training t h e y h o p e for, and their reasons . D e b a t e over th i s quest ion , a lready increas ing throughout t h e nat ion , will b e m o r e pert inent if t h e part icular project here out l ined is k e p t clearly in mind .

rope. They do not propose universal service.

They do propose universal training. They propose to train selected young men (not women) to be ready to serve their country promptly as soldiers, sailors and Marines if an emergency arises — that and nothing else. Dur-ing the year's training they would not be subject to garrison duty, to service outside the country, or to any other duty save training.

It is pointed out that enactment of universal military training would not increase the number of men liable for military service. Every male who is physically fit is now liable for serv-ice under arms. Universal training merely means that those who are and always have been liable will be pre-

5 6

s h a l l a l l o u r b o y s h a v e m i l i t a r y t r a i n i n g ? 57 pared to perform their obligation when called upon.

The men charged with responsibil-ity for national security deem these truths self-evident: That all citizens of a free state are duty-bound to de-fend it; and that the state is duty-bound to help them do so at least risk to their lives and health and at least cost to the nation. They have drawn plans based upon this country's ex-perience since George Washington advocated peacetime universal mili-tary training but got instead the poor substitute of a few professionals and a lot of raw militia — a system that wasted our lives and money for gen-erations.

Here are the main outlines of the plan:

The Army and Navy want Selec-tive Service boards to choose all phys-ically and mentally qualified youths as they graduate from high school or reach 18 years. Modern war requires soldiers physically mature and agile, mentally receptive, loyal and opti-mistic. These qualities are at their peak in youth. The services believe the year after high school the best one for the training period, because that will cause the least interruption to education or careers.

So far as possible, boys will be al-lowed to enter the branch of service they prefer, assuming that aptitude tests show them fitted for it. They will be trained for one year, minus about one month's time for induction, fur-loughs and discharge. That means a year straight, not dabs of three sum-mer months stippled over four years. Army and Navy believe that a four-summer plan would favor the 15 per-cent of college boys over the 85 percent

who would have to leave their jobs three times. It takes that long to learn today's varied weapons and tactics well enough to be ready if war comes again. For if war does come, it will come suddenly, allowing no time for raw recruits to learn what it's all about. (One reason universal training is needed is that the air forces have become so important, and aviation requires such highly trained men.) Trainees will not be inducted simul-taneously, but in four equal batches, three months apart, so that there will be a steady flow of trained reservists, instead of great annual waves.

Instructors will be mostly not regu-lars but reserve officers and noncoms — citizen soldiers like their pupils. Only three or four of the 11 months will be allotted to basic training. The trainee's showing in this early stage will help determine into what spe-cialty he will fit — aerial photogra-phy, electronics, gunnery, and so on.

From every thousand men, the Army now needs 101 chauffeurs and mechanics, 45 cooks, bakers and butchers, 34 medical and dental tech-nicians, and dozens of other special-ists. Therefore 75 percent of all Army trainees will take some type of tech-nical training. This will not neces-sarily be taken in camp. Some may learn in factories how to repair jeeps or gyroscopes, others serve on rail-roads, learning to operate trains. All naval trainees will become special-ists, learning radar, fire control and myriad other technicalities.

Today's soldier or sailor is no robot, but a thinking individual fighter who cooperates with others like him. He will be trained accordingly, first in small units, then in larger teams, un-

58

til in the latter part of his training he will go through large-scale maneuvers, duplicating actual battle conditions.

There will be officer candidate schools for trainees who show leader-ship. There may be a plan whereby the candidates can go through college while training as reserve officers.

All graduate trainees would be li-able for perhaps five years to be called back to active service. But there will be no recall for "refresher" courses, or for any reason save war or threat of war. Then Congress must declare an emergency and decide how many reservist trainees are needed.

If the services' plan is adopted, in five years there would be perhaps 5,000,000 citizen soldiers, sailors and Marines so well trained that with only a month or two for assembly and physical conditioning they could help defend this country.

Opponents exclaim, "Five million militarists! That's what they'd make of our boys!"

Proponents reply, "No, we'd just make them fit to fight if they had to. We wouldn't propagandize them or brutalize them. We'd make them bet-ter boys, better citizens of America and the world."

Chief of Army Chaplains William R. Arnold says: "Universal training would be the finest thing that could happen to this country. It would strengthen the home discipline and self-control of the younger genera-tion."

Of 1,250,000 boys reaching 18 yearly, about 860,000 would prob-ably pass the mental and physical tests. About 350,000 of them might need tinkering: dental, optical or other. Requirements might even be

February

relaxed to give more youths the medi-cal stitch in time and the physical up-building that may later mean the difference between health and illness, success and failure. All trainees would get a first-class medical supervision during a year of good food and open-air life.

All possible steps will be taken to assist trainees to strengthen their edu-cational status. General Marshall is personally concerned that they have every opportunity. "What do you want to learn?" Army, Navy and Ma-rines will ask their trainees. All can expand greatly in peacetime the re-markable work now done by the U. S. Armed Forces Institute, which en-ables officers and men of all services to study vocational or cultural sub-jects by correspondence.* The Army will probably have distinguished ci-vilian educators as lecturers.

Army and Navy officials recognize their obligation to boys' families and churches. They will see that trainees are actually less exposed to tempta-tion than boys of the same age who go away to college. Trainees will have much more work and supervision than college boys. Liquor and broth-els will be kept far from their camps.

Graduating trainees will be helped to jobs in civil life by having learned occupational specialties. An Army tailor is a tailor, a Navy watch-repair-man, a watch-repairman, without further training. And with brief train-ing, an aerial photographer can be-come a topographical draf tsman or geodetic computer. Some military jobs have eight civilian cousins. Many trainees will discover unsuspected

* See " G I Joe Goes to School Under Fire," T h e Reader's Digest, January, '45.

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

s h a l l a l l o u r b o y s h a v e m i l i t a r y t r a i n i n g ? 59 a p t i t u d e s , l e a r n n e w skills. R e c o r d s show discharged service m e n n o w usually get no t "the old j o b " but a better one.

T h e services bel ieve graduate train-ees will be broader menta l ly f rom as-sociating w i t h other boys from other parts of the country and the other side of the tracks. M a n y a silver-spoon boy wil l l earn to admire the pick-and-shovel virtues; m a n y a pick-and-shovel boy wil l be fired to earn a silver spoon in col lege . All wil l h a v e learned d e m o c r a c y as they probably could not at h o m e ; h o w to l ive a n d work and get a l o n g together.

T h e A r m y a n d N a v y w a n t trainees to l ive not as a group apart but in touch with the world . T h e y will be helped, the p lan says, to " d e v e l o p sound and clear ideas of responsible Amer ican c i t izenship." T h e y wil l be helped to understand their country's position in the wor ld — geographi -cally, economica l ly , polit ically a n d historically. T h i s wil l be done large ly in discussion, somet imes wi th c iv i l ian educators, somet imes wi th the m e n ' s o w n platoon officers.

General Marshal l says, "Universa l training is the essential foundat ion of

a n effect ive nat iona l mil i tary organi -zat ion ." W h i l e striving t o avert an-other war, w e should real ize that for years to c o m e w e c a n n o t surely k n o w whether w e h a v e succeeded , a n d if w e fail a n d a g a i n are c a u g h t unpre-pared, not mere ly Pearl H a r b o r will be devastated but vital areas of our cont inental U n i t e d States.

Assistant Secretary of W a r J o h n J . M c C l o y , in general charge of A r m y plans for universal training, says: "Thi s country entered both wor ld wars woeful ly unprepared . Both t imes our friends he ld off the aggressors whi le w e got ready . N e x t t ime the ag-gressor wil l not m a k e the same mis-take. W a r wil l c o m e s u d d e n l y f r o m the air and w e shall be the first to be attacked. For nat ional security w e need a pool of trained m a n p o w e r , such as only a universal mil i tary train-ing system c a n prov ide ."

W e think, conc lude the experts , that mil i tary training is a g o o d th ing for boy and for country — for the present, a n y w a y . U n t i l w e see w h a t happens to the world a n d to our plans for future peace , let us g ive it a fair trial. T h e n , if w e don't n e e d it or like it, w e c a n d r o p it.

The Art of Living to the End a l w a y s l o v ed Irv in C o b b , b u t n e v e r q u i t e so m u c h as a f ter a n

hour w i t h h i m a f e w d a y s pr ior to his d e a t h . Irv in h a d l a u g h e d a n d jokedLso incessant ly that I d e c i d e d h e d idn ' t k n o w h e w a s n c a r i n g the e n d . L e a v i n g , I p r o m i s e d , "I ' l l see y o u a g a i n . "

" N o t in this wor ld ," Irvin a n s w e r e d . O b s e r v i n g m y surprise, h e a d d e d , " Y o u th ink I ' m n o t b e i n g p r o p e r l y s o l e m n . M y son , l ife is a p a r t y . T h e m o r e y o u e n j o y it, the m o r e the o t h e r guests wi l l a n d the m o r e success ful it wi l l be . A n d I shou ld say it w a s a m i g h t y p o o r a n d ungra te fu l gues t w h o d e p a r t e d g l o o m i l y . " — Channing Pollock in Coronet

-'si

My ;Mother Breaks Her Pearls Condensed from Good Housekeeping

Marion Sturges-Jones

DURING one of the periods when we were quite out of funds, after Father died, Mother

took a position as companion to an elderly Philadelphia lady. Mother read aloud beautifully and she was a great success with the wealthy and rheumatic Mrs. Effingham.

This rheumatism of Mrs. Effing-ham's eventually led her to try the treatment of a New York doctor. Mother hadn't been to New York for years, and when Mrs. Effingham told her that she was to go along, and that they would stay at the Hotel Plaza for a week, Mother's excitement knew no bounds.

She was in the middle of telling me the news when a cloud came over her face. "I hadn't thought about clothes!" she gasped. "What on earth will I wear? Of course I've got my pearls," she added thoughtfully. "A black dress to wear with thein would really fix me up."

I had given Mother a string of pearls the previous Christmas, a good string costing $3.98 at John Wana-maker's, and she had been talking ever since about getting just the right black frock with which to wear it. So now we went to Mr. Solomon's, and by some miracle he produced a black dress that seemed made for a string of (good) pearls. The effect was one of quiet elegance, suggesting the Plaza at teatime.

It was only after Mother was safely back in Philadelphia that I learned of her adventures with the pearls.

They broke in the lobby of the Plaza when Mother and Mrs. Effing-ham were coming through from din-ner one evening.

"Oh, dear! My pearls!" Mother cried, and gave a little shriek. There was a momentary sensation, and a gallant Navy officer came to the res-cue and began gathering them up. Then the captain of bellboys ap-peared, sweeping the Commander firmly aside. " I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but I shall take charge of this until the chief detective gets here. Everyone will please step aside so we can describe an arc around the ladv and see that no pearls are over-looked."

"Oh, thank you!" said Mother. She thought it delightful of the hotel to be so assiduous in serving her, and she fluttered around murmuring her appreciation until the last pearl had been retrieved.

"Shall I seal these in an envelope and put them in the hotel safe until you can have them restrung, madam?" asked the chief detective.

" I think that's a splendid idea!" said Mother, and waited .happily at the desk for a receipt.

The next day Mother took a walk on Fifth Avenue, and paused to glance at an elegant jeweler's display. It

Copyright 1944, Hearst Magazines Inc., 57 St. at Eighth Ave., New Yorl( t9, N. Y. (Good Housekeeping, February, '44). This article appears in the book "Babes in the Wood," copyright 1941, 1942, 1944, Marion Sturges-Jones Wescott, Co and published at $2.50 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2 W. 45 St., New York. 19, N. Y.

m y m o t h e r b r e a k s h e r p e a r l s 6l

suddenly struck her that fate had carried her to just the place for the restringing of her pearls.

She w e n t in. A tall g e n t l e m a n in tails greeted her.

" C o u l d I get m y pearls restrung in the next day or two?" M o t h e r in-quired. " I ' m here f rom Phi ladelphia and I would like t h e m d o n e i m m e d i -ately if possible."

T h e gent leman was excessively civil. "I'l l f ind o u t , " he said. " D o e s m a d a m have the pearls w i t h her?"

" N o , " said Mother . "I left them in the safe at the Plaza ."

T h e gent leman picked u p a golden te lephone and held a polite conversa-tion wi th another part of the build-ing. " O u r Mr. D e Wit t cou ld call at the Plaza this af ternoon and get them, if m a d a m is not otherwise en-gaged ," he said. " W e w o u l d like m a d a m to a c c o m p a n y M r . D e Wit t and the pearls here, so that she can witness the restringing."

M o t h e r was a little d i zzy from so m u c h attention. H o w perfectly de-lightful everyone h a d been about her pearls! "I 'd love to w a t c h the re-stringing!" she said gratefully. " M y pearls are m y very dearest possession."

"Precisely," said the tall gentle-man. "Shal l w e say three o'clock?"

M o t h e r had the pearls, still sealed in their envelope, in her bag w h e n Mr. D e Witt appeared at the Plaza. H e was a handsome m a n w h o looked like a U n i t e d States Senator, and M o t h e r felt herself be ing envied as she walked through the l obby w i t h him. It was quite thrill ing, too, to return to the jeweler's in the private l imousine provided.

W h e n they arrived at the jeweler's, Mr. D e Wit t ushered M o t h e r past

all the counters of d i a m o n d s a n d rubies, past the sterling silver and ex-quisite crystalware in to a h a n d -somely furnished r o o m at the far end. T h e r e M o t h e r was seated at a table, and a cloth of h e a v y black velvet w a s put before her.

" O u r Mr. D u p r e z does the string-ing, m a d a m , a n d will be wi th us in a m o m e n t , " said M r . D e Wit t .

M r . Duprez , a sharp-featured lit-tle F r e n c h m a n w i t h fancy mustaches , soon b o w e d his w a y into the room. Sit t ing down, he p l a c e d a tray of implements o n the table , s m o o t h e d out the velvet , a n d reached for the Plaza's envelope . T h e y all w a t c h e d as h e opened it w i t h thin, careful fingers a n d let the pearls roll out . H e was about to put o n a pair of spectacles w h e n he suddenly st i f fened. His h a n d trembled; he hesitated, and then h e adjusted the glasses hasti ly over his ears. H e took a slow, s teady look at the pearls and then he breathed sud-den ly with a sharp, hissing sound.

" M a d a m has been robbed!" he cried. " T h e pol ice m u s t be sum-m o n e d ! These are not pearls!"

M o t h e r blinked. " O h , I ' m sure I haven ' t been r o b b e d ! " she said. "Everyone at the Plaza was so nice — I — I couldn' t think such a th ing of t h e m ! " She l eaned over and stated at the beads. " N o , " she said, a n d h e a v e d a sigh of relief. " T h o s e are m y pearls all right — I r e m e m b e r the c lasp quite wel l . Y o u see, it is a Jieur de lis design in gold a n d d iamonds — not real d iamonds , of course — but it's a c h a r m i n g clasp, don't y o u think?"

M o t h e r turned to M r . Duprez , a n d from him to Mr. D e Witt . M r . D e Wi t t was scarlet of face a n d looked

64 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

ready to have a stroke, while the little Frenchman had turned gray-white and was grasping the arm of his chair. His mouth opened, but no sound came.

"Is something the matter?" Mother asked in alarm.

Mr. De Witt was the first to re-cover the power of speech. "Madam," he said, "you are sitting in a private room of the world's most exalted dealer in gems. On that very chair you occupy the Aga Khan has sat while new designs were drawn for his priceless emeralds. The Prince of Wales has brought family jewels to this very room, to discuss resetting. In spite of this, we are not too proud to restring the pearls of any American citizen. But, madam, we do not re-string beads that have cost 98 cents!"

Mother drew herself up. " I think you are being very rude," she said coldly. "These are certainly not 98-cent pearls. My daughter gave them

to me for Christmas. I never inquired the price — something I dare say you couldn't understand — but I know that they are good pearls even though they aren't real pearls. If you don't care to restring them, you are at lib-erty to decline, but I must say I think your manner is far from courteous."

By the time Mother finished speak-ing, Mr. De Witt had pulled him-self together and had risen to his feet.

"Madam is right," he said, looking like a Senator once more. "The error is ours! I apologize for forgetting my-self— it was just that, in all the 30 years I've been with the firm — but never mind that! The error was ours. Duprez, you will restring madam's — er — madam's pearls at once —"

"Oh, thank you!" said Mother, all smiles again.

"And there will be no charge!" Mr. De Witt added. His expression was one of pain, but it was of pain nobly borne.

A

Who Has Pictures to Help the Navy?

AN urgent cal l for pictures and m a p s of the Japanese -contro l l ed areas in the 1- Pacific, to be used in invas ion plans , has been issued by the U . S. N a v y . Specif ic

areas of interest are the J a p a n e s e m a i n l a n d , the J a p a n e s e - m a n d a t e d islands, and Formosa a n d the Kuri les; K o r e a , M a n c h u r i a , o c c u p i e d China , the Nether -lands East Indies , I n d o - C h i n a , Thai land, M a l a y a a n d Burma.

Analys i s of ground- leve l photograp l i s a d d s i m m e a s u r a b l y to d a t a g l eaned from aerial photographs . I n part icular , shore- l ine photographs a id planners of landings on hosti le areas in d e t e r m i n i n g e x a c d y the best zones for invasion, and in es t imat ing the requirements for operat ions pre l iminary to the invas ion. P h o t o -graphs m a y save lives.

R e a d e r s w i l l ing to l oan or g ive m a p s and pictures are requested t o c o m m u n i -cate w i t h the nearest off ice of N a v a l Inte l l igence . Distr ict Inte l l igence Off ices are loca ted i n N e w York, Boston, Ph i lade lph ia , Norfolk , Charleston, M i a m i , N e w Orleans , C h i c a g o , S a n D i e g o , S a n Francisco , Seatt le , A n n a p o l i s a n d W a s h i n g t o n , D . C .

]heFlagCoes Up Again Condensed from Collier's

I GOT BACK in time to see the first American flag go up in the Philip-pines. The boys who hit that

tough Red Beach on Leyte Island 30 seconds before H Hour were deter-mined to get their banner up as quickly as it was safe to send a man up a palm. But my personal reason for wanting to be on hand dated from a dark, muggy day in January 1942, when I was a prisoner of the Japs in Manila and watched them drop the red, white and blue bunting from the flagpole in front of the High Com-missioner's office, and stomp on it.

There was plenty of ceremonial gunfire that day when the Japs hoisted their rising sun. But now there was more purposeful gunfire for our Red Beach ceremony. All hell was break-ing loose.

A tough sergeant in spotted jungle suit rose up out of his foxhole. "Don' t them so-and-so's know these islands belong to us?" he shouted. "Come on! Let's get 'em out of there!"

I was about to follow the sergeant's men when I heard a GI say, "Well, this is about the time to put it up."

I turned to see a g*imy soldier hold-ing a small American flag and study-ing the palm stumps for a suitable flagpole.

Boatloads of soldiers, landing up and down the beach, hit the sand, then rose on their elbows to watch the

flag go up. American and J ap dead were sprawled at the bases of nearby uprooted palm stumps. A wounded GI, lying 20 feet away, motioned a hospital corpsman aside so he could watch.

A short dash and a jump carried 20-year-old Pfc. Austin Holder of Chattanooga several steps up the top-less palm trunk he had chosen. He was wearing a telephone l ineman's climbing spikes. He had the flag tied around his waist.

We could hear slugs thumping into the tree trunk, but the flag-bearer didn't stop. About halfway up he made a grab at his waist to pull the flag loose. As if someone had led them in a cheer, the boys on litters and in foxholes and on the beach cried: "Higher . . . higher! Take it up higher!" And he did.

His helmet had slipped over one eye, but he carefully tied the knot on top and the knot on the bottom of the bunting. Then, because at that mo-ment there was no breeze, Pfc. Austin Holder reached over and lifted the end of the flag out straight.

There it was — all 48 stars and 13 stripes — once more high over Philip-pine soil.

There was another throaty cheer as Holder slid down the palm pole. That 's all there was to it. The war went on from there.

Copyright 1944, The Crowell-Collier Puh. Co., 250 Park. Ave., New York '7, N. Y. (Collier s, December 2, '44) 63

in the Philippines Royal Arch Gunnison

•A-ON OUR w e d d i n g night our car broke d o w n in upper M i c h i g a n 2 0 miles from nowhere . After a l o n g walk w e saw a house in w h i c h a l ight was burning. M y knock was answered b y an elderly m a n and his white-haired wife.

" O u r car stalled d o w n the road," I said, "and w e w o n d e r e d if w e might spend the night here?"

T h e old m a n g lanced dubiously at his wife and muttered , "Wel l , y o u n g feller, we'd sure like t o h e l p you, but . . ." Just then m y wife touched her hair a n d a few grains of rice fell to the floor.

A l ight b e a m e d in the old lady's eyes a n d she interrupted her husband. " O f course you chi ldren can stay here. Jus t c o m e in and sit d o w n whi le I get the guest room ready."

A few minutes later she ushered us into a room where there was not only a com-fortable bed but a tray with tea a n d cookies. T h e old l a d y closed the door w i t h a cheerful " G o o d - n i g h t . "

W e rose early the next morning and were t iptoeing out w h e n m y wife touched m y arm and whispered, " L o o k ! " T h e r e in the gray l ight of d a w n w e saw the o ld lady curled u p in a red shawl on the sofa, a n d the old m a n sprawled uncomfortably in a chair.

I t iptoed back to the "guest" room and added a ten-dol lar bill to the five dollars I had left. — L A F A Y E T T E S T U C K

•DURING a Shriners' convent ion in Los Angeles one of the d o w n t o w n boulevards was roped off for a parade. O n l y official cars wi th large signs such as Potentate and Past Potentate were a l lowed there; all other traffic was hal ted or rerouted. But one ingenious Californian got by the pol ice blockade and drove nonchalant ly d o w n the street. Hi s placard read: Past Participle!

— MILFORD P . JOHNSON

f Life inThese * W E DIDN'T realize t h e pastor of our little N e w E n g l a n d church had a sense of humor unti l this pathet ic card was mai led t o m e m b e r s of his parish:

"If absence makes the heart grow fonder, w h a t a lot of folks must love this c h u r c h ! " —LOUISE BAER

* I MET a lumberjack n a m e d R o c k y on the street one d a y a n d remarked, "You're out of c a m p early this year."

"I qui t ," he replied. " H o w did y o u c o m e to d o that?" "Well , I h a d a hard t ime deciding

what to do . I was tired of working and wanted t o g o on a binge. Still, I felt I should finish the season in the woods. After bothering a b o u t it quite a while I decided to leave it to chance ."

"Chance?" "Yeah . I threw m y axe into the air.

I f the a x e c a m e back d o w n I was to QUIT." LON WOODRUM

• IN A large industrial city of the South there l ived a colorful old character, 72 years old but hard as nails, w h o had l ived and worked near the railroad tracks all his life. L o c o m o t i v e smoke was perfume to his nostrils. O n e year, after m u c h per-suasion, h e agreed to spend a short vaca-tion at a country cot tage far from city smoke. W h e n he returned, I asked h i m how he l iked the country.

"All r ight ," he snapped, "except for the air. W e a k as p o n d water. N o e lement in it. I'll take c i ty smoke a n y t ime. Rea l nourishment there." — EDWARD FURTICK

*LATE o n e moonl ight n ight in a Florida trailer c a m p , I was awakened by the sound of newcomers parking in the next lot. Eventual ly the bustle died down, a n d for a t ime all was serene. T h e n I heard a rough m a l e voice, evident ly out-

64

Jnited States side the trailer, cal l ing to s o m e o n e inside it.

"Edi th ," said the voice . N o answer. " E d i t h ! " it cal led louder . " C a n ' t y o u

hear me?" Si lence still prevai led. A m o m e n t later

the exquisitely tranquil n ight was shat-tered wi th " G O S H D A M M I T , E D I T H , Y O U C O M E O U T H Y A R O R I ' L L T H R A S H Y O U ! "

Edi th apparent ly heard , a n d came, for the voice suddenly l owered and, hoarse wi th ecstasy, croaked: "Edi th , jest look at that thar m o o n . " — F L O R E N C E F R I T S

• A FRIEND of ours, vis i t ing in Charleston, S. C. , heard that an o ld friend was laid u p wi th rheumat ism. R e m e m b e r i n g that the old lady a lways read the newspaper from cover to cover, she sent over her c o p y of the N e w York S u n d a y Times, sure her old friend would derive m u c h pleasure from so m u c h reading matter .

A few days later our friend went to call and as she was l eav ing the old lady handed her the paper, neat ly folded and obviously unread. " T h a n k you, honey, for this paper ," she said. "But y o u k n o w — I don' t k n o w a n y o n e in N e w York."

— M E R E B E . M O S S M A N

•K PAYING a business call at a Kansas farm, I found the farmer plac ing forkfuls of h a y along the e d g e of a shed roof. " W h a t are y o u d o i n g tha t for?" I asked, m y curiosity aroused.

"Wel l ," the farmer repl ied, "this ain't very good hay, and if I put it in the manger the cows won ' t t o u c h it. But if I put it u p here where they can just barely reach it, they think they're stealing it, and they'l l ea t every bit o f i t ."

— H A R R Y J . W I L L I A M S

+ WE WERE din ing in a smart N e w York restaurant a n d not iced the utter adora-

t ion w i t h w h i c h the headwai ter , waiter a n d bus boys hovered a r o u n d a prett girl w h o was w i t h a y o u n g officer. A s w left I asked the headwai t er w h y she re ce ived such special service. "She's th finest lady I ever k n e w , " h e said, a n d tol this story.

Several weeks earlier the girl had bee ea t ing a hasty snack before go ing to th opera. A waiter carrying a h e a v y tray w< approaching her tab le w h e n anothe patron rose sudden ly to greet a lady . I the inevitable crash, soup," gravy a n oysters cascaded over the girl's whit even ing dress. T h e staff scurried to m o her off , whi le o ther diners tried to loo the other w a y . T h e n the girl's clear voic w a s heard, c a l m a n d a m u s e d .

"I t was a horrid dress," she said to th frenzied waiter. " I t b u n c h e d in the res a n d I never liked it. I l ive near here. K e e m y food hot. I' l l b e right back."

" A n d do y o u k n o w , sir," cont inued th headwaiter , " w h e n she g o t back, all fres a n d pretty in a n e w frock, she w e n t t the manager . 'If a n y t h i n g happens t that waiter,' she to ld h i m , 'I'll nev< c o m e here aga in a n d nei ther will m fr iends . '" — H E N R Y F . P R I N C I

The Reader's Digest invites conlribi tions to " L i f e i n T h e s e U n i t e d S t a t e s

FOR EACH anecdote published in this d< partment, T h e Reader's Digest will pa $200. Contributions must be true, revelator or humorous unpublished human intere incidents, from your o w n experience c observation. M a x i m u m length 300 word but the shorter the better. Contributioi must be typewritten, and cannot be a< knowledged or returned. All publishe anecdotcs become the property of Th Reader's Digest Association, Inc. Addre "Life in These United States" Editor, Th Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, N . Y.

6s

Bootleg O 0 1 1 C P * I N V 1 0 n S Watch out for the fellow who offers J to sell you "nylon" hosiery! There isn't any

Condensed from This Week Magazine With additions by the author

N Frank Brock

o MERE man can fully under-stand the power of nylon stockings over women's minds,

hearts and consciences. But a lot of men are busy exploiting this feminine weakness.

Foremost example: Uncle Sam. The only legitimate purchaser of nylon hosiery in the world is the U.S . Government. No, the stockings aren't "sent to Iceland on lend-lease," as reported in a silly story that was re-peated on the floor of Congress. They travel a much more devious route.

Our secret agents overseas discov-ered that a half dozen pairs of sheer nylons would buy more information from certain mysterious women in Europe and North Africa than a fist-ful of money. After all, what could the ladies buy with money in the empty shops of the Old World? So several large hosiery mills, which had made no nylons since Pearl Harbor, received substantial orders from Wash-ington; the necessary yarn, they were informed, would be available. Pleas-antly surprised, they turned out the merchandise — the only nylons le-gitimately manufactured in years.

Nevertheless, enough American women want nylon stockings at any price, in contempt of law, and with callous indifference to our soldiers' needs for other nylon goods, to sup-port a sizable black market. It is some

satisfaction to record that the black market operators give the women a merciless stinging.

Thirteen cases of raw nylon en route from the Du Pont factory in Martinsville, Va., to a parachute yarn plant in Winston-Salem, N. C., were stolen from a motor-freight ter-minal in Greensboro, N. C. Accept-ing the thin story that the nylon was salvage from a warehouse fire, two manufacturers made it up into ho-siery. It was spread as far as possible by making the feet and tops of cotton. But these skimpy makeshift stockings sold readily for $5 a pair to bootleg-gers, who in turn got $10 a pair from customers, male and female, hexed by the magic word "nylon." The nylon yarn was worth $7800; it was made into $140,000 worth of stockings.

FBI and OPA agents arrested three men. One, a former official of a trucking company, was fined $5000 and is serving a two-year prison term. The two hosiery mill men were fined $12,000 each and placed on 18 months' probation. The Government agents managed to seize 5000 pairs of hose before they could be peddled. These, by court order, were sold at the OPA ceiling price of $1.65 a pair in the office of the U. S. Marshal in Greensboro. The sale was to begin at ten o'clock in the morning. At 5 a.m. the queue began to form; when the doors opened, the line of women, four abreast, extended four city blocks.

66 Copyright 1945, N. Y. Tribune Inc., 230 W.41 St., Neiv York N. Y.

(This Week Magazine, January 21, '45)

b o o t l e g n y l o n s 6 /

Half of them went away disappointed. Much more intricate was another

scheme for black market nylons. A silk mill in Pennsylvania got a con-tract to convert raw nylon into thread for glider towropes. Part of the raw nylon was systematically snitched, and accounted for in reports to the WPB as "spoilage." The "spoiled" nylon was transported to three ho-siery mills whose owners were in the plot. When the FBI cracked down, it found 10,320 pairs of nylons in one warehouse, 6500 unfinished pairs in another, enough thread to make 36,-000 pairs more. Four men were indicted.

Most patrons of the nylon black market are stung in two ways: they pay fantastic prices and they do not get nylon. Travelers, and even pro-fessional merchandise buyers who should know better, have bought "Mexican nylons" in quantities. Sometimes they have misleading names, such as "carbonyl." Dozens of pairs have turned up for labora-tory analysis at the New York head-quarters of the National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers. They're just rayon. You can get them at any hosiery counter in the United States — ceiling price, $1.25.

An Omaha store imported 1680 pairs of these "nylons" in good faith and advertised thein at $2.25, plus $1.85 for customs duty. The Better Business Bureau had a pair analyzed and thus convinced the merchant he had been victimized. The stockings were withdrawn from sale.

The lengths to which the gyps will go is indicated by the troubles of the Van Raalte Company. It is getting a stream of complaints about hosiery

bought as nylon, stamped with the Van Raalte name and the nylon trademark and, most convincing, made with the patented Van Raalte toe. Some victims bought the coun-terfeits in Mexico City, some bought them from bootleggers in the United States; but it seems plain the imita-tions were all made in Mexico.

The small amount of honest nylon wastage or spoilage that does occur in war production is allotted to manu-facturers of underwear, brassieres and girdles — never to hosiery mills. Every retailer should know that there just isn't any nylon hosiery to be had. Still, when George M. Toney wrote to 1000 stores from a post office box address in Washington, D. C., offer-ing nylons at $7.44 a dozen pairs, he got orders with some $2000 cash by return mail. There is no guesswork about the money, because postal authorities opened his mail and counted it.

Ruses of the bootleggers show little originality. The driver of a delivery truck, often bearing the name of a well-known shop, stops a woman on the street and tells her that some ny-lons were put on his truck by mistake. She can have them at $5 (or $10) a pair. Or a peddler drifts into a doc-tor's office on the pretext of making an appointment. He casually men-tions that the parcel in his hand contains nylon stockings — unfortu-nately not his wife's size. Could any-one use them? He is typical of the shifty-eyed, furtive nylon bootleggers who canvass office buildings in the big cities.

Perhaps the limit of credulity is reached by the people who buy com-pounds which, dissolved in water, will

68 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

"ny lon i ze" r a y o n stockings. O n e of the big hosiery manufac tu r e r s re-m a r k e d drily, " I f a n y chemist has such a fo rmula , h e n e e d n ' t b o t h e r wi th the 25-cent t r ade . I ' l l give h i m $5,000,000 for it i n cash . "

Af te r t he w a r t he re will be ny lon hosiery, f iner, sheerer , s t ronger , m o r e

beau t i fu l t h a n ever before. Designs for the mach ines to m a k e it a r e past the b luepr in t stage. But un t i l t he wa r is over , t h e A r m y a n d N a v y need every p o u n d of nylon. T h e r e w o n ' t be a n y fo r stockings except w h a t is stolen. A n d the re w o n ' t be m u c h stolen. So, ladies — d o n ' t be suckers.

->>>->>>->>>->>>->>>->>>->>>->>>^

Picturesque Speech and Patter A resentful taxpayer addressed an

envelope to "Collector of Taxes, Boston City Haul." (PA/)

Signs of the times: Above the soda fountain on an airplane carrier long on duty in the Pacific: WAITRESS W A N T E D . . . In a Rapid City, S. D . , restaurant: Our steaks are so tender we wonder how the cow ever held together . . . On a war plant bulletin board: For sale— 1 pair city shoes; owner returning to Arkansas.

The taxi started up like a squirt of seltzer (O. o. Mclntyre) . . . They danced as if they had been blown to-gether by the music (Margery Sharp) . . . An enthusiastic puppy, wagging everything behind his ears (Mary M. Lonergan) . . . A baby caterpillaring across the floor (J. Greene Mackenzie) . . . They avoided the subject as if they were stepping around puddles in the conversation (Maud Merritt)

She leaves me with a feeling that when we bury the hatchet she marks the exact spot. (Louise Andries)

GI's remark: What I want to get most out of this Army is me. (Pfc. Ralph Miller)

V T s

I V

f I 5 y Y 5? Y

9 Y

« I | Y

Y

I Y 9 I S

A Virginia kennel with dachshund puppies for sale advertised: Git a long little doggie.

New England brevity: T h e editor of a Vermont weekly sent to one Hiram Sparks a notice that his subscription had expired. The notice came back with the laconic scrawl: "So's Hiram."

(Contributed by Theodore Rubin)

Eventually most parents develop Wails-resistance. (Marcelene Cox)

Advice to loose talkers: "Build a better mouthtrap." (Nadine Conner)

Mai de mer: French for "You can't take it with you." (Garry Moore)

As comfortable as a bad habit (Frank Barry) . . . Getting the morning trans-fusion of coffee . . . I feel tired far into the future (Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements) . • • The blood, that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us (Sir Osbert Sitwcll)

A woman's first letter to her soldier: "One day is gone, the day you went away with." (Lilyan Mac Vicar)

TO THE FIRST CONTRIBUTOR OF EACH ACCEPTF.D ITEM o f e i t h e r P a t t e r o r P i c t u r e s q u e S p e e c h a payment of $25 is made upon publication. In all cases the source must be given. An addi-tional payment is made to the author, except for items originated by the sender-. Con-tributions cannot be acknowledged or returned, but every item is carefully considered.

ADDRESS PATTER EDITOR, BOX 6 0 5 , P LEAS ANT VILI.E, N. Y.

Roanoke 's VolunteerLifesavers Condensed from Public Safety

James J . Kilpatrick and

Charles Henry Hamilton

ON A May afternoon in 1909, a boy on the bank of the Roa-noke River watched help-

lessly while two men struggled in the water, trying to reach their over-turned canoe. Bystanders shouted hoarse advice, and tossed branches into the stream. The men kept crying for help — then suddenly they were gone.

Memory of the scene haunted the boy for years. It was a needless trag-edy — there should be means of quick rescue for accident victims. Just 19 years later, in May 1928, Julian S. Wise, the boy grown man, organized with nine other volunteers the Roa-noke Lifesaving and First Aid Crew, the first of its kind in America. As its fame has spread, other communities have founded lifesaving crews on the Roanoke, Va., model.

The Roanoke crew answers 1500 calls a year. In its 16 years, it has saved more than 200 lives. And when the records say a life was saved, it means that the physician on the scene so attests. People have been saved from death by drowning, gas, attempted suicide; pulled from burn-ing autos, cave-ins and live wires; rescued from floods.

There are 25 members now, all business and professional men. Mem-bership is a coveted honor. To be

' This citizen emergency squad i has saved 200 lives — an idea for // • your town

admitted on probation when a va-cancy occurs is only the beginning. The new member must learn swim-ming, to meet the Red Cross life-saving test; first aid; techniques of using inhalator, iron lung, acetylene torch and "hot stick" for handling live wires; expert canoeing; use of diving helmet, grappling iron, under-water telephone. Members must at-tend two-hour drills every Wednes-day night. They must be on call 24 hours a day. Not for two years is a new member permitted to answer calls without the supervision of an older member. And yet there is a long waiting list!

At first the crew had a difficult time overcoming public indifference. It was usually called too late to save life, and asked only to help recover a body. But gradual ly the public learned that crew members knew what they were doing, and would work long hours on the faintest hope of pumping life back into someone apparently dead.

Then the city council contributed $300 which was spent for an early type of inhalator for gas and smoke victims. A few grappling poles were donated. Captain Wise tirelessly pro-moted the thought of calling the crew promptly. Finally, in 1931, it made a sensational rescue. A 16-year-old

Copyright 1944, National Safety Council, Inc., 20 N. Walker Drive, Chicago 6, IU. (Public Safety, January, '4$) 69

70 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

Negro boy went down in a lake. The crew had its boat in the water 11 min-utes after the boy disappeared, and 12 minutes later the youth was regaining consciousness.

After that the crew was kept busy on all kinds of calls — to the scene of accidents, to help in epidemics, to supply needed equipment. For exam-ple, when a Roanoke high school teacher became critically ill with pneumonia in Raleigh, N. C., and no oxygen tent was immediately available there, the crew chartered an airplane and flew one to his bed-side. The members gave many lec-tures and demonstrations in first aid, and taught scores of nurses, police and firemen the techniques they had learned.

Virginia last year had the worst poliomyelitis epidemic the state has ever known, with 752 cases. Roanoke was particularly hard hit. The life-saving crew worked tirelessly.

"They saved at least a dozen lives," says Dr. E. C. Harper, of the State Health Department. "Their skill was amazing. For example, the rubber collars on iron lungs wear out and have to be changed. Ordinarily you put the patient in another lung, and give a mechanic considerable time to make the repair. One patient in Roa-noke Hospital could not be taken out of the lung for more than one minute at a time. The collar of his machine wore out — and every other iron lung was in use. The crew sent two members to change that collar. They took the man out of the respirator, put him on a stretcher, and 42 sec-onds later they had a fresh collar on, and the patient back in place.

"Another time, there was a power

failure at the hospital, and the crew instantly sent men to operate the iron lungs manually. Working a respirator by hand, even for a few minutes, is a tough job. But these men never missed a stroke."

Polio was not new to the lifesavers. In 1940 the crew got a call one rainy Sunday afternoon; an iron lung was needed — quickly. In three minutes the crew's squad car was on the way, towing the lung. The men had to lug the 750-pound machine across a creek and up a muddy bank. They found an 11 -year-old boy gasping in his mother's arms. Fifteen minutes later, the respirator began its steady swish-swish. Soon the boy smiled at his mother. The crew's iron lung stayed in the home for six months. Today the boy is back in school.

The only campaign for funds the crew ever put on was for the purpose of buying an additional iron lung. A grateful city contributed twice the modest $1000 asked, so two lungs were purchased. When polio swept North Carolina early last summer, the crew saw trouble ahead and voted to buy three more—jus t in case. There wasn't any money in the treasury, but Captain Wise had faith in the people of his city. Word got around. One woman came to the crew's headquarters with a check for $1300. Long before the iron lungs were delivered, there was more than enough money to pay for them.

As it happened, the day after the new lungs arrived, an urgent call came from the Roanoke Hospital. The crew loaded a lung on its special trailer and headed out. Captain Wise saw driving behind them the woman who had given the $1300. He waved

•945 ROANOKE'S VOLUNTEER LIFESAVERS 7 '

for her to follow along. She had never seen an iron lung, but in a few mo-ments, through the window of the isolation ward, she saw a ten-year-old boy regaining normal color under the artificial lung power of the respirator — her gift.

Through the years the crew has accumulated 300 pieces of apparatus. There is a crash trailer for reaching plane wrecks, which includes asbes-tos suits, acetylene torches, a heavy tripod and chain hoist, and two gen-erators to supply floodlights. There is a squad car carrying items such as inhalators, gas masks, burn kit, oxy-gen cylinders. A motor truck carries floodlights, scaling ladders, diving suit, telephone equipment, and special poles designed by the crew for break-ing into burning automobiles and re-moving unconscious persons.

The Roanoke crew has taken an active part in organizing similar squads elsewhere. The nearby Salem, Va., crew, organized in 1932, has saved nearly 100 lives. Other crews have been formed in Wisconsin, Mich-igan and Alabama. A man in Hellen-der, Denmark, wrote for the constitu-tion and by-laws, and established a crew there.

Julian Wise sees no reason why lifesaving crews should not be estab-lished in every municipality. Roanoke now considers it a "dependable essen-tial of community life," in the words of one editorial writer.

And what do the members receive for their labor and the risking of their lives? "I t ' s hard to explain," Wise says, "but once you feel a human life come back under your own hands, that's all the reward you could ask."

The Fault Speeding

Shopli f t ing

N o t reporting for induct ion

Steal ing

Driving wi thout driver's l icense

List of Inventors The Excuse

A heavy tail w i n d p u s h e d h i m along.

She tried a hat on, a n d it was so small she forgot she h a d it on her head.

T h e not ice d idn' t say " w h a t year."

H e needed m o n e y to repay $ 1 o he had stolen.

H e couldn' t get a l icense even if he appl ied for one , because he was getting a blind pension from the state.

The Inventor Santa Clara motorist

Buffa lo lady

C h i c a g o y o u t h

Windsor , N . C. , resident

C h i c a g o motorist

— W. E. Farbstcin in Collier's

Poison from Europe Condensed from The American Mercury \

Francis Rufus Bellamy

DOWN in Argentina, behind the smoke screen of diplomatic double-talk, one of the most

sinister figures of the Western Hem-isphere is at work. His name is Fritz Mandl. He was a munitions maker in Austria; now he is a central figure in Argentina's new armament pro-gram. He is Menace No. i to the peace of the Americas. He is poison from Europe.

Fritz Mandl's contradictions are extraordinary. He insists at times that he is a friend of the Allies, yet he boasted after Dunkirk of his excel-lent relationships with the Nazis. He calls himself a refugee from the Gestapo, but all Buenos Aires saw him bring a Nazi official from Ger-many to help him set up a munitions plant in Argentina.

Mandl was born rich in 1900. Be-fore he was 30 his father gave him the management of the family munitions plant in Vienna, the great Hirten-berger Works. European wars fat-tened him. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco was in his debt. II Duce decorated him for help to Italy in the Abyssinian War. Armaments have netted him over 60 million dollars. As a result, weapons of de-struction have always fascinated him.

This article is derived from confidential sources and authentic documents available to the author.

The ineffable Fritz Mandl, "merchant of death," (and once the husband of Hedy La-marr, if you're interested) helps implement Argentina's armament program and stirs up trouble in Latin America

He goes into raptures over new land mines which tear off the feet of ad-vancing soldiers.

An Argentine citizen now worth many millions, according to Mandl himself he is still only a poor refugee. " I have always followed one direction exclusively," he says, " that of an Austrian patriot. Because of it I have lost my country and the greater part of my fortune."

However, the record shows that when danger first threatened Austria, in 1937, the patriot abandoned his country. When the Nazis marched in he was running the Hirtenberger Works from a villa on the French Riviera. The record of the losses he sustained at the hands of the Nazis is similarly dubious.

Aligned as early as 1927 with the Austrian fascists, he later armed Prince Starhemberg's Home Guard by a stratagem. He sold ammunition to Mussolini for the conquest of Ethi-opia. By agreement the Italian Gov-ernment was overcharged 30 per-

73 Copyright 1944, The American Mercury, Inc., 570 Lexington Ave., New York. 22, N. Y.

{The American Mercury, January, '45)

p o i s o n f r o m e u r o p e 73 cent. With this money Mandl bought arms in Italy and smuggled them back into Austria. II Duce thus was trying secretly to balk German ex-pansion.

When Hitler's invasion of Austria was in the making, Mandl was thus already on record as having backed the Austrian fascists. Fearing this would not meet with Hitler's ap-proval, Mandl made a secret visit to Austrian Foreign Minister Schmidt, before the German entrance into Vi-enna, and left Austria with his per-sonal fortune and all the ready cash of the Hirtenberger Works.

To take money out was a criminal offense. One of the first acts of the invading Nazis in 1938, therefore, was to confiscate the Mandl estates for "high treachery" and seize the Hirtenberger Works. Promptly Mandl selected as his personal agents the firm of Johann Wehrli, international bankers of Zurich, and sent them to Berlin to bargain.

For a refugee, he got a good bar-gain. In exchange for the return of the Hirtenberger cash, he got back his Austrian estates plus a million dollars in pounds sterling and a mil-lion and a quarter reichsmarks. His personal funds were not mentioned. As late as 1944 he still referred to the Hirtenberger Works as "my works in Vienna."

But there was a typical Nazi joker. The deal was made in behalf of the Nazis by a bureau called the Gusdoff Foundation. One clause called for the payment by Mandl of all back taxes on his estates. As soon as the taxes were paid the estates were seized again, this time by the Ges-tapo. When Mandl screamed "fraud,"

the Gustloff Foundation blandly ex-plained that the Gestapo was a dif-ferent bureau of the Reich over which the Foundation had no con-trol. Mandl lost his estates. That is the basis for his description of himself as a refugee from the Gestapo.

Mandl had taken his first look at Argentina late in 1937. It was not an ordinary investor's trip; the oncoming Nazi storm already darkened the sky. But Mandl himself had definite plans transcending mere safety.

He was well received in political circles. His relationships with Musso-lini and Franco were of value, he al-ready knew many Argentine Army officers, and the German Embassy itself recommended him. Everything seemed favorable to the project he had in mind.

October of 1938 saw him in Buenos Aires again. This time he bought a cattle ranch and a rice plantation, deposited 700 kilos of gold bars in Argentina's Central Bank, a like amount with Lloyd's in London, put $2,000,000 to his credit in New York, and set up in Buenos Aires a personal holding company for his fortune. In-cluded in the list of incorporators was a leading Argentine Nazi. As usual, Mandl kept his name out of it; he controlled by power of attorney.

He entered into partnership with one of Argentina's leading families. He invested in plastics, cement and textiles, interested himself in artificial silk and synthetic rubber, bought a ship and sold it to the Japanese. He carefully cultivated relationships with Argentina's military officers, in particular General Basilio Pertine and General Juan Bautista Molina, both highly placed pro-Nazis.

74 In October 1939 Mandl arrived

in New York for a visit of seven months. Included in his large en-tourage was a Nazi official, a metal-lurgical expert released by Germany to help Mandl's plans. Already his dream had begun to take practical shape — a huge, new and greater Hirtenberger Works rising in Argen-tina.

He purchased machinery and ma-terials for a large bicycle factory — yes, bicycles, but wait! — entered into negotiations for a brass mill and bought machine tools. On the advice of his Nazi metallurgical expert he concluded a contract with a large engineering firm which had built the Hermann Goring Werke and one of Britain's great steel plants. He hired this concern to survey the field in Argentina and draw up plans and estimates for a steel plant.

Mandl returned to Buenos Aires — in time to hear of the tragedy of Dun-kirk. Here was an unexpected turn of events. He had counted on buying his materials and equipment in the United States. But obviously a victo-rious Germany could meet his needs better than an isolated America.

Within 48 hours, therefore, he changed his plans and cabled his old friend, Austrian Minister Schmidt, now in Berlin and director of the Hermann Goring Werke, proposing an all-out collaboration in setting up his new steel combine in Argentina. He suggested that in return for Schmidt's collaboration he would see to it that the Argentine Government purchased its other steel requirements from the Hermann Goring Werke. Receiving a favorable reply, he promptly sent to Germany the de-

February

tailed plans and estimates already in hand. What he wanted to obtain was the Krupp process whereby steel is extracted from iron-ore sands such as those which stretch endlessly along Argentina's southern coast. He talked no more about his hatred of the Ges-tapo. His relationships with Germany were excellent, he boasted.

However, before the Germans could act on his proposal, Britain's stubborn defense shook Fritz Mandl's confidence in eventual Nazi victory. Cautiously he resumed negotiations with the United States.

O n Augus t 27, 1941, in Accion Ar-gentina appeared a full-page article describing Cometa, the new bicycle factory. Mandl had consistently de-nied to his American friends any idea of making munitions, yet tucked away in the article was the informa-tion that the bicycle plant could be turned to ammunition making in 24 hours. The article also asked a most embarrassing question: Precisely what were the circumstances whereby Fritz Mandl had been able to take a huge fortune out of Austria?

This was only one of several flea bites which were making things un-comfortable for Mandl. The British and American colonies and many Argentine families still ostracized him, and German residents had be-come uncertain of his real relation-ship with Berlin. When he sought membership in the exclusive Jockey Club he was blackballed. He attrib-uted his rejection to a campaign against him by the German Embassy.

Then another blow fell. Through the New York office of a private banking firm of Buenos Aires, Mandl had sent $100,000 in currency to a

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

•945 p o i s o n f r o m e u r o p e 75 Brooklyn brewery — for "safekeep-ing." In June 1941 the brewery, obeying the Treasury regulations for reporting foreign funds, revealed the transaction. The firm which had acted for Mandl, although Argentine in name, was partly Swiss — which brought it under Foreign Funds Control as having a European in-terest.

Various c i rcumstances aroused Washington's suspicions; an investi-gation was pushed. The upshot was that in October 1942 all Mandl's American resources and activities were blocked by order of the U. S. Treasury. His company in Argentina soon found it impossible to obtain materials from the United States. Here was real trouble.

Mandl talked to every influential North American and Britisher who would listen. He loved the Allies, he insisted. Confident his negotiations with the Hermann Goring Werke were secret, he proclaimed that he never had any dealings with the Nazis. His only chance to regain his Austrian estates was by Allied victory. On what possible grounds could such a mistaken action be based? For many months he was a constant visitor at the American and British embassies — to no avail.

To his Argentine military friends he confided finally that he had always hated the Allies anyway. He would go it alone, he boasted. All further necessary drawings were on their way from Vienna and Berlin. All necessary machinery could be tooled by Cometa. Agreements had been made for Chilean copper and iron, steel from Sweden was available, •crap iron was at hand in great quan-

tity, experts were at his elbow to help him, five fabricating steel plants were already at work. All he needed to start up again in the munitions business in a big way was a little clever propaganda among his mili-tary friends to make sure of orders, and a chance to buy into Argentine industry so that he would not appear as a foreigner out merely for personal profit.

Propaganda he found easy. Many of the military clique already half believed that Brazil coveted Argen-tina's rich Corrientes province and the territory of Misiones. Lend-lease, they suspected, was merely a Yankee trick whereby Brazil, under cover of arming for a European war, could secure armament for the conquest of Argentina.

Such beliefs were fertile ground for Fritz Mandl, and he made the most of his opportunity. With the success of the June 1943 revolution in Argentina he found himself on intimate terms with the new military rulers of a country ripe for arma-ment at any cost.

In October of that year Mandl bought surreptitiously into an old Argentine concern named Impa. Makers of airplanes, arms and trucks, the firm was directed by Jos6 Mario Sueyro, brother of the late Vice-President of Argentina and of the present Minister of Marine. Included in its customers were many black-listed concerns and among its person-nel were escaped Italian air pilots from the Italian Lati Line seized by the Brazilian Government.

Impa had everything that Cometa lacked — machinery, materials, an old Argentine name and above all

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

an intimate blood relationship through Sueyro with Argentina's military rul-ers. By November the merger was complete. Mandl changed Cometa over to ammunition making, bought out those stockholders who com-plained, put in Jos6 Sueyro as presi-dent and took control for himself.

Early in 1944 the Argentine Gov-ernment awarded Impa Armamentos its first contract, 56 million pesos for arms, ammunition, mines, trucks and field kitchens — with further con-tracts for airplanes and warships to follow.

Fritz Mandl is going ahead fast. Since January 1944 the production facilities of Impa Armamentos have been trebled; rolling mills are being bought in Brazil, technical processes, drawings and production know-how have been secured from a Hermann Goring subsidiary in Budapest, land has been purchased outside San Martin for a new brass and copper foundry, and a great new munitions combine is in course of construction in the proud land of the pampas.

One result is that Fritz Mandl has been black-listed as an open enemy of the Allies. But to many Argentines such a black listing appears as an out-right American attempt to sabotage Argentina's armament program — one more stride along the long path of Allied coercion.

Mandl is also personal adviser to Colonel Peron, Vice-President. As such he influences not only Argen-tina's armament program but her fiscal and industrial policies as well.

He works closely with the Argentine War Materials Commission and with General Savio, head of the Argentine Army arms factories.

So powerful is he, in fact, that alarmists insist that all his activities are part of an agreement with the Nazis dating back to 1938, whereby Argentina will eventually be taken over by the Germans precisely as, through Quisling, Norway was ac-quired.

Nazi agent or mere profiteer, how-ever, Fritz Mandl is in a position now to push his ambitions to the limit.

Just what can be done about it is not easy to say. In Fritz Mandl's background are decades of the in-trigues, hatreds and suspicions of Cen-tral Europe, with their deadly flower of armament contracts. The nations of South America are to him merely another series of Balkan states, with the same or greater armament possi-bilities. Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Para-guay — all are on his list of preferred prospects. To drum up business he is cheerfully looking forward to im-mediate trouble with Brazil.

As an example of European poison brought to the Western Hemisphere, Mandl is tops. His god is money; war and death are his allies. Peace and democracy are unintelligible to him. But he has persuaded the military rulers of Argentina that they need him. He is an Argentine patriot now. He is an increasing menace to the peace of all South America — a men-ace which sooner or later will have to be faced.

rfo

jt Pays to JncreaseYourWord Power Wilfred Funk

£ a c h n e w word y o u learn opens a n e w door in your mind . Y o u r words are the keys to your thoughts , and the more words y o u have at your c o m m a n d , the deeper, clearer and more accurate will be your thinking, your understanding and your power of expression. So b e c o m e cur ious about words. Look u p those that are unfamil iar to y o u a n d discover their meanings . M a k e a g a m e of it. It's fun. A n d it's a va luable g a m e , too.

Below is a brief vocabulary test based on 20 words se lected from a recent issue of T h e Reader's Digest . After each word are four other words or phrases. Under l ine either a, b, c or d, whichever one y o u think comes nearest in mean-ing. Check your results against the answers on the fo l lowing page and find out your vocabulary rating.

'!) egress — a. entrance b. exit c. wild animal preliminary agreement between countries c. gen-<1. progress erosity d. a reference book (2) meticulous — a. unpleasant b. amusing (12) mulct — a. to ferment wine b. to prepare c. finicky d. helpful food for cattle c. to deprive of by trickery d. to (3) mundane — a. mournful b. stupid c. aver- J"tlhze land

age d. worldly (13) centrifuge — a .a type of musical compo-' , ., ,. , , sition b. an architectural term c. a middle course

• , m "i T 3 - , i °V" WtnmW d. a machine for separating by rotation moisten d. to sulk . . J . r , , . . (14) clandestine — a. calm b. extremely cold

(5) panoply — a. a full suit of armor b. a tool c. kept secret d. clannish c . great pomp d. an inlaid floor ,, -•> , ,. . , , . , ... J (15) tuliginous — a. overwhelming b. like soot (6) torque — a .a turban b. a jest c. a Turkish or smoke c. bulging d. like a lightning flash tosh d. that which produces a twist (16) autonomy — a. right to self-rule b. a (7) prototype — a .a primitive form b. print- dictatorship c. rule of the majority d. rule of a rr's type c. a photograph d. a high dignitary small class (8) palliate — a . to flatter b. to lessen c. to ( 1 7 ) surreptitious — a. repetitious b. over-mqratiate d. to be generous generous c. overanxious d. done by secret means

(9) m a l e v o l e n t - a . homely b. wishing evil < 1 8 ) f a n s m u t e - a. transport b. translate c. bad tempered d. pessimistic c carry away d. change inform

. ,. . , , (19) flagrant — a. wondering b. evil smelling (10) myopia — a. deafness b. a political phi- c. 0peniy scandalous d. absurd losophy c. near-sightedness d. a style of writing (2Q) tentative _ a ^ ^ ,(/w)„„n,a/

(11) protocol — a. an act of aggression b. a c. intense d. leisurely

What's theWord? Fred A. Green T h i s W e e k M a g a z i n e

< 7 - Y OLLOWING are 12 sentences, each conta in ing an italicized, intentional error in dict ion. For each mistake you can correct, count ten points. A score of 60 is fair, 90 is good and 120 is perfect. Check your answers with those o n the fo l lowing page.

I) A new airplane has been designed that (2) " Try and catch me 1" challenged the will average better than 500 miles an hour. small boy.

78 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

(3) When the show was over the actor made his exodus. (4) Her son was awfully grateful for the present. (5) The new battleship was quickly tied to the dock. (6) After the meeting the members of the Debating Club went their divers ways. (7) Because of his bad stomach, the ailing man spent a sleepless night.

(8) Prisoners are first arraigned at the Magistrate's Court. (9) At times we are all apt to be mistaken. (10) The people of some foreign lands have a strange habit of wearing precious stones in their teeth. (11) Soon after taking office, the governor-elect convened the legislature. (12) The visitor was told to return bye and bye.

*

Answers to " I t Pays to Increase Your Word Power" 1 - b ; 6 - d ; 1 1 - b ; 1 6 - a ; 2 - c ; 7 - a ; 1 2 - c ; 17—d; 3 - d ; 8 - b ; 1 3 - d ; 18—d; 4 - a ; 9 - b ; 1 4 - c ; 1 9 - c ; 5 - a ; 1 0 - c ; 1 5 - b ; 2 0 - b .

Vocabulary Ratings 2 0 - 1 5 correct excel lent 1 4 - 1 0 correct good 9 - 6 correct average under 6 correct . . . . i n a d e q u a t e

+

Answers to "Wha t ' s the Word?" 1. Use more instead of better. 2. D o not use and in place of to, unless

two separate acts are implied by the verb. 3. Use exit. An exodus denotes the de-

parture of a large number of people. 4. Substitute very for awfully. 5. Ships are tied to wharves. A dock is the

slip or waterway extending between two piers or projecting wharves, or cut into the land for the reception of ships.

6. Substitute diverse for divers. Divers means several; diverse different.

7. Use ill, not bad.

8. Arraignment occurs in, not at court.

9. Apt is used erroneously for likely or liable.

10. Use the word custom instead of the word habit. The latter is acquired, but the former is followed.

11. Use convoke. It means "to call to-gether." T o convene is to come together.

12. In an adverbial sense, use by and by.

i j T O ' f - ' f W T O m f W J I jnclrei.s p a r a d e ^ T ^ ' P T ' i S ^ ^ W W W ?

rNNOUNCEMENTS m a d e to naval personnel over public-address systems customari ly b e g i n w i t h "Attent ion, al l h a n d s ! " and conc lude wi th " T h a t is all ."

Sailors a t tending to their dut ies at an eastern naval air station were startled recent ly b y the fo l lowing a n n o u n c e m e n t :

"Attent ion , all hands ! T h e W a v e s will report this af ternoon on the drill field for inspect ion at 14 o 'c lock. T h e W a v e s wil l wear hats and ties. T h a t is al l ." — Contributed by Don Rose

G How an American flier lived in the midst of the Germans and escaped capture—an exciting and heart-warming story from the war in Italy

IU S E P P E and the Sergeant Condensed from St. Louis Post-Dispatch + Frederic Sondern, Jr.

THE British captain looked sus-piciously at the tall, blond, bearded man in his tattered

clothes. "Incredible," he said. "An American flier in these hills for seven months? Right in the middle of the Jerries?" The little Italian farmer who had brought the American in edged up to the captain. "But itsa true," he announced in his best Italo-American. " I see hima come down. I take care hima long time. We very gooda friends." He grinned broadly.

And it was true. For seven months Staff Sergeant Lee Nelson had lived within a few miles of the great Ger-man fortress at Cassino — on cheese, crusts of bread, and his wits. The Nazis had almost stumbled over him time and again. From his mountain hide-1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

SERGEANT NELSON enl isted in his h o m e town, Rockford, 111., in J u n e 1941, a n d asked for assignment to the Air Force. His hobby was radio. In J u l y 1942, he was sent with the 12th M e d i u m Bomber Group to North Africa — one of the first outfits to go. After considerable service wi th the Desert Air Force , he was grounded for sev-eral months by malar ia . H e began to fly again in Sicily a n d was shot d o w n on his fifth mission. W o r d that he was missing in action reached his mother the day after his father had died. Sergeant Nelson recently came home , married "the girl" in Rockford, and is on duty at a southern air base. W h e n he gets out of the Army , he has been prom-isc d a j o b with his father's o ld firm, the Itorg-Warner Corporation.

out he had looked down on the vast panorama of the fateful battles for the Hitler Line, until the tide of the Allied advance finally swept past and set him free. Says Sergeant Nelson, very solemnly, " I t was a crazy thing to have happen to a guy."

It was possible only because of Giuseppe, the little Italian farmer. Giuseppe had spent years in the United States. When he went back to Italy, to take care of his aged parents, he left his heart in America. And when Fate presented him with a chance to help an American soldier, he was overjoyed. Let the Sergeant start the story:

" W E WERE sweating it out to Ponte Gorda that day. I was radioman in a B-25. Around Cassino a lot of flak started coming up, and the left en-gine was hit. I t squirted flame, and soon the ship was afire. Over the in-terphone the pilot said, 'Abandon ship,' so I put on my chute, got over to the hatch, waited my turn, and jumped.

"And was that a loony j u m p ! When I reached for the rip-cord handle, it wasn't there. The parachute pack had broken loose and was flap-ping around in the air above me, the shroud lines slapping my face. I hauled it down to me, found the handle and pulled. Something had gotten jammed, though, and only a

Copyright 1944, The Pulitzer Pub. Co., St. Louis, Mo. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 7, '45)

8o

little silk came out. I had to feed the rest out with my hands. I was falling pretty fast, by then, and doing somer-saults like a trapeze artist. When the chute finally did take hold, the body straps almost cut me in half. Then I began to oscillate badly. When you're coming down fast on a mountainside covered with boulders, that's no fun. The ground came up and hit me with a bang.

"The next few hours were a bad dream. I knew I was right in the middle of one of the biggest German military concentrations in Italy — with a battered ankle that hurt so much I couldn't walk. No cigarettes, food, or anything, the scramble in the plane had been so sudden. I didn't know where the other fellows were. I hadn't seen their chutes; I had fallen much faster on account of the delayed release, and apparently in a different direction. I was alone, all right, and I never knew you could feel so lonely.

"Suddenly something moved against the horizon. Ankle or no ankle, I hit the ground like a snake — for the first of many, many times. But the four Italians had seen me and came up waving and shouting — it's a wonder they didn't bring down the whole German Army on us. They half carried, half led me to a stone hut. With what litde Italian I had man-aged to pick up in Sicily, I overheard them arguing in whispers about turn-ing me over to the Nazis. I kept hear-ing the word 'dangerous.'

"And then this litde guy, Churchill, walks in. I couldn't ever pronounce his real name, so that's what I called him. He has a big grin all over his face, and stretches out his hand.

February

'Hello, my friend,' he says. 'How are you? You gotta nothing to worry about no more. I taka care of you.' And he meant it!"

GIUSEPPE and his two sons had been working nearby. Giuseppe had lived on a comfortable litde farm in the valley, but he was afraid the Germans would take his sons for forced labor, so they had moved to a shack on the mountain. When our planes came over that day he dropped his hoe and watched, as he always did, waving his hands and cheering. He felt more American than Italian. These were his bombers.

When he saw a B-25 burst into flames Giuseppe stamped and cursed. Five white parachutes billowed out. Four slithered sideways with the wind and down — right into a German encampment. The fifth, after plum-meting earthward for breath-taking seconds, disappeared behind the mountain. "We must find him before the Germans do," said Giuseppe. "He will be hurt. We must save him."

From the first, Giuseppe embar-rassed the Sergeant with the intensity of his feelings. "Donta you worry," he declared. "Asa long as I hava crust of bread, this big" — his mobile hands made a microscopic gesture — "you geta half. You lika my son."

He was as good as his word. He took Nelson to his own shack at first, but it was dangerous to stay there in daytime. The Germans continually sent patrols into the mountains in search of livestock. So, in a well-hidden spot, Giuseppe and his sons built a lean-to for the Sergeant. It cost them their invaluable hoard of

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

•945 g i u s e p p e a n d t h e s e r g e a n t 8l

wood and canvas, and Nelson ob-jected. Giuseppe waved him aside. "Itsa no Statler Hotel," he said. "But itsa good and warm."

The Sergeant had narrow escapes. "Several times they almost stumbled over me," he says. "Once, after my ankle was a little better, I had started out on a walk. That was about all I could do. I had nothing to read; I 'd thought about most everything I could think about; so I just had to look at the scenery. All of a sudden I heard German voices. I hit a hole in some underbrush — fast. Along the trail came two krauts, each with a tommy gun in the crook of his arm. They were beating the bushes with sticks, and every few minutes they'd yell "baaaaa" — to attract the sheep in the neighborhood, I suppose. In be-tween they were having an argument about something, and of course they had to stop right in front of me to finish it. If one of them had so much as looked down at his feet during those ten awful minutes he couldn't have missed me. But neither of them did, and they went on their way still playing sheep.

"Every evening Churchill would make sure that the coast was clear, then come up to my hide-out and take me back to his hut. Well —- one evening a squad of Nazis appeared on Churchill's place. Somebody must have tipped them off about me. Churchill was afraid that I 'd start out for his hut by myself and run right into an ambush. He did some fast and what must have been bitter thinking, God bless him! He had Dine sheep hidden away on a little

meadow that the krauts hadn't found. Now he started out up the trail,

pretending he didn't know the Ger-mans were following him, and led them right to the flock. While they were busy rounding up the animals he got away and warned me. I spent that night in a ditch. Churchill was a very solid citizen."

Giuseppe made that sacrifice as cheerfully as he did other things to "make the Sergeant happy." His tiny stock of cigarettes and the bits of food which his wife managed to smuggle up from the valley were care-fully divided. Nelson's shoes began to wear out. Giuseppe found an old tire, and went down into the valley for some nails — a very dangerous sortie for him. Thus the Sergeant got new soles for his field boots. When it got cold, Giuseppe produced his highly prized greatcoat — a relic from the last war. He was very angry when Nelson suggested that he might need it himself.

Then the snow came. There was danger the Sergeant's footprints would be noticed. So the Italian, who for-tunately had big feet, would walk ahead. Nelson would tread carefully in his prints. "Itsa nuisance," Giu-seppe apologized, "but necessary."

Time passed slowly for the Ser-geant. He had been shot down on October 21, 1943. "At first 1 made a scratch on my watch every day. Tha t was when I thought I might be able to get away. But by the time my ankle was well, more and more Ger-mans had come in. The roads in the valley below were crawling with them all the time. Finally I realized that I'd just have to wait. I did enough sleeping and thinking to last me the rest of my life. There was no work to do. The meadows where I might have

82 helped were all too exposed for safety. It was Churchill w h o kept m e from going nuts."

In the evenings Giuseppe and the Sergeant had long conversations. T h e little Italian had worked all over the Uni ted States, in an amazing assort-ment of jobs — from stonemason to streetcar conductor.

"Itsa wonderful place, America ," he would begin one of his disserta-tions, "itsa got everything!" T h e trouble was, according to Giuseppe, that not enough Americans appreci-ated what they had. " N o w you justa taka da scenery, for example ," he would say. " Y o u think itsa beautiful here. Well , let me tell you. In Ari-zona . . ." A n d Giuseppe was off on a travelogue. Fiorello LaGuardia was one of his heroes. "You bringa h im over, leta h i m run Italy. T h e n you see somethings happen."

Giuseppe was convinced that the American system would work any-where in the world. "It makesa more people happy," was always his con-cluding argument.

T h e Sergeant listened. "Churchill's eyes would get all shiny, his accent would get even worse than usual, and he'd fall all over his o w n words. Every once in a while he'd say — 'You understanda what I say.' A n d I certainly did. H e was such a good American that he made m e feel kind of ashamed of myself. I hadn't ever thought about it very much; sort of took it for granted, I guess, the way most of us do. Giuseppe taught m e a lesson I'll never forget."

And then, one day, Giuseppe went all mysterious. H e dispatched one of his sons to tell the Sergeant to stay away for a night and not to come

February

d o w n until the fol lowing evening. Nelson thought that the Germans were unusually active. Actual ly it was Christmas and Giuseppe had planned a surprise. W h e n the Ser-geant arrived at the little stone hut, it was decked out wi th greens. Giuseppe had slaughtered a cow. M a m m a and some trusted relatives had arrived wi th a bottle of wine for the feast.

Nelson was blue at first. Christmas at h o m e had always been his favorite day of the year.

"But Churchill was so happy ," the Sergeant says, "that I couldn't stay blue very long. 'Some day soon, w e have a real Christmas again,' he'd say. 'You see. Everythinga fix himself and w e always be friends.' H e grinned that terrific grin of his, and the first thing I knew I was enjoying myself. T h e y were all smiling at me. By now I could talk to them a little in Italian, and it turned out to be one of the best Christmases I've ever had ."

O n e morning in January, Giu-seppe c a m e panting u p the moun-tain, so excited that he was shouting. T h e Fifth Army was advancing on Cassino. But that excitement was short-lived. T h e sound of cannon-ading died away, the bombers stopped coming over, and the worst months of the war — for the Sergeant — started. February, March and April dragged by. Even Giuseppe's cheeri-ness was wearing thin.

A n d t h e n , in ear ly M a y , the bombers started coming again; this t ime by the hundred. Giuseppe was beside himself wi th joy. " N o w w e fix ' em! N o w w e fix ' em!" he would shout, thumping the Sergeant's back.

At a new vantage point on the mountain they built a lookout post,

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 g i u s e p p e a n d t h e s e r g e a n t

scarcely 75 feet above the main road that led from Cassino over a pass to the rear. It commanded a magnifi-cent panoramic view of the valley below. They watched column after column of gray-clad German troops pouring forward through the gap into the valley —• reinforcements for the Hitler Line.

By May 15, however, the rumble of gunfire was becoming louder and louder. "Thatsa our artillery," said Giuseppe. "Lotsa guns we got. Thisa very good!" The earth trembled as huge gusts of sound bounded from one mountain wall to the other and back again.

"All day long," the Sergeant re-lates, "heavy-caliber shells from the Allied batteries whined over our heads, into the communications lines behind us. It almost drove us crazy — wanting to correct their fire. There was one bridge they were trying hard to get. They kept missing it by a few yards. Churchill would shout, as though they might hear him, 'Uppa 50 yards! Downa 30 yards!' and pound my knee with his fist until it was black and blue. I was yelling, too, like a kid at a football game. We cer-tainly had seats on the 50-yard line.

"One early dawn brought the pay-off. We had been in our foxhole all

night. There was a peculiar lull. Churchill was restless and kept peer-ing into the dark trying to see some-thing. The first light started the guns going again, and suddenly Churchill grabbed me. 'Looka there! Looka there!' he shouted in what was sup-posed to be a whisper. 'They'ra com-ing back!' And sure enough, on the road below us, the gray columns were going the other way — with the tired, hangdog droop of beaten soldiers. In the valley a dust cloud that spurted flame was coming closer. 'That 'sa us!' yelled Churchill.

"All day the Germans kept pouring back over our road. Churchill counted every unit as they passed. I was afraid he was going to fall down the cliff right into them, in his excitement. 'Pretty soon they's alia finished,' he announced. And sure enough, the first Allied tank soon nosed around the elbow in the road below us."

They shouted and hugged each other. As they went down the trail which the Sergeant knew so well, Giuseppe suddenly stopped. " M y friend," he said very solemnly, " I always tella you thata we win."

He put his hand on the Sergeant's shoulder. "You come back next Sep-tember," he said. "Everthinga be ripe then. We have a big feast!"

(Seating the (buj/i . A

JAP prisoner, asked w h o h e t h o u g h t were the best j u n g l e fighters, replied, "Austral ians ."

" W h o are n e x t — Americans?" " N o ! " h e said. "Japanese ." "Wel l , w h a t a b o u t the Americans? Aren' t they g o o d j u n g l e fighters?" "Amer icans n o j u n g l e fighters," the N i p replied. " A m e r i c a n s remove jungle ." — Royal Arch Gunnison, NANA dispatch

N o w Fanners Crow Fish j A new crop that uuus cheap and nutri-

tious variety to the farm family'a meals

Condensed from The Progressive + Holman Harvey

IAST Y E A R 7000 farmers, encour-aged by Government experts, raised a crop of fish. This year,

many more will build and stock fish ponds, for the advantages of this new side line in farming are fast gaining recognition in many states. The farmer gets 200 to 300 pounds from each acre of pond. The fish are fat and sweet, sometimes tipping the scales at six or eight pounds, and it costs no more than ten cents a pound to raise them — cheaper than chicken or meat. They add wholesome variety to the diet of farm families.

The astonishing production rec-ords attained in fish-farming are based on three discoveries:

1. In any given controllable body of water, a natural, balanced "food chain" can be set up which auto-matically provides its fish population with enough food to live, reproduce and grow to usable sizes.

2. Any increase in the number of fish, without a corresponding increase in the food supply, simply results in reducing the average size of each fish in the pond.

3. By fertilizing the water, the food supply can be stepped up to support larger numbers of fish, just as pasture land can be fertilized to increase the poundage of meat or of milk per acre.

It is impossible to "fish out" a pond that has been correctly stocked

and regularly fertilized. No more than half of the fish can ever be caught with hook and line; the re-maining half, left with twice their former food supply, simply stop bit-ing for a few months until their num-ber builds up and their food becomes scarce again.

I have just made a 1000-mile tour through South Carolina, Geor-gia and Alabama, visiting scores of farms with fish ponds. Most farmers were outspokenly enthusiastic.

O. W. Coleman works his own 1400-acre general farm in Saluda County, S. C. After his day's work, Coleman often strolls down to his fish pond for relaxation.

" I get a big kick out of that little pond," he said. "Maybe I'll only fish her for half an hour, but I can always bring back something tasty for supper. She's chock-full of fish; the other night I weighed one in at better'n six pounds."

Judge Raymonde Stapleton, of El-berton, Ga., has pioneered with a model pond in a region all but bereft of natural fishing waters. Three families living on his farm supply their tables with fresh fish, and Judge Stapleton himself has caught 100 bass and sev-eral hundred sunfish in the past year.

A valuable by-product of these farm fish ponds is recreation. The family has fun fishing and swimming,

Copyright 1944, The Progressive Pub. Co., Termev BUg., Madison Wis. (The Progressive, January / , '45)

n o w f a r m e r s g r o w f i s h 85 .ind many a farmer sells fishing privi-leges to individuals or clubs for a nice cash return. Sixty families in Auburn, Ala., pay $10 a year each to maintain a 12-acre pond. Last year they caught 3000 pounds of fish.

Two pertinacious scientists at the Alabama State Agricultural Experi-ment Station are chiefly responsible for removing the guesswork from (ish farming: H. S. Swingle, fish culturist, and E. V. Smith, botanist. In joint research since 1935, they have learned that any ordinary chemical fertilizer placed in the pond will al-most immediately increase the produc-tion of microscopic plants and ani-malcules known collectively as plank-ton. Insects feed upon the plankton, forage fish feed upon the insects and their larvae, and, finally, carnivorous fish feed upon the swarming young of the forage fish.

Within a few days after the first application of fertilizer, the water takes on a delicate sea-green opales-cence from the myriads of plankton. Later on, it should become impossible to see more than ten inches below the surface. If the farmer can see his hand a foot or more down, it is time to add more fertilizer. No other test is needed. The plankton, by the way, prevents the fish from seeing the fisherman or his boat.

Weed growth largely dies away as plankton-filled water shuts off the infiltration of sunlight. Pond lilies .ind weeds which send large leafy surfaces to the top must be destroyed by lopping off their tops, for they afford concealment to small fish which throws the pond's food chain out of balance. Incidentally, when there are no weeds, fish devour the

mosquito larvae, thus helping to eliminate the pests.

The bluegill sunfish (or bream) is the perfect pond forage fish for the southern states. It multiplies fast, and is good to eat. A fertilized pond will support a large number of adult sun-fish weighing around half a pound, an ideal size for frying. From one pond I caught 15 in 30 minutes — about as fast as I could bait the hook.

A new pond, after fertilizing, is stocked with exactly 1500 sunfish fingerlings per acre. During the first year each pair of sunfish will pro-duce about 4000 young. Unless these new fish were held down in num-bers, there would be, within a year, 3,000,000 little sunfish per acre. Here the carnivorous fish enters to complete a stable food chain. The choice for the southern regions is the largemouth black bass, a hardy, fighting fish. For every 1500 sunfish, 100 bass fingerlings are stocked. Fewer bass may fail to keep the sun-fish population within bounds; more may annihilate it entirely.

One year after stocking, a pond is usually supporting the maximum weight of fish for the available food, which means in a well-fertilized pond as much as 500 to 600 pounds of fish per acre. Of this total weight, between 150 and 200 pounds per acre will be bass — three to four times as many bass as the best natural lake you ever fished.

Fertilizing will likewise increase the fish crop in natural waters. B. W. Taylor, of the Department of Game and Fisheries in Quebec, heard of the Alabama scientists' work and be-gan experiments in 1943 which proved that speckled trout in Canadian lakes

86 THE READER'S DIGEST February

would double in weight in a year when fertilizer was scattered in the shallows.

Our farmers get fingerlings free or at a nominal charge from state-op-erated hatcheries, or from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service if their applications are endorsed by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. The SCS gives the farmer advice on the se-

lection of a site and the best methods of constructing his pond. If the farmer does his own work with his own trac-tor or mule, he can build a one-acre pond for from $100 to $200.

As more farmers learn that they can produce a cash crop merely by flooding their marginal land, it is ex-pected that thousands of new ponds will be built.

The eJ^an's glossaryofu„fa familiar If Ms and Phrases

As Used by Advertising Writers to Describe Female Apparel and Appurtenances

knickknack — Any little thing.

bibelot — Any little thing that costs more.

sequins -

negligee — What she hopes she'll have on when the house burns down.

bathrobe — Live alone and lump it.

wetlges — Vamps on ramps.

marabou — I t ' s b e t t e r to sneeze than to freeze.

mink — when a woman turns around to look at another woman — that's mink.

sable — When a woman in mink turns around to look at an-other woman.

tttcish net — Hammock for the hair.

gossamer — The nearest thing to no th ing — a n d better in black.

lapin \ just a bunny, trench beaver I honey, m a d e erminette > to look l ike squirreline 1 m u c h m o r e polar seal ) money-

- F e m a l e armor (not impreg-nable).

glamorous — Anything plus a sequin.

crocodile) ° n e h a s a b i S S e r mouth but „ . V you can't tell the difference in

alligator j the end

bois tie rose 1 shocking ( What dQ yQu think? K n k , tlusty | petal

n e w — Adjective for anything.

ch ic — Adjective for anything with a hat to match.

fabulous

From a pre-Christmas ad by Macy's, the New York department store

W e haven't seen anything like it for half an hour.

iheTravel Lure qfa6o-HourWorld

A L R E A D Y thousands of would-be travelers are enthusiastically

A. JA. window-shopping for a trip abroad soon after V Day. More than 500 requests are on file a t the Hol-land-America Line for space on the Kieuw Amsterdam's first postwar sail-ing. On the day Paris was liberated, the French Line's New York office received 400 requests for passage to France. Pan American Airways esti-mates that in the typical postwar year 233,500 passengers will go to Europe, and it has a tentative schedule of 36 transatlantic departures weekly to handle its share of the rush.

It is uncertain how soon after the war we shall be able to go abroad, but the State Department was issuing tourist passports six months after the I<)i8 armistice. Priorities this time will be given those engaged in urgent iwstwar reconstruction work; next, businessmen working on rehabilita-tion projects, and refugees who are mxious to get back to their homes.

A preview of your postwar tourist oppor-tunities — the planes you'll take, the places you'll go, and the shrinking cost

Condensed from T h e Rotar ian Deena Clark

Then passage permits will go to naturalized American citizens who may be worried about relatives or property in the old country. These passengers will travel in the same troopships and bucket-seated air transports that bring our boys home.

The most important factor in the prospective postwar travel stampede is, of course, the airplane. Formerly thousands of Americans were barred from vacationing abroad because ships took five days or more to cross and an equal time to return, thus us-ing up most of their holiday. After the war, a stenographer will be able to leave Friday after office hours, spend two weeks shopping on the Rue de la Paix and board a Sunday night plane that will return her to her type-writer on Monday morning. Surveys show that trips to England will be most sought by the first postwar trav-elers, with France next and the Medi-terranean countries third.

The planes now spanning the At-lantic in routine flights at the average rate of one every 20 minutes prove that a postwar "commuter service" by air to all countries is practicable. And rates will be so low that a man can take his wife and children to Europe as inexpensively as they for-merly traveled at home.

Several air lines have drawn up tentative rates and schedules. TWA is even now converting five 36-pas-

Copyright 194s, Rotary International, 35 E. Wactyr Drive, Chicago r. III. (The Rotarian, February, '45) »7

88

senger "Stratoliners" for peacetime use. Pending approval of the Civil Aeronautics Board, they will inau-gurate daily flights to London at a fare of $263.80, in 22 hours and 40 minutes. TWA has also ordered 40 Lockheed "Constellations," 57-pas-senger transports which will later take us from New York to London in about half that time for $195.

American Airlines expects delivery of thirty 56-passcnger Douglas DC-6's by June 1945, and Pennsylvania Cen-tral Airlines is buying fifteen 48-passenger DC-4 transports for New York-to-London flights. Pan Ameri-can Airways expects delivery in 1945 of luxury liners that will enable its timetable ultimately .to read: Two express flights daily between New York and London at $267 round trip.

Most travel officials expect a post-war boom in trips to Russia. North-east Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Pennsylvania Central Airlines and Pan American all plan flights to Mos-cow, some of them for as low as $290.

Hawaii will be among the first tourist targets. Five major air lines are competing for the sky route to the Islands, pushing the passage price down to the level of the prewar steam-ship fare. Pan American plans two 128-passenger flights daily which will bring Aloha Tower within eight hours of the Golden Gate at a cost of only $96 per passenger.

Right now you can fly to Alaska, with its magnificent, unexplored wil-derness and its fishing and hunting possibilities, on a regular PAA sched-ule from Seattle to Nome at a fare of $421.20 round trip. TWTA plans to take us from Chicago to Nome in 17

Februai y hours, for $232. Northwest Airlines will offer competition at 4.8 cents a mile.

Spending less than a nickel a mile for passage, you can fly the Andes to the sportsman's paradise of Chile, where there are streams that yield 27-pound rainbow trout, and 3000 miles of ski runs unrivaled even in Switzerland. The proposed PAA schedule will cut the present one-way fare from New York to Rio from $489.50 to $ 175, and the flight time from 91 hours to 21.

Pan American thinks that the de-mand for passage to Germany will justify two 17-hour flights a day to Berlin, round-trip fare $216. Round trip to Tokyo in 1948 will be equally inexpensive, and Fujiyama will be within 30 hours of New York. The flight from San Francisco to Singa-pore will take 29 hours —• the fastest sea voyage used to take 29 days.

Complete round-the-world trips by tourist plane can be an early actuality in new super-airships which will com-press the whole world into 60 hours of flying time. Three major air lines have applied for globe-circling routes. American Export could inaugurate service on V Day plus 1, with two 20-passenger "Flying Aces." Pan American has scheduled a 30-day, globe-girdling, all-expense cruise, in-cluding hotels and sight-seeing, which will cost approximately $900. Pas-sengers will travel at 300 miles an hour in comfortable, 153-passenger Clippers, delivery of which is ex-pected in 1946. TWA plans a 27-day de luxe air cruise, with only three days spent in actual flight; the rest of the time will be used for sight-seeing.

Come peace, it will take only three

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

">45 to six months to produce the new iime-slashing planes. Douglas Air-• raft has already received 50 million dollars' worth of orders from three air lines to be filled as soon as mate-rials are released by the War Produc-tion Board.

Glenn Martin, president of the company which bears his name, fore-sees 100-passenger planes with pri-vate baths and showers, personal ship-to-ground communicat ion, a l ardroom, cocktail bar, gameroom for quoits and table tennis, a writing room equipped with a ticker-tape news service, a library, and on the afterdeck a plexi-glass observation lounge. Pressure control in the cabins will eliminate discomfort regardless of altitude, while developments of radar will make for great safety in Hying and landing.

Where time is not a controlling factor, ocean travel will retain its allure. Floating-mine disaster stories left over from the last war will be no deterrent to the vacation parade. The fact is that there is no case on record in which a tourist ship ran into

89 a floating mine. And our first ships will wear degaussing belts as pro-tection against magnetic mines.

An American Express official states that the first seagoing tourists can count on t ramp trips in small ships of the Liberty class about eight months after the war is over. For the comfort-loving traveler, pleasure cruises to England and the Mediterranean will be ready in approximately a year, to the Continent in 18 months. Scandi-navian cruises can be resumed prac-tically simultaneously with the close of the war. The Swedish-American Line reports that all cabins have been asked for on its first tourist sailing.

Attractive plans for buying trips on the installment plan have been worked out. Thousands bought de-ferred-payment trips the year before the war, on the basis of a 25 percent initial payment and the remainder in 12 monthly installments after the re-turn home. Travel agencies are not yet accepting passage money, but they do keep priority lists, which are increasing in length every day as the dammed-up demand for travel mounts.

T H E T R A V E L L U R E O F A 6 0 - H 0 U R W O R L D

' "

When Magicians Meet

RECENTLY, D u n n i n g e r , w h o l ikes t o b e k n o w n as " t h e m a s t e r m e n t a l i s t , " - c a l l e d o n B lacks tone , w h o d o e s n ' t m i n d b e i n g k n o w n as a p l a i n

m a g i c i a n . W h e n D u n n i n g e r arr ived , h e f o u n d the g r e a t m a g i c i a n r a n -sacking his b e d r o o m for his w h i t e t ie . " Y o u ' r e t h e g r e a t m i n d r e a d e r , " Blacks tone finally e x p l o d e d , " S u p p o s e y o u tell m e w h e r e I p u t t h a t t i e ."

D u n n i n g e r c o n c e n t r a t e d . " I t ' s i n t h a t b o x , " h e sa id . B lacks tone h u r r i e d l y w e n t t h r o u g h t h e b o x , f o u n d a t ie w h i c h h e h e l d

u p scornfu l ly . " Y o u ' r e a f ine m i n d r e a d e r , " hc ' sa id . " I t ' s b l a c k . " D u n n i n g e r s h r u g g e d . " I f y o u ' r e a n y k i n d of m a g i c i a n , " h e a n s w e r e d ,

" y o u c a n c h a n g e i t i n t o a w h i t e o n e . " — Harriet Van Home in N . Y. World-Telegram

A tie that binds the family-together and all to God

^(/eTeach Our Children to Pray Condensed from Better Homes & Gardens

0. K. Armstrong

A SMALL phonograph and a Bible jL^S. rest on the buffet of our din-

ing room. They are our "props" for family prayers. They help make possible what the children call "God's minutes."

Those minutes are not long — sel-dom more than five. But they are im-portant. They stand for daily recog-nition that there is a Power greater than we, a heavenly Father who is kind and good to His children.

My wife and I both were reared in homes where prayers were said. When the children came along we thought prayers would be a good thing for them, too, but we couldn't find the right routine. My work at first was teaching and writing, then holding public office. There was al-ways something to do at night — meetings to attend, work to finish, social engagements. We taught our children the "Now I lay me" prayer and let it go at that. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

O . K . ARMSTRONG is a wri ter a n d p u b l i c official . H e has served three t erms in the Missouri H o u s e of Representa t ives a n d he h e l p e d organize the Counc i l of S tate G o v -e r n m e n t s in various states. For t e n years M r . Armstrong w a s c h a i r m a n of ch i ld w e l -fare for the A m e r i c a n L e g i o n of his s tate . A u t h o r of several books a n d n u m e r o u s m a g a z i n e articles, he is especial ly w e l l posted on g o v e r n m e n t a l organizat ion, inter-state cooperat ion a n d j u v e n i l e d e l i n q u e n c y .

The first two boys grew into husky lads. The little girl, Sister, was pro-gressing in school. The last two boys were ready for kindergarten. All were dutifully enrolled in Sunday school. Still we weren't getting anywhere with their spiritual training. Half-heartedly we experimented with pray-ers at various times of the day. It was difficult to find a time when the family was all together. Before school there was the rush of brushing teeth and gathering up books; after school there were music lessons, games and' what not. We gave up.

Then a bolt of lightning brought us suddenly to an intense appreciation of our blessings. The two older boys were doing summer work, packing blackberries in a small community cannery. A storm came up. Lightning struck the building and stunned every-one there. Although no one was seri-ously injured, the realization of how close the boys had come to death brought to my wife and me an over-whelming sense of thanksgiving that they were spared. Perhaps it was just the workings of chance; we found it easier to believe in the hand of Provi-dence. We said some extra thanks at our evening meal and next day de-cided to add a bit of Scripture read-ing.

"We sing at church. Why not sing Copyright 1945, Meredith Pub. Co., Det Moines J, Iowa

CBetter Homes & Gardens, February, '45)

'945

before our prayers?" Sister asked. ( l o o d idea. I dug out some o ld H o m e r Rodeheaver records. W e added other transcriptions. "I need T h e e every hour" and "Blest b e the d e that binds" are favorites.

After the song, comes the Scrip-ture. M a y b e it's on ly a verse, perhaps a short chapter. T h e n the prayer. Somet imes it's the Lord's prayer, all together. Somet imes a n older boy will lead. O r the t iny treble of one of the little boys wil l startle us into hid-den smiles as he thanks G o d for " the wienies and taters w e got for supper." Whatever the prayer, it's spontane-ous, and it makes G o d a sort of part-ner for the household. It breaks d o w n barriers that so often keep a father or mother from ment ion ing the most fundamenta l fact in any child's life: the existence of a Creator.

God's minutes take only a t iny fraction of the busy day , but they have brought us a n e w sense of family closeness. Troubles s eem easier to forget. Anger cannot out l ive a verse of song. Worry fades w h e n w e c o m e u p o n the lines "Seek ye first the king-d o m of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you ."

W e ' v e passed o n the idea to nu-merous friends. Professor a n d Mrs. Blank over at the col lege, w i th two girls in h igh school , find breakfast-time the best. Mike , w i d o w e r night-w a t c h m a n , has a good-n ight prayer wi th his six chi ldren before h e goes to work. We' l l never k n o w h o w m a n y have copied our plan. A visit ing min-ister was so impressed h e w e n t back to his h o m e parish a n d started a crusade for family devotions.

A t first w e felt some embarrass-

91 m e n t w h e n w e he ld prayers w i t h guests present. N o w it seems like a n a d d e d note of hospital i ty . Polit icians, bus inessmen , t eachers — all p a u s e wi th us whi le w e recognize the pres-ence of the constant Guest . As the phonograph began the h y m n "Beulah L a n d " one evening , our d inner visi-tor, a no ted manufacturer , burst in to a roaring baritone. " S i n g it a g a i n ! " he shouted on the last note . "I haven't heard that since I w a s a boy! ' ' A criminal-court j u d g e seriously told us: "If all families had prayers I w o u l d n ' t h a v e m u c h to do ."

T h e brief Scripture reading , w e ' v e found, adds u p to a lot of Bible knowl -e d g e as the days m e r g e into m o n t h s a n d years. W e ' v e l earned m a n y fa-vorite passages " b y heart" — the first Psalm, the shepherd Psa lm, the Beati -tudes, the e ighth chapter of R o m a n s , a n d St. Paul's marve lous ly beaut i ful words on faith, hope and charity in First Corinthians. C h i l d r e n , w e h a v e discovered, are just as interested in Bible stories, w i th their d e e p spiritual meanings , as in a n y others. D a v i d a n d Gol iath, J o s e p h a n d his brothers, f eed ing the five thousand, the l a m e m a n at the beautiful ga te — all h a v e n e w s ignificance for us.

Several publishers h a v e brought o u t helps for fami ly prayers, such as " T h e U p p e r R o o m " w i t h its da i ly S c r i p t u r e l e s s o n , c o m m e n t s a n d prayer, all requiring o n l y a few m i n -utes. T h e Cathol ic C h u r c h has l o n g provided helps for private devot ions . A ' r a b b i assured us that Jewi sh f a m i -l ies c o u l d s e c u r e s i m i l a r g u i d i n g pamphlets . T h u s prayer becomes our spiritual c o m m o n denominator .

O u r young people face a future sure to be hard a n d trying. G r e a t

w e t e a c h o u r c h i l d r e n t o p r a y

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

p r o b l e m s w i l l res t u p o n t h e i r s h o u l -d e r s . N o t e m p l o y m e n t a l o n e , n o r l i b e r t y n o r o p p o r t u n i t y a l o n e , w i l l s e e t h e m t h r o u g h . T h e c h a r a c t e r a n d m o r a l s t r e n g t h t h a t a r e b u i l t b y c o m -m u n i o n w i t h G o d w i l l b e e s s e n t i a l f o r t h e s u p r e m e test .

O n e o f o u r o l d e r b o y s is i n t h e N a v y n o w , a n d t h e o t h e r p l a n s t o g r a b h i s h i g h s c h o o l d i p l o m a a n d r u s h o f f t o t h e A r m y . W e a r e g l a d

t h e y h a v e l e a r n e d t o p r a y . T h e y c a r r y w i t h t h e m a n i d e a l t h a t s o m e d a y t h e y a n d t h o u s a n d s o f t h e i r b u d d i e s w h o fight t h e g o o d fight c a n r e t u r n a n d h e l p b u i l d a b r o t h e r h o o d o f m a n s o s t r o n g a n d j u s t t h a t w a r s w i l l b e n o m o r e . A n d w h a t e v e r d a n g e r s t h e y f a c e , w e k n o w t h e r e w i l l b e w i t h t h e m a P r e s e n c e , a n d a V o i c e s a y i n g , " B e o f g o o d c o u r a g e ! . . . I f G o d b e f o r us , w h o c a n b e a g a i n s t us?"

Where to Bury a Dog This editorial by Ben Hur Lampman is one of

the most popular which ever appeared in the Portland Orcgonian; readers have asked again and again to have it reprinted:

SUBSCRIBER of the O n t a r i o Argus has written to the editor asking, " W h e r e shall I bury my dog?"

W e would say to the O n t a r i o m a n that there are various p laces in which a d o g m a y be buried. W e are thinking now of a setter, whose coat w a s flame in the sun-shine, and w h o , so far as w e are aware, never entertained a m e a n or an unworthy thought . T h i s setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden l o a m , and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple; or a n y flowering shrub is an excel lent p lace to bury a g o o d d o g . Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer , or g n a w e d at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to chal lenge some strange intruder. These are g o o d places, in life or in death . Y e t it is a smal l matter. For if the d o g be well remembered , if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in

life, eyes kindling, laughing, begg ing , i t matters not at all where that dog sleeps. O n a hill where the w i n d is unrebuked, and the trees are roaring, or beside a s tream he knew in puppyhood , or some-where in the flatness of a pasture land where most exhi larat ing cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, a n d all o n e t o you, and nothing is ga ined, and n o t h i n g lost — if m e m o r y lives. But there is o n e best p lace to bury a dog .

If you bury h i m in this spot, h e wil l c o m e to y o u w h e n y o u call — c o m e to y o u over the grim, d i m frontiers of death , and d o w n the we l l - remembered path, and to your side again. A n d t h o u g h y o u call a d o z e n l iving dogs to heel they shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming , for he belongs there. People m a y scoff at you, w h o see no l ightest b lade of grass bent by his footfall, w h o hear n o whimper , people w h o m a y never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for y o u shall k n o w someth ing that is h idden from them, a n d w h i c h is wel l worth the knowing . T h e one best place to bury a good d o g is in the heart of his master.

— Ben Hur Lampman, How Could 1 Be Forgetting? (Binfords 6t Mort)

WILD W I S D O M Selecfedj^/AlanDevoe

P r i z e - W i n n i n g L e t t e r s — V

•I/HE WISDOM of wild creatures differs f rom our "rational inte l l igence" by being largely intuitive, but it has long a m a z e d outdoors m e n . T h e following observations are selected from hundreds sent in by readers.

Teddy-Bear Guide IN THE inter ior of N e w S o u t h W a l e s I f o u n d a b a b y k o a l a t h a t h a d b e e n lost

b y its m o t h e r . ( T h e k o a l a is a f u n n y , furry l i t t l e a n i m a l that l o o k s l ike a T e d d y bear . ) I a d o p t e d h i m , f e d h i m , a n d s o o n h e b e c a m e m y d e v o t e d c o m p a n i o n o n j a u n t s n e a r a n d far.

O n e d a y , in the in ter ior , I w a s c a u g h t i n a b u s h fire w h i c h c a m e r o a r i n g u p o n m e w i t h terr i fy ing s p e e d . I flung myse l f o n the g r o u n d , b r e a t h i n g w h a t l i t t le o x y g e n w a s still l e f t c lose to the e a r t h . I w a s sure m y las t m o m e n t h a d c o m e . T h e n I b e c a m e a w a r e of the koa la . H e w o u l d run u p to m e , n i p m y c lo thes , then r u n off a l i t t le w a y . D a z e d as I w a s , I s e n s e d that h e w a n t e d m e t o f o l l o w h i m . I n a f e w h u n d r e d feet w e c a m e to a smal l l a k e w h i c h I h a d n o t k n o w n e x -is ted. I p l u n g e d in , the k o a l a r id ing o n m y s h o u l d e r . D u r i n g t h e h o u r s t h a t the fire r a g e d w e s tayed there ; I d u n k e d myse l f a n d the koa la c o m p l e t e l y w h e n e v e r the h e a t b e c a m e t o o intense .

But for the w i s d o m a n d the fa i thfu lness o f t h a t l i t t le " b u s h b e a r " I s h o u l d n o t b e a l i v e t o d a y . — H. Regie

Turtle Tactics NEAR a fr iend's h o u s e i n Cal i forn ia , in the b e d o f a dry creek , l i v e t w o deser t

turtles w h i c h h a v e prac t i ca l ly b e c o m e pets , s i n c e m y fr iend f eeds t h e m regu lar ly . T h e turtles' spec ia l pass ion is l e t tuce , a n d the ir hos t s u m m o n s t h e m to the feast b y b e a t i n g o n a tin p a n . T h e o t h e r d a y h e i n v i t e d m e to see t h e m in a c t i o n .

A t the s o u n d of b a n g i n g o n the p a n , the t w o turt les c a m e f o r w a r d a t w h a t w a s — for turtles — a r a c i n g g a l l o p . N e c k a n d n e c k they d r e w n e a r the c o v e t e d l e t tuce . S u d d e n l y , w h e n t h e y w e r e o n l y a f e w fee t f r o m the pr i ze , the larger turt le s w e r v e d a n d w i t h a n e x p e r t ges ture thrust his h e a d u n d e r n e a t h his c o m p e t i t o r a n d flipped h i m n e a t l y o v e r o n his back . T h e n h e c a m e rac ing o n a n d b e g a n d e v o u r i n g the d i n n e r .

A t least a third o f the l e t t u c e w a s g o n e b e f o r e the o u t r a g e d v i c t i m of this stroke of turt le gen ius c o u l d kick a n d rol l h imse l f over o n t o h i s f ee t a g a i n . —Ellsworth E. Zahn

Last Testament A STRAY CAT that h a d rever ted to the w i l d , as cats so eas i ly d o , s t ood a t m y

d o o r a n d m e w e d . I tr ied to c o a x her in , b u t she c o n t i n u e d to l ook i n t o m y eyes , i m p l o r i n g l y . S h e w o u l d a c c e p t n o mi lk . M e w i n g , l o o k i n g b a c k a t m e , s h e b e g a n to w a l k a w a y .

93

94 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t February

I fe l t a l i t t le foo l i sh , b u t I f o l l o w e d her . S h e l e d m e to the h a y l o f t o f a n o l d b a r n w h e r e , d e e p in the h a y , four t iny b l ind ki t tens w e r e h i d d e n .

T h i s s e e m e d v e r y s trange — ca t s usua l ly g o t o a n y l e n g t h s to c o n c e a l the w h e r e a b o u t s o f the ir kittens. S o the n e x t d a y I v i s i ted the l i t t le f a m i l y a g a i n .

T h e kittens, f rant ic w i t h h u n g e r , w e r e t ry ing t o nurse . But their m o t h e r l a y still in d e a t h , her c o l d b o d y flung pro tec t -i n g l y bes ide h e r bab ies . T h e n I u n d e r s t o o d . N a t u r e h a d to ld the m o t h e r that d e a t h w a s c o m i n g ; a n d w i t h her last s trength s h e h a d • T T v E v v S S i ^ r ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ m a d e sure t h a t s o m e o n e w o u l d care for h e r l i tde ones . — Anna Nielson i \ — J.

Field Operation

DURING the M e t z o f fens ive , Pvt . D u a n e N . K i n m a n , a 19-year-o ld m e d i c a l

a i d m a n of the F i f th In fantry Div i s ion , p e r f o r m e d a n e x c e p t i o n a l feat of b a t d e -f ie ld surgery. K i n m a n , a former a u t o m o -bi le m e c h a n i c of C o l l e g e P lace , W a s h . , w a s w i t h a c o m p a n y a t t a ck ing L o u v i g n y , w h e n he s a w a r i f l eman fall. H e rushed to the stricken m a n , w h o w a s thrashing a b o u t in great p a i n a n d g a s p i n g for b r e a t h t h r o u g h a w i n d p i p e gashed b y a shel l f r a g m e n t ; his face h a d turned b lue , a n d h e a p p a r e n t l y w a s suf focat ing .

M e d i c a l a i d m e n are n o t surgeons, b u t i n desperat ion K i n m a n d e c i d e d to per-f o r m a n operat ion he h a d heard descr ibed a year before d u r i n g his basic tra ining. H e h a d n o ancs thet ic a n d no ins truments e x c e p t his pocketkni fe . N e e d i n g s o m e type of t u b e to k e e p the w i n d p i p e o p e n after the throat inc i s ion h a d been m a d e , he b o r r o w e d his pat ient ' s f o u n t a i n pen .

S e c o n d Lt. E d w i n M . Eber l ing c a i n c t h r o u g h t h e hai l o f m a c h i n e - g u n a n d mortar fire t o h o l d the r i f l e m a n s teady w h i l e K i n m a n p r e p a r e d t o m a k e the in-cision. T h e pr ivate tr ied to q u i e t his pa-t ient , w h o w a s protes t ing phys ica l ly b u t c o u l d n o t speak, w i t h , " I d o n ' t l ike to d o this, b u t it's the o n l y w a y you 're g o i n g to l ive ." T h e n , w h i l e m o r t a r shel ls crashed o n all sides, the y o u n g m e d i c started a n operat ion that m a n y surgeons w o u l d hesi-tate to per form u n d e r perfect condi t ions .

It w a s necessary to m a k e a long i tud ina l incis ion, because the s l ightest s l ip dur ing a lateral incis ion w o u l d h a v e e n d a n g e r e d the j u g u l a r ve in . Af ter o p e n i n g the throat b e l o w the w o u n d , K i n m a n felt for the w i n d p i p e , m a d e a n incis ion a n d s l ipped in the top e n d of the f o u n t a i n pen . A t o n c e the pat ient s tarted to breathe freely a n d c o l o r b e g a n t o re turn to his face . " K e e p that founta in p e n in y o u r w i n d -p i p e a n d you' l l be o k a y , " K i n m a n told h i m . " Y o u can ' t brea the t h r o u g h your nose or m o u t h , but if y o u k e e p y o u r w i n d -p ipe o p e n y o u c a n b r e a t h e t h r o u g h the c u t I jus t m a d e . "

A few m i n u t e s la ter the r i f l e m a n w a s o n his feet a n d w a l k i n g b e t w e e n the "sur-g e o n " a n d "anes thet i s t" to a tank. A t the bat ta l ion aid stat ion, the surgeon , e x a m -i n i n g the result of the o p e r a t i o n w i t h a m a z e m e n t , said that h e c o u l d no t i m -prove o n it. T h e n e x t s top w a s a c lear ing s tat ion, w h e r e the as tonished surgeon o n l y r e m o v e d the f o u n t a i n p e n t o p a n d inserted a t r a c h e o t o m y t u b e before the p a t i e n t w a s r e m o v e d to a n e v a c u a t i o n hospi ta l .

K i n m a n , w h o w a s p r o m o t e d t o a t ech-n ic ian , fourth grade , for his feat , has b e e n o f fered a free m e d i c a l e d u c a t i o n a t W e s t -ern R e s e r v e U n i v e r s i t y . " G o l l y , " the d e -l i g h t e d m e d i c said u p o n h e a r i n g of the offer , " that ' s jus t w h a t I w a n t e d to d o all m y l i f e . " —Gene Currivan in N. Y. Times;

Robert Richards. U P dispatch

Jfie Perfect Memorial The Washington Monument — a Finger Pointing to the Sky

C o n d e n s e d f r o m T h e K i w a n i s M a g a z i n e + + Donald Culross Peattie + +

THE Washington National Mon-ument is not only the tallest memorial in the world but one

wholly perfect. It is perfect in fulfill-ing the Greek ideal of beauty, which is strength combined with grace. It is perfect in its proportions, which re-veal the secret of the Egyptian obe-lisks, the height, 550 feet, being just ten times the base of 55 feet square. And it is perfectly appropriate. In its soaring integrity, it is a "speaking likeness" of the man it commemo-rates. It speaks to us of Washington's clear and lofty ideal for his country. It speaks of a man, four-square and upright, who swerved as little in ad-versity as would the Monument it-self, its 81,120 tons embedded deep in the earth. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British Ambassador to this coun-try during World War I, called it "George Washington's finger pointing to the sky."

The monument lifts the eyes up, like a shining peak. Its head is lost in the clouds sometimes, when the winter sky comes low; on a fair spring day it flashes like a blade. Visible from the White House, the Monument has been the inspiration of har-assed Presidents since it completed in 1884. Cleve-land, surrounded by slander and intrigue, testified that he drew courage and faith from its noble serenity. One

could wish that everybody in the Government daily measured himself and his work by that great standard in stone.

Unlike the Great Pyramid of Che-ops, built by slave labor at ruthless cost of life to gratify the vanity of a living king, the arrowy Monument was raised, without accident, by a free people in memory of the man who set them free. Over 200 of the blocks inside the hollow shaft are in-scribed as specific gifts of the peoples of this nation and of foreign govern-ments proud to honor George Wash-ington. The stone given by Greece, from the ruins of the Parthenon, com-pares him to Pericles. The Turkish stone displays, in a strange script, an

ode upon Washington by the Sultan's court poet. America's states and towns, lodges and schools gave stones as large as those from the King of Siam and the Emperor of Brazil.

Many a patriot with a stout heart-muscle has climbed die 898 steps to the lookout win-dows at the top. But most of the millions of sightseers have pre-ferred to ride up and, till the stairs were closed for the dura-tion, many liked to walk down.

Probably few of them know these odd facts about the Monument: That it was once a "leaning tower." Tha t hundreds of persons

Copyright 1945, Kiwanis International, $20 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago I I , III. (The Kiwanis Magazine, February, '45) 95

T H E R E A D E R ' S DIGEST

have stepped over its tip. That it some-times rains inside when the sky out-side is clear. That it ended a danger-ous political party and caused in-directly the death of a President.

The rain is due to the condensa-tion of moisture inside the dank shaft, so that attendants need rain-coats and rubbers. The Monument's history explains the other curiosities. In Major L'Enfant's plan for the city, a bronze equestrian statue of Washington was to stand on this spot, but the General opposed the cost while he lived. Then Chief Jus-tice Marshall proposed a marble tomb instead. Congress dallied; finally George Watterston formed the Wash-ington National Monument Society, and Robert Mills, the architect, won a competition with his design for an Egyptian obelisk to surmount a conic Babylonian shrine, which in turn would be balanced on a circular Greek temple. Thanks to George P. Marsh, distinguished American dip-lomat, this appalling plan was sim-plified into the present cloud-pricking needle.

On Independence Day, 1848, the cornerstone was laid with the same trowel that had cemented that of the White House. Two years later, dur-ing July Fourth ceremonies at the shadeless foot of the unfinished Mon-ument, President Zachary Taylor drank so many pitchers of ice water that he died five days later.

SLOWLY the Monument climbed.

In 1854 Pope Pius I X sent for it a block from the Temple of Concord in Rome, which was smashed, one night, by masked men with sledge hammers. These were rabid anti-Catholics of the Know-Nothing Party, then so strong they had a candidate slated for the Presidency. Their vandalism caused an international uproar — and helped to bring the Know-Nothings to disgrace and oblivion.

The Civil War stopped work on the Monument, and when it was re-sumed the next tiers of marble did not exactly match the rest in color, which explains the "ring" on "George Washington's finger." Army engi-neers, finding that the Monument had settled out of plumb, got a new concrete slab under it and trued it up. As the work neared completion, a solid aluminum tip was cast, 8.9 inches high and weighing 100 ounces. When this was exhibited in the east-ern seaboard cities, hundreds of schoolboys bestrode it, in order to boast they had stepped over the top of the Washington Monument.

In 1934 the Monument was scrubbed for the first time, with steel brushes, sand and water. During that time, the story goes, a departing Republi-can saw from his train window the large steel scaffolding erected around it; arriving in New York he dashed to his party's headquarters.

"That Man in the White House," he cried, "has got the Washington Monument all crated up and is plan-ning to ship it to Hyde Park!"

E x c e r p t s f r o m t h e b o o k b y

Bennett CerJ

Try and Slop Me is a 371-page collection of anecdotes, most ly humorous, dedicated "To all those people whose wit , or lack of it, made this vo lume possible." Bennet t Cerf has always had, he says, a useless knack for remembering unrelated anec-dotes about unrelated people. In his book he presents " the best that people have ever palmed off as their own."

Many of the i tems included in the book have appeared in Mr. C e r f s l ively column, Trade Winds, a weekly feature of The Saturday Review of Literature.

ONE of the sharpest wits in the theater is the property of Beatrice Lillie. T h e only t ime her sang-froid deserted her be-hind the footl ights was at the final per-formance of The Third Little Show. H o w -ard Die tz b o u g h t the entire first row or-chestra that n igh t and distributed the tickets a m o n g m u t u a l friends of Bea Lillie and himself. S h e was in the midd le of a solo number , w h e n by prearranged signal , everybody in the row bent d o w n a n d d o n n e d l o n g whiskers — b r i g h t - g r e e n , red, pink, zebra , plaid a n d polka dot . T h e sight w a s too m u c h for Bea Lillie. She stopped in the middle of a note , pointed helplessly at the so lemn first row and ran h o w l i n g to the wings. By the time Die tz reached her dressing room, she had regained control. " N o b o d y c a n appreciate m y voice a n y h o w , " she said, " w h e n I sing above a whisker."

WHEN D i e t z was publ ic i ty chief of M e t r o - G o l d w y n - M a y e r h e w a s o n c e bawled out b y his boss, Louis B. M a y e r , because h e got to his desk too late every morning . "But y o u s e e m to forget, Mr . M a y e r , " said Die tz , " that I also leave early every af ternoon." By the t ime M a y e r figured it out , the crisis w a s over.

e<5*

ABOUT 3 0 years ago, there w a s a l ight-we ight boxer in H o b o k e n w h o fought under the n a m e of M a r t y O'Brien . H e was a clean, l ikable kid, c o m p l e t e l y o n the level , and a m o n g the host of fr iends he m a d e was a rising y o u n g s inger n a m e d Bing Crosby. M a r t y O'Br ien g o t mar-ried, and in t ime had a son w h o w a s too frail to b e c o m e a boxer l ike his d a d , but inc l ined toward a musical career. H e cou ld carry a tune like nobody ' s business. M a r t y wrote to his old friend Bing. C o u l d Bing he lp the kid get the mus ica l e d u c a -tion he craved? Bing c o u l d a n d did . O'Brien's boy studied mus ic a n d in t i m e turned professional. T h e b o y w a s Frank Sinatra — Bing Crosby's most formidable rival in the crooner ranks today.

HOLLYWOOD lifted e y e b r o w s over t h e marriage of Victor M o o r e , the 67-year-old c o m e d i a n , to a girl of 22 . " W h a t ' s w r o n g w i t h that?" quer ied B u d d y d e Sylva . " W h e n she is 100, h e wil l only b e 145-"

Z&i

SOMEBODY asked Bob H o p e w h a t w e n t through his m i n d w h e n he got his original v iew of D o r o t h y L a m o u r in a sarong. " I never g a v e it a second thought ," h e averred. "I w a s too busy w i t h the first one ."

t&z

SOME years ago, one of the bright y o u n g m e n w h o represented S tandard Oi l in C h i n a returned to A m e r i c a fo» a v a c a -tion, in the course of w h i c h h e m e t a n d married a lovely girl from his h o m e town .

Copyright 1944, Bennett Cerf, and published at f i by Simon and Schuster, 12JO Sixth Ave., New York 'V- Y. 97

98 "You' l l just love Shanghai ," he as-

sured her again and again on the w a y out , "particularly m y N u m b e r O n e Boy, Ling. Y o u won' t have to lift a finger. L i n g runs the household ."

T h e y arrived in Shanghai , the bride m e t Ling and approved. T h e next morn-i n g her husband kissed her good-bye before reporting back o n the job. "Sleep as long as you like, darl ing ," he told her. " L i n g will take care of everything."

A few hours later she awoke again, to f ind herself being shaken ever so gent ly by the N u m b e r O n e Boy. " T i m e to get dressed and g o h o m e n o w , Missy," h e said.

«7S

FORMER M a y o r H y l a n of N e w York se ldom bothered to read the speeches that trusted ghosts prepared for h i m ahead of t ime. I n the middle of one speech he c a m e to the phrase, " T h a t reminds m e of one of m y favorite stories." I t deve loped that the M a y o r had never heard the joke be-fore, and w h e n he finished reading it, he l a u g h e d so hard he broke his glasses.

C<5>3

The Man Who Came to Dinner was the direct result of a typical visit, by Mr. Alexander Wool lcott , to Moss Hart's Bucks County estate. H e bullied the serv-ants, c o n d e m n e d the food, invited friends of his o w n from Phi ladelphia to S u n d a y dinner , and wrote in the guest book, " T h i s is to certify that o n m y first visit to M o s s Hart's house, I had one of the most unpleasant times I ever spent ." H e also suggested that M o s s write a play in w h i c h h e could star.

T h e next d a y H a r t was describing Wool lcot t ' s behavior to George K a u f m a n . " W o u l d n ' t it have been horrible," he ruminated , "if he had broken a leg and been on m y hands for the rest of the sum-mer?" T h e collaborators looked at each other w i t h d a w n i n g del ight on their faces a n d took the cover off the typewriter.

c<?s

February

ON A recent radio program, Fred Al len says his next sponsor will be the manufac -turer of L u m p o Soap: "It doesn't lather. It doesn't float. It contains .no secret oils. It is des igned solely to keep y o u c o m p a n y in the tub."

DOROTHY THOMPSON and her ex-hus-band, Sinclair Lewis, had a tranquil mar-ried life unti l Miss T h o m p s o n b e c a m e so engrossed in writ ing, lecturing a n d radio that she had no t ime left for anyth ing else. S o m e b o d y asked Lewis where she was, one evening. "She disappeared in to the N B C Studios three years ago ," he an-swered, "and n o b o d y has seen her since." Another t ime he heard that she was be ing ment ioned for President. "I w o n -der," he said wistfully, "if they'll le t m e write ' M y D a y . ' "

A BISHOP of T e x a s visited L o n d o n and was taken to a fashionable soiree at w h i c h the ladies' dresses were cut very low. His hostess asked condescendingly if he had ever beheld such a sight. " N o t , " said the bishop, "since I was weaned ."

e<s>a IN LONDON, Liddell Har t said to Ber-

nard Shaw, " D o y o u realize that 'sumac' and 'sugar' are the only two words in the English l anguage that begin w i t h 's-u' and are pronounced 'shu'?" "Sure ," said Shaw.

MAYOR LAGUARDIA, of N e w York, presides occasional ly in Police Court. O n e bitter co ld d a y they brought a trembling o ld m a n before him, charged w i t h stealing a loaf of bread. His family , h e said, was starving. "I 've got to punish y o u , " said LaGuardia . " T h e l a w makes n o exception. I sentence y o u to a fine of $10 ." But the Little F lower was reaching into his pocket as he added , "Here's $10 to pay your fine. A n d n o w I remit the f ine." H e tossed the bill into his famous

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 TRY AND STOP ME 99 sombrero. "Furthermore," he declared, "I'm going to fine everybody in this room 50 cents for living in a town where a man lias to steal bread in order to eat." The hat was passed and an incredulous old man, with the light of heaven in his eyes, left the courtroom with a stake of $47.50.

W 3

M E Y E R LEVIN tells this story about a little eight-year-old girl in a Pennsylvania orphan asylum. She was a painfully unattractive child, with annoying man-nerisms, shunned by the children and actively disliked by the teachers. The head of the institution longed only for a

legitimate excuse to get her out of the place.

One afternoon it looked as if her op-portunity had arrived. The girl's room-mate reported that she was conducting a clandestine correspondence with some-body outside the grounds. "Just a little while ago," she reported, "she took a note out and hid it in a tree." The head of the asylum and her assistant could hardly conceal their elation. "We'll get to the bottom of this," they agreed. "Show us where she left the note." Sure enough they found it in the branches of the tree. It read: "To whoever finds this: I love you."

A reader who received this announcement forwarded it to the Digest

2 5 k. STie

BuMond's D i g e s t ITEM OF LASTING INTEREST

BERNADINE AND ROSCOE, MY Parents 1 ANNOUNCE A BRAND NEW l i f e 2 WHO FIRST SAW THE JVeu York Sun 3 OCTOBEE. Z3W 12.. 3 0 P.M. 4-THEY THINK IT IS THE Nationt tutim* 5 TO STATE I SCALED S lb. ft oo. AT THAT. . . . Time 6 MOTHER IS DOING TINE, THAtlK. Cue 7 DAD H E A R D THE G O O D Mews Week 8 WITH EXCITEMENT. MY FIRST. look O AT T H 1 5 BEAUTIFUL World lO WAS IN NEW Y O R K CITY. I Think. II I AM AT P E R S O N A L Liberty 12 TO M E N T I O N THAT Nature 13 DID NOT P R E D I C T M Y Cn>'dLif* 14-WOULD BE LIVED AS AN Isguire 15 O R AS A T Y P I C A L Good Housekeeper 16 SO, F R O M N A M E S THAT CAck. 11 MOTHER AND DAD DECIDED TO Pre IB ONE NAME TOR A Boy Scout 19 A N D ONE NAME f O E A Madonarette 20 S I N C E I AM AN A men can 21 THEY SELECTED SUSAN L£E FOR MY Future 22 CO ME TO M Y jlmerican Mean 23 ArTER N O V E M B E R . 4 , h AND TAKE A Peek 74-AT ME A N D t/ud$e 25

MY PICTURESQUE SP££CH AMD PATTER. 1«» YEAR OF PRODUCTION

« T 7 " i S T E N , " said Joel, a skinny young-I ster, aged ten, his black

" eyes snapping, "I ' l l tell you how it happened. We Youthbuilders were talking about how voting is part of democracy, and then somebody said that there were quite a few grown people in this district who might not be able to vote —" .

"Because they couldn't pass the lit-er-acy test!" said Sholem, another ten-year-old.

"So," said little dark-eyed Felicia, "Demos made some posters" — she pointed to the tallest boy in the ex-cited group around me — "and we put them up in stores and places."

"You see," Demos explained, "a t the voting places they ask some funny questions, about the Constitution and things like that — so our posters said, 'Are You Sure You Can Pass the Literacy Tests? If You Want Help Come to Room 105, Public School No. 96, Any Day After 3 p.m.' "

"Did many come?" I asked. "Oh , yes!" said Joel. "And we and

the teachers coached them, and then they could vote."

Here was young citizenship in ac-tion. And it wasn't school — it was fun!

Youthbuilders, Inc. — a plinipse of young citizenship in action

Condensed from Future

Webb Waldron

P. S. 96 is but one of more than 150 New York City schools in which groups of children calling themselves Youthbuilders are reaching out of the classroom into life and proving that the average child has a drive to be a good citizen.

At a junior high in lower Man-hattan, the Youthbuilders realized that an alarming number of kids their own age were roaming the streets at night, buying illicit sex literature, getting into dice games and petty theft. With the teachers' help, the Youthbuilders called a community •mass meeting. Parents, policemen, social workers and children spoke their minds. Patrolman Wasselewsky told how he was trying to fix up an • unused church as a recreation center for the children on his beat. "But I need help," he said.

"Why shouldn't some of us help supervise such places every day?" asked one mother. Many parents volunteered. So recreation facilities in the district were more than dou-bled, and the children got off the streets.

The spark which set Youthbuilders on its way came from pretty, blue-eyed, dynamic Sabra Holbrook, wife of a New York advertising man and mother of two lively young daughters. When Sabra was newly graduated from Vassar, she had gone to Boston

Copyright IQ44, Future, Inc., 14 E. /action Blvd., Chicago 4, III, (Future: The Magazine for Young Men, February, '45)

i t i s n ' t s c h o o l — i t ' s f u n i

to work with underprivileged chil-dren. A thing that startled her was the sharp division in the minds of chil-dren between school and the world outside. Why couldn't school have more to do with life and thereby give children some part in their own edu-cation?

When Sabra married and came to New York she had a chance to talk with a group of junior-high school students. "They were bubbling over with ideas about democracy, politics, the community, crime, gangs, their parents, their own future, everything/" she says. "But they seemed to have litde time or encouragement to ex-press these ideas in school, and cer-tainly no chance to put any of them into action."

Mrs. Holbrook got permission from the Board of Education to organize discussion groups at a few New York schools after hours, with volunteers as leaders. These groups not only talked but sometimes were able to act on their ideas. When the New York City school system decided to let Sabra Holbrook go further, she organized Youthbuilders, Inc., with Newbold Morris, president of the New York City Council, as chairman of the board of directors.

For a time she operated in a cubby-hole office with one assistant, her expenses paid out of her own pocket and the contributions of a few inter-ested friends. Then a zipper manu-facturer, Louis Rabinowitz, turned over to her a large part of one floor of his building. The New York Rotary Club; the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Golden, the theat-rical producer; Newbold Morris and others have chipped in to help with

IOl

expenses. She herself has given her energy to the enterprise for six years without pay.

Fundamental in Youthbuilders is the teacher-leader for each club. Sabra Holbrook picks the leaders carefully: they must be interested in children, respect children as indi-viduals, and must be gluttons for work. Each Youthbuilder club meets for an hour once a week on school time, but its activity spreads far be-yond that hour in time and space, and the leader must go along, advis-ing, directing, encouraging. Leaders get no extra pay. Their sole reward is the satisfaction of doing a pioneer job.

Youthbuilder clubs consist of 25 to 40 children. All are volunteers, but the leader attempts to get into a club many divergent elements of race, faith, economic status, and intelli-gence levels, so that it will be a true cross-section of its school.

At one junior high the Youth-builders were discussing racial and religious discrimination. "Is there any of that in this school?" the leader asked. "Yes, there is!" cried one child. " In the lunchroom, we all sit separate." It was true. Jewish chil-dren sat by themselves, and so did Catholics, Negroes, and other special groups.

That, the Youthbuilders decided, was wrong. They asked the princi-pal's permission to start an Honor Table, at which a student would sit by invitation. There were 35 differ-ent national backgrounds represented in the school and half a dozen reli-gions, and the club invited a rotation of races and religions to the Honor Table. Many friendships formed across

102

racial and religious lines. That was last year. This year no Honor Table is necessary.

Jewish and Catholic children from two neighboring schools were fight-ing in the streets. Youthbuilders held a luncheon for students from both schools at which it was decided to set up a Community Youth Council. Children of all faiths enrolled in this council are now busy getting out a n e i g h b o r h o o d n e w s p a p e r , News Back Home, that is sent to all service men of the area — to show the boys that children at home are working to-gether for democracy.

In many schools, the Youthbuild-ers have initiated student self-govern-ment. In a Bronx elementary school, the study of different kinds of govern-ment led the club to send a dele-gation to attend a session of the City Council, after which one of the Youthbuilders raised the pertinent question, "Why do people have to be so disagreeable when they disagree?"

In one upper Manhattan district, junior-high school boys needed a base-ball field. There were parks, but one was full of rocks, another had no fence to keep the ball from skittering into the near-by Hudson. The Youth-builders drafted a letter to Park Commissioner Robert Moses listing the advantages to the city in giving them a field: it would save police the trouble of chasing them off the streets, and windows wouldn't be broken by stray balls. "We boys will cart off the rocks," they said. "Afterward we'll pick up papers and refuse and keep the field clean." The boys got their field, and a lesson in democratic gov-ernment: that the way to get some-thing is to contribute to it.

February

At elementary school No. 41, in Greenwich Village, Youthbuilders sur-veyed the neighborhood's opportu-nities for supervised recreation —• games, Scouts, music, painting, gyms, swimming — and got out the infor-mation, including addresses, hours and cost, in an attractive mimeo-g r a p h e d booklet , Places to Play. T h e y distributed it in the school, and en-rolled practically every pupil in at least one wholesome out-of-school activity. Another school, in Brooklyn, opened an information center in a vacant store where children could come for up-to-the-minute informa-tion on what was doing in recreation.

At a junior high on the lower West Side a club got to discussing the OPA. "The stores don't pay any attention to the ceiling prices, my mother says!" Another comment was: "My mother doesn't see any use in the OPA!" The leader of the club re-ported this controversy to Sabra Hol-brook, who arranged for the young-sters to visit the local OPA office and learn how the nation-wide system depended on cooperation between dealers and customers. Next, a mem-ber of the OPA staff talked to a meet-ing of parents at the school. The Youthbuilders then suggested that dealers display the ceiling price list plainly in front of the store, and that the lists be printed in all languages current in the district. These sugges-tions were transmitted to Chester Bowles, OPA Administrator in Wash-ington, and the ideas were adopted.

"When Youthbuilders are discuss-ing some national or international question," says Sabra Holbrook, "the leader doesn't tell them to look up authorities in the library — that would

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 be just like school. If the leader says we'll fix up an interview with a big shot who knows, then it becomes thrilling, even though it still is edu-cation."

So, when a Brooklyn club was talk-ing about what to do with Germany after the war, the Youthbuilder office arranged interviews with Rex Stout, of the Writers' War Board, and Paul Hagen, German refugee, author of of Germany After Hitler, w h o r e p r e s e n t contrasting views. The club picked a committee of five to get the inter-views. Its report, at the next meeting, stirred a lively discussion.

John Gunther, Quentin Reynolds, William L. Shirer, Cecil Brown, Jo-hannes Steel, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Ely Culbertson and Clarence Streit are among those who have given gen-erously of their time to Youthbuild-ers. The Modern History Club at Stuyvesant High School prepared a thoughtful booklet, World Peace — How?, based on talks with Streit and Culbertson and discussion afterward.

One morning I dropped in at a meeting of the Youthbuilders club at Benjamin Franklin Junior High in The Bronx. A committee was mak-ing its report of an interview with a judge of the juvenile court. Afterward the Youthbuilders and I jumped.into a discussion of the race problem. When the noon bell sounded, Lazarus Ross, principal of the school, asked: "How many of you would like to continue this discussion downstairs?" " I would!" came one voice from 40 throats. They all boiled downstairs to Ross's office, where boys and girls, white and Negro, went on talking excitedly of their experiences, opin-ions, beliefs and hopes.

103

The talk shifted to street fights and the fear of a certain Negro boys' gang, the Hawks. "Are they bad boys?" I asked. "No, sir," said a Negro boy, "not exactly bad. Just a gang." And then several of the Youthbuilders said they thought the Hawks might be turned to good pur-poses if one went about it in the right way. They promised to bring the leader to see Mr. Ross, who said he'd try to help.

"Well," said Ross, as they finally dispersed, "those are the Youthbuild-ers. There are only 40 of them but their influence runs through this whole school of 1100 children."

This spirit is not something injected into the children from outside. It is the genuine spirit of youth bubbling up under skilled stimulus and guid-ance. The 4500 Youthbuilders are, in fact, a ferment running through the entire school population of our greatest city. That is why schools that haven't Youthbuilders are asking for them, and why Sabra Holbrook is selecting and training more leaders as rapidly as possible.

The school system recently assigned three outstanding teacher-leaders to devote their entire time to Youth-builders as supervisors, working un-der Mrs. Holbrook and reporting frequently to Dr. Elias Lieberman, Associate Superintendent of Schools. Other cities are interested. Rochester sent a delegation of teachers to study Youthbuilders, and Sabra Holbrook recently went to Philadelphia on in-vitation to explain what it is all about.

I hazard the guess that the Youth-builder idea will spread across the nation and become an integral part of public education.

i t i s n ' t s c h o o l — i t ' s f u n 1

Another installment of ideas for new enterprises in the Digest $25,000 contest

Part-Time Accounting Service. A S a n Francisco woman, Genevieve L. Her-rill, has built a service for small busi-nesses which might be duplicated by an experienced man or woman ac-countant in a thousand cities and towns. Starting with the idea that many businesses cannot afford a full-time accountant, and found it diffi-cult to keep up with social-security and income-tax regulations, she rented desk space and offered a part-time accounting service. She serves seven clients — a small oil company, a florist, a geologist, a small steamship line, and three manufacturers.

Her fees are from $25 per month to $25 per week, depending on the service rendered. For the larger fee she spends about an hour every day at the client's office; for the minimum charge she devotes one day a month, checking the client's books, and an-swering inquiries by phone when income-tax or social-security prob-lems arise. Her monthly earnings over four years have averaged be-tween $500 and $600. To get busi-ness, she simply had to ask for it. While she could handle four or five more accounts, she prefers to use part of her time to take courses to keep her up-to-date in accounting practice and Government regulations.

Farm Machine Shop. C . J . Ca r l son , owner of a 300-acre farm in Marshall county, Iowa, operates a "back-yard

industry" that keeps him, his hired man and his neighbors busy on rainy days and during the winter. In his well-equipped machine shop on his farm he makes attachments for farm implements, builds farm machinery of his own invention, and does repair work for farmers who come to him from miles around.

In the winter of 1943, for customers who believe the corn cultivator is easier to watch in front of the tractor than behind it, he built 112 cultivator attachments to fit the front end of Ford-Ferguson tractors. He has or-ders for many more.

Six neighbors are using low, two-wheeled trailers, built by Carlson, to haul hay, grain bundles, corn fodder or livestock. The trailers are so con-structed that they are much easier to load than the ordinary hayrack. On a rainy day, cars of a dozen farmers often wait in Carlson's yard for ma-chinery repairs.

Carlson may be setting a pattern for many farm boys who will come back from the armed services with highly developed mechanical skills. Certainly there is plenty for a farm shop machinist to do in a typical rural neighborhood, judging by his experience. — John A. Rohlf, Associate Editor,

Farm Journal and Farmer's Wife

Bachelor's Laundry. Noting that Mrs. Anna M. Miller, a public stenogra-pher and telegraph operator in a

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b e y o u r o w n b o s s i

Kansas City, Mo., hotel, augmented her income by doing mending for male patrons, a customer suggested that she start a laundry serving men only, and take care of their mending and darning. She started with one employe and $50 borrowed from a bank. Her "Bachelor's Laundry" grew steadily until today it is a sub-stantial enterprise, handling over 100,-000 bundles yearly, and serving 3500 patrons. Service includes turning col-lars or cuffs, darning, mending, sew-ing on buttons. Prices are no higher than the average laundry's, and there is no extra charge for repairs. While this business now occupies its own building, employs 70 people, and operates three delivery trucks, it is a type of enterprise which might be started at home and built gradually into a well-equipped commercial laundry.

Food Specialty. A y o u n g m a n in Chicago whose mother knew south-ern cooking, and could prepare genu-ine southern "lye hominy," built a thriving business on that specialty. The hominy was made in a shed, packed in pint jars, loaded into a car, and sold on a "taste and see" basis at 20 cents a jar. The little business developed several hundred customers and netted nearly $100 per week. Empty jars were collected and used over again.

Trading Post. When Floyd Haw-thorne, proprietor of an Abbeville, S. C., radio shop found that he could get no more merchandise to sell, he opened a novel business which he calls "Noah's Ark." He buys or trades old iceboxes, furniture, rugs, stoves,

musical instruments, antiques, plumb-ing equipment — anything that can be salvaged and used in homes. He has reclaimed thousands of articles that were ready for discard. To ob-tain them he scours the countryside. The enterprise is profitable, and draws customers from long distances. Several times a year he visits New York to buy used equipment. Last summer he sold 350 ice refrigerators, and in the past two years 500 bath-tubs, many of them from the former French liner Normandie. Repairing and trading in used equipment prom-ises to be a flourishing business for some time after the war ends, owing to the acute nationwide shortage of household goods.

Fireproofing System. T h r e e m e n i n Chicago, starting a year ago with a capital of less than $500, built an unusual business known as Airways Fireproofing System. They contract with hotels, restaurants, department stores, etc., to vacuum-clean kitchen exhaust systems, air-conditioning sys-tems, elevator shafts, and acoustical walls and ceilings. An Airways crew consists of a working foreman and two helpers, and is equipped with two $110 portable vacuums with special attachments. The charge per crew is $15 an hour. The firm's average in-come is S500 a week per crew.

This service has been so welcomed that one client recommends it to another; no salesmen are needed. The company serves 150 Chicago clients and has opened a Milwaukee branch. In the opinion of George L. Candler, one of the partners, this is a good permanent business for many returning war veterans.

io6 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

"At Your Service." A P i t t s b u r g h woman with a flair for organizing, skill as a shopper, and a natural spirit of helpfulness, established a business known as "At Your Service, Inc." This bureau takes complete charge of weddings, from addressing invitations to arranging for music, flowers and refreshments; supervising rehearsals, cataloguing the presents, and making travel arrangements for the wedding trip.

It also packs and unpacks trunks; opens and closes houses; shops for gifts and wraps and mails them; pro-vides singers, entertainers and orches-tras for parties; procures tickets for theaters, concerts and sporting events; and, in normal times, operates a travel bureau.

Charges vary with the character of service rendered and the time con-sumed. In some cases a flat fee is charged; in some, ten or 15 percent is added to the total bill; in others all or part of the fee is the customary commission allowed by the firms

patronized. The business has pro-vided a good income for two people for several years.

Such an enterprise can be started in many cities which are not now provided with a similar service. The only investment required is for a desk and typewriter. At the outset, desk room might be rented in a hotel, office or other central location. Possibilities are limited only by the resourcefulness of the man or woman starting it.. A sense of humor, a desire to serve people, ability and a wide acquaintance are "musts." The chief problem is to work out a fair method of charging, and to be genu-inely helpful without doing too much for nothing.

The Contest for Ideas for Small Busi-nesses closes February 1. Thus far over 37,000 suggestions have been received. Awards to 175 prize winners will be com-pleted as soon as possible—probably early in April.

rJU Slips That Pass

» FROM the society column of the Boul-der, Colo., Daily Camera: "Members of Thursday Club met yesterday at the home of Mrs. Frank Spencer for luncheon and contract. Guests were Mrs. I. D. Linder, Mrs. A. A. Parkhurst and Mrs. Neil Wilkinson. Mrs. Wilkinson was high."

» CLASSIFIED AD in the New Britain, Conn., Herald: "WANTED—JANI-TOR; must understand boilers; also cleaning woman. Apply or call Teachers College."

» A SIGN in the Bronx says: "Piano les-sons; special pains given to beginners."

— Earl Wilson

» CLASSIFIED AD in a Washington paper: "Secretary about to be married urgently, needs a 2 rm apt."

» FROM the society column of the Green-field, Mass., Recorder-Gazette: "The bride wore an aquamarine floor-length gown with fuchsia trimming and carried an old-fashioned."

JANUARY 25, 1787, was low-water mark for America. It was the moment when all our troubles

came to a head, when it seemed pos-sible that our tenth birthday would be our last.

On that day Captain Daniel Shays led his army of 2000 up the hill at Springfield. He wore his old Conti-nental uniform. The muskets his men carried were those they had used against the British and the Hessians. Now they were to be fired at the mi-litia of Massachusetts, drawn up above to defend the Arsenal.

Shays was a simple man of the peo-ple. He had fought before to right the intolerable wrongs that wicked men had done him. Now he thought he was fighting again for the same rea-son. The lawyers and financiers in Boston, the legislature and judges that they owned, were just as wicked as King George and his ministers. They had brought him — and the common people everywhere — to the point of ruin. So he believed.

Readers will find an abundance of rich de-lail on the forgotten years of our history in The Critical Period of American History 1783— f?8g, by John Fiske (Houghton Mifflin, $3) .

C h a o s a n d a n a r c h y t h r e a t e n e d ; m e n m e t the chal lenge. R e s u l t : t h e C o n s t i t u t i o n , t h r o u g h which 13 b icker ing l i t t le republ ics b e c a m e t h e U. S. A.

Steadily they marched up the slope. The late afternoon sun touched the cannon waiting for them up above. It was bitter cold, the worst winter in many years.

When the two armies were 300 yards apart a courier came running down the hill. He carried a message from General Shepard, in command of the militia: "Halt your men or I fire."

"Tell him that's what we want," growled Shays. He led on.

A hundred yards to go. A com-mand was shouted above and muskets were leveled. A volley was fired — then another — but aimed over the heads of the advancing rebels. Some of them wavered. But the Continental veterans were in front, and under their example the others came on.

Shays held his fire — too long. The third volley crashed, this time aimed to kill. The front rank was down, some writhing in the snow, others ly-ing still.

107

Our Postwar Problems of 1787

By Edwin Muller

110

Shays and his men broke and fled down the hill. The threat of the Re-bellion was ended.

BUT the musket balls of the militia hadn't cured the troubles or ended the dangers that threatened us.

"There are combustibles in every state which a spark might set fire to," wrote Washington. " I feel infinitely more than I can express for the dis-orders which have arisen."

For Shays' Rebellion was only one of many "disorders." In western Massachusetts, in Vermont, else-where in New England there were armed clashes. In New York the mili-tia of Dutchess and Columbia coun-ties was called out.

There had even been the begin-nings of actual warfare between states. The Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania had been settled by men and women from Connecticut. One spring the Susquehanna rose and flooded the valley, destroying houses, barns and cattle. The Pennsylvania legislature sent a company of militia, ostensibly to help the settlers. The soldiers behaved as if in enemy terri-tory, stealing and burning. The set-tlers resisted. Then the troops turned them out of doors at the point of the bayonet, burned their remaining houses, drove them out of the state.

Wiser counsel prevailed in Penn-sylvania and amends were made — just in time to prevent Connecticut from sending an expeditionary force to retaliate. While the states were contending with each other there was the threat of foreign war. Britain was still hostile, refusing to withdraw her garrisons from the West. Spain was threatening to strangle the western

February

settlements by closing the mouth of the Mississippi. We no longer had an effective army with which to meet these threats.

Nor had we a navy to protect our shipping. The Barbary pirates, those savage sea-robbers of the North Afri-can coast, preyed on all the shipping that entered the Mediterranean. Britain, France, Spain were, to some extent, able to protect their vessels. We were not. So the pirates always welcomed the sight of an American flag. American citizens were kid-naped, sold into slavery, murdered. This went on year after year. We could do nothing about it.

Closer to the average American at home were the economic troubles, those which had driven Shays and his like to rebellion. There was no na-tional currency. Instead there was a confused medley of dollars, shillings, moidores, pistareens — all sorts of odd coins. Each state had its own scheme of paper money, some more bizarre than others, fluctuating wildly in value but tending steadily toward zero.

Foreign observers commented on our affairs with complacent I-told-you-so's. For example, the Dean of Gloucester: "As to the future gran-deur of America, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever was conceived. The mutual antipa-thies and clashing interests of the Americans, their difference of govern-ments, habitudes and manners, indi-cate that they will have no center of union and no common interest. A dis-united people to the end of time, sus-picious and distrustful of each other, they will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths or princi-

t h e reader's d i g e s t

'945 palities according to natural bound-aries."

This wasn't really a nation. It was merely an alliance of 13 independent republics straggled out on a long sea-coast. The alliance was held together shakily by the Articles of Confedera-tion, drawn up by the Continental Congress at the time of the Declara-tion of Independence, but not accepted by all the states until 1781. In effect the Articles comprised a treaty by which the 13 states agreed to act together — as the United Nations agree today.

The only machinery for acting together was Con-gress. It was all there was to the Government of the United States. And Con-gress was little more than a council of ambassadors. It had, supposedly, certain powers, such as declaring and waging war and issuing money. But these powers were illusory.

There was no central executive power. There was a President, the president of Congress, but he had no more authority than any other mem-ber. We had 14 Presidents before George Washington, between 1774 and 1789, but how many people to-day can remember the name of any of them?

The alliance had been able to win a war. But, as usually happens, when the war was over it began to disinte-grate. Its members followed their sep-arate interests.

In 1783 the Continental Congress sat in Philadelphia. Eighty soldiers, mutinous because they had not been paid, lined up before the state house

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GEORGE WASHINCTON

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where Congress was sitting, passed the grog and began throwing stones at the windows. Then, pointing their muskets, they threatened to seize the members, to hold them hostage until the pay was forthcoming.

The members appealed to the state government. It did nothing. They ap-pealed to the city authorities. No re-

sponse. So they fled in un-dignified rout to Princeton, where the college charita-bly took them in.

Congress was weak be-cause it had no effective way of enforcing its laws. As Noah Webster said, "A law without a penalty is mere advice." The central government could neither raise money, maintain an army and navy, nor estab-

lish trade or other relationships be-tween the states.

There were some Americans who saw the remedy. Washington was one. He insisted that the only hope was a real union under a single federal government.

But the average American wasn't for it — not yet. Washington had said that the people must be willing to sacrifice some of their local interests to the common weal. But the states were not willing to surrender any part of their sovereignty to a "super-state" — a word then much in vogue.

Rugged Governor Clinton spoke for New York. It had everything — strategic position, a great port, fertile lands, room for expansion. Why should it give up its advantages and pool its interests in a union? Rhode Island was even tougher. It prided it-self on being "the state of the other-

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wise minded," the people who had left Massachusetts because they wanted to run their own affairs. Should they give up that independence?

Citizens of the different states hardly knew each other. They were much farther apart in time than we are from our Russian and Chinese allies. From Boston to New York took a week to ten days — a tedious, ex-pensive, uncomfortable trip. To go from North to South meant a long ocean voyage, longer in time than going from San Francisco to Aus-tralia today.

There were no great press associa-tions, newspapers or periodicals to maintain contact between sections. Madison wrote to Jefferson: "Of the affairs of Georgia I know as little as of those of Kamchatka."

And the most important reason of all for not wanting a strong national union was the healthy Anglo-Saxon instinct to get along with the absolute minimum of government. The people had just fought a war to get rid of too much government. Why impose it on themselves?

So there was a heavy, inert mass of resistance to the making of a nation. To overcome it required a crusade, as daring and forceful as that which had brought about the Revolution.

THE MEN who planned and wrote the Constitution were a remarkable group. One or two of them could claim genius.

Alexander Hamilton, just turned 30, had shown himself a master in every field he had touched — busi-ness, finance, law, military strategy, above all in the science of govern-ment. The driving force of his life now

February

was a desire to create a strong central government — a nation. Through the critical years 1781-87 he moved steadily toward that goal, together with Washington, James Madison and others.

Of that far-seeing group Hamilton was the leading spirit. He directed the strategy of the movement, taking care not to keep too far ahead of pub-lic opinion. There was little hope of accomplishing anything through Con-gress. Rather the objective was to bring together a new body, a conven-tion which should write a constitu-tion, build the structure of a nation.

That purpose could not be avowed — the people weren't ready for it. Hamilton and his group moved indi-rectly. In 1786 they proposed that Congress give its sanction to a con-vention of delegates from all the states to make certain revisions in the existing Articles of Confederation — no more than that. Even so, Congress balked at first. So did the state gov-ernments.

But Washington favored the con-vention. Influenced by his prestige and by the persuasions of Hamilton and Madison, Congress reluctantly came around. It passed a resolution inviting the state legislatures to send delegates to Philadelphia.

The legislatures received the pro-posal without enthusiasm. They were dilatory in acting on it. But in the end 12 states did appoint delegates. Rhode Island decided to have noth-ing to do with the affair.

Fifty-five delegates assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787. They were well chosen. Of the men who had risen to greatness through the years of the Revolution few were absent. Wash-

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ington was there, Benjamin Franklin, Madison, Hamilton. Thomas Jeffer-son and John Adams were in Europe. Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Rich-ard Henry Lee stayed disapprovingly at home.

When the delegates met in Inde-pendence Hall, they elected Wash-ington chairman and got down to business. At once they were faced with the funda-mental decision that had to be made. Why were they there? To revise the Arti-cles of Confederation? Or to tear up the Articles, write a new constitution, make a truly national gov-ernment?

Now Hamilton, Madi-son and their group came out in the open. With all the force of their genius they urged their case. Slowly, reluctantly the convention came in line. At last the decision was made: a new constitu-tion, a strong central government.

When the decision was apparent some of the delegates went home. They said that their people wouldn't stand for giving up any essential part of their state sovereignty. Others stayed only to oppose. And many wavered in their conviction. They would trim and weaken the proposed government so as to make it accept-able to the people.

Washington held them in line with his famous words: "If , to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a stand-ard to which the wise and the honest can repair."

There still remained a difference

of opinion as to how far to go. Granted that state sovereignty must be surren-dered to the national government. But how much of it?

Hamilton would cut the states into small units like the present French departments. He would have the President appoint the governors.

This went too far for the majority. As his plan was rejected Hamilton dropped into the background of the conven-tion. James Madison came forward as the effective leader. He was a shy, prim little man who blushed easily and had no relish for rough-and-tumble debate. But, like Hamilton, he was a profound student of gov-ernment. He could analyze the faults and virtues of the

Amphictyonic League of the Greeks or any other system of government, ancient or modern. At the same time, he knew the grass roots of politics.

The delegates moved from step to step, sometimes a little shocked at the novelty of what they were doing. When it was first suggested that the executive power be intrusted to one man, there was a profound silence. Then old Mr. Franklin got up, said brightly that it was an interesting subject and he'd like to hear what the delegates had to say. That got them started. Whenever they seemed at a deadlock a compromise was found.

One fundamental issue nearly wrecked the convention. It was the question that always plagues an al-liance: shall the big states run it or shall all, big and little, have equal powers?

The fight centered on the proposed

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national legislature. Virginia, speak-ing for the big states, presented its plan: a lower house elected on the basis of population, an upper house selected by the lower out of persons nominated by the state legislatures.

The smaller states rose against the proposal, and New Jersey offered an opposing plan: a legislature of one house, representing the states — not the people — each state with an equal vote.

That in turn was attacked by the big states. The fight grew bitter. There seemed to be no middle ground.

Then the Connecticut delegation came forward with its plan, the fa-mous Connecticut Compromise. Two houses: the lower elected by the peo-ple, on the basis of population; the upper by the state legislatures, two votes to each state. The chief advocate of this compromise was Roger Sher-man. He was a deacon of the church, a typical Connecticut Yankee who "combined piety with a great desire to succeed in practical affairs." He had succeeded — first as a cobbler, then as an almanac maker, then as a man of business. He shrewdly urged Connecticut's combination of the Vir-ginia and Jersey plans.

He was supported by another al-manac maker, Franklin: "Yes, when a joiner wishes to fit two boards, he sometimes pares off a bit from both."

The compromise was scrutinized in every detail. Somebody suggested that with the growth of population the House would be an unwieldy body in 150 years. But Gorham of Massachusetts laughed to scorn the idea that any government which they might contrive would last 150 years.

So by fitting together their differ-

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ent concepts they worked steadily to-ward their goal — a national govern-ment which should be strong and centralized, yet in which the states should not be submerged. They worked in an atmosphere of excite-ment and grim determination. There were hurried conferences of different factions, long sessions in lodgings. It was the hottest weather in years and sometimes tempers wore thin. When a delegate grew pigheaded, refused to hear any point of view but his own, Mr. Franklin came out with his fa-vorite story — about the French lady who, in a dispute with her sister, said: " I don't know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself who is always in the right."

Slowly but steadily the structure of government rose under the hands of the builders. They nicely balanced the three branches: executive, legisla-tive and judicial.

The work was done at last. The Constitution was written down. They began it — perhaps with a little wry self-questioning — "We, the people of the United States . . ."

AND SO the Constitution was sub-mitted to us, the people. On the whole we didn't like the looks of it. Historians are generally agreed that at the start there was a clear majority in the country against its adoption.

The common man felt that some-thing had been put over on him. He had been reconciled to the necessity of giving up some small part of the sovereignty of the states, of his own freedom. But this went too far. Here it was, the dreaded superstate. He saw tyranny ahead. Tyranny of Con-gress, which could control elections.

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'945 Especially tyranny of the President. The Constitution was called a con-, spiracy of the well-born against the common people.

Then Hamilton entered the fight in New York. Therein he showed his greatness, since the Constitution was a disappointment to him. For him it was a halfway measure of the most doubtful value, though an improvement on the exist-ing order. With all his matchless eloquence he urged its adoption. Adroitly he maneuvered the differ-ent factions to its support. He formulated the case for a federal union in the great series of the Federalist pa-pers, of which he wrote the larger part.

Through all the 13 states the contest developed. It was our first national political campaign — and one of our hottest. In general it was up-state against down-state, town against country. The farmers and small-town mechanics were mostly against the Constitution, the com-mercial classes in the cities were for it.

All the devices of electioneering were used. There were stump speeches, parades, torchlight processions, bon-fires. One parade in New York lasted from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Its feature was a great float that rumbled through the streets, the Good Ship Constitution in full sail.

The newspapers were full of im-passioned letters-to-the-editor. There was a flood of anonymous pamphlets, most of which were sold for a small sum. "Plain Truth ," "Brutus," "An Old Whig," "Rough Hewn," "Rough Hewn, J r . , " had their say. An anti-

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Federalist pamphleteer called the pro-posed Constitution " a beast, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, having great iron teeth."

There were outbreaks of violence. Very early in the campaign the voters of Pennsylvania came to the boiling point. The majority of the legislature was pro-Constitution. They were

about to vote to submit it to the electorate of the state. The minor i ty members tried to block the vote. They stayed at home, pre-venting a quorum. But a mob of pro-Federal is ts routed them out of their lodgings, car r ied them struggl ing th rough the streets to the state house, held them forcibly in their seats until the vote was

taken. Federalist and anti-Federal-ist meetings were broken up. Copies of the Constitution were burned. In Albany a Federalist parade en-countered a pa rade of the ant i -Federalists. There was a pitched battle in which swords and bayonets were used. One person was killed, 18 wounded.

SLOWLY the tide turned in favor of the Constitution. It turned not only because the arguments of Hamilton and the other Federalists were effec-tive. Rather it was because the aver-age man came to see the alternatives more clearly for himself. On the one hand, increasing chaos. On the other, a strong central government. As one Jonathan Smith, a plain farmer of the Berkshires, said: "Would it not be bet-ter to put up a fence that did not please everyone's fancy, rather than keep

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disputing about it until the wild beasts came in and devoured the crop?"

The popular will was expressed in state conventions. Delaware was the first to ratify, on December 6, 1787. Pennsylvania and New Jersey ratified that same month. Six were in by February 6. Then those who still hesi-tated began to feel the threat of being left out. By June 21 nine had joined — the number required to ratify. Rhode Island and North Carolina held out until after the new government had begun to function. Rhode Island was last to ratify, on May 29, 1790 — "otherwise-minded" to the end. • JAMES MADISON •

So WE the people took the Constitution — a little uncertain whether we had a bargain or not. Then we proceeded to make alterations. From the day it was adopted the Con-stitution began to change in certain important respects — by amendment, by interpretation, by usage. Jefferson summed it up when he said that the Constitution was a good canvas, only in want of some retouching. The first job of retouching was the addition of ten amendments, the Bill of Rights. The absence of such a bill had Lx-t-n the point on which the common peo-ple everywhere had attacked the

Constitution. They demanded that . certain specific liberties be guaranteed them under the new government; among them religious liberty, free-dom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble peacefully, the cer-tainty that no man be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

At first some states re-fused to ratify unless amend-ments were made covering those liberties. Finally they compromised on a sort of gentlemen's agreement that the amendments be made as soon as the first Congress assembled.

The agreement was car-ried out. The Bill of Rights, its wording largely influ-enced by Jefferson, was

voted by the first Congress and rati-fied by the states.

Our Constitution has been a model for other new nations in erecting their structures of government. It may be a model for greater structures of the future.

Nearly 60 years ago John Fiske wrote: " In some future still grander convention we trust the same thing will be done between states that have been wholly sovereign, whereby peace may gain and violence be diminished over (Tther lands than this which has set the example."

• f

R. JOSEPH R . SIZOO, pastor of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas in New York, says that this proverb of Confucius has been the golden text of his life:

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."

BOOK SECTION

Verdict on India is the result of a recently completed tour by one of England's most pro-vocative journalists. A vivid persona l adventure a m o n g the Indian people and their present-day leaders, it presents i n d i v i d u a l c o n c l u s i o n s in striking contrast to some cur-rent views on the fateful prob-; lem of Indian independence.

A C O N D E N S A T I O N F R O M T H E B O O K B Y B E V E R L E Y N I C H O L S

w : -HEN an infected foot landed me in an Indian hospital, the first thing I learned was

that there is only one trained nurse to every 65,000 inhabitants oj India. T h i s figure corresponds, roughly, with 200 nurses for the whole Dominion of Canada. In the city of Peshawar, where I was confined, there are 60,000 cases of tuberculosis alone. If we allotted only one nurse to every ten of these u n f o r t u n a t e s , we would need to employ the entire nursing community of India in this one comparatively small city.

In India, nursing is still regarded as a dishonorable profession by the vast majority of Indian women. The prej-udices of Victorian England, which

Florence Nightingale had to fight, are mere whims and fancies com-pared with the hidebound rules of caste and custom which govern Hindu womanhood.

That is why so large a proportion of the tiny corps of nurses is composed of Anglo-Indian girls, most of whom are Christians. The humiliations which these girls often have to suffer are past belief, particularly when they go on private cases. One girl, of high culture and intelligence, told me that she was expected to eat with the sweepers, and that after bathing her patient with antiseptic the pa-tient always insisted on bathing again in order to wash off the "pollution" of her touch.

Copyright 1944, Beverley Nichols, and published at $2.50 by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York. 17, N. Y. "S

Verdict on INDIA

6

And those 60,000 cases of tubercu-losis?

One reason is the institution of Purdah. If you walk through the streets of Peshawar you will never see a female face. The few women you meet are covered from head to foot; two narrow slits for the eyes and a tiny hole for the mouth — that is all the fresh air they ever get.

"If anybody had tried to invent a costume that was quite ideal for the incubation of microbes," said the doctor in my ward, "he could not have done better than Purdah. We fight it year in and year out, but we can't fight it too openly for fear of offending the religious suscepti-bilities of the people."

"There's trouble in one of the wards in the next wing," said my nurse one Monday morning.

"A little boy's just arrived with 18 relations who insist on sleeping by his bed."

"Eighteen?" "Yes. Parents, grandparents, aunts,

uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, to say nothing of three babies howling their heads off. And he has to have absolute quiet."

"Why don't you get rid of them?" "We can't. If we asked even one

of them to go they'd take the boy away, and he'd be dead before morn-ing."

The explanation is the Hindu joint-family system, under which families of 20 or more are required to live under one roof. When I was well enough to explore the quarters of the other patients in a wheel chair I found many of the rooms to be miniature Bedlams. Every inch of floor space was occupied by some

February

member of the family, from aged crones to screaming babies.

Searchlight on Hinduism OF THE hundreds of writers who

have called attention to India's "re-ligiosity" I do not recall a single one who has faced up to its implications in the modern world — who has shown how religious fanaticism today is sweeping its way into every phase of Indian life. Hinduism in its most extreme form is a turbulent force. Its voice rises above the roar of the fac-tories, it dominates the assemblies of politicians and students.

In its very early origins, Hinduism was a mystical way of life, of excep-tional difficulty and extreme abstrac-tion, which was immortalized in a few great works of art such as the Gita a n d t h e Upanishads. T h i s " r e -ligion" — which, in any case, would be totally beyond the comprehension of any large body of men — has become perverted beyond all recog-nition; it has borrowed here, there and everywhere, accumulating a mass of superstitions, deifying instinct, sanc-tifying convenience, and giving di-vine authority to human passion, till it found itself saddled with several thousand "gods," some of them of the most disreputable character, "gods" of greed and "gods" of lust.

The religious fervor with which so monstrous a custom as child-marriage was defended by the Hindus in their fight against the Child Marriage Act will come as a revelation to the average Westerner. Even today, the law is openly flouted.

I myself have stood in the Monkey Temple at Benares while streams of little girls, who could not have been

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'945 more than 12 years old, were dragged toward the idols to implore the "blessings" of fertility. They cringed, as though in shame because they had not yet fulfilled the divine duty of maternity.

Suttee, the custom of burning wid-ows alive; thugee, the use of profes-sional religious assassins — these were part of the Hindu religion. They were abolished by the Christian British, and their abolition was fiercely con-tested by the Hindus in the name of their religion.

It was the same with the devadasis, the temple prostitutes who are dedi-cated from childhood to minister to the pilgrims and the priests. They are not so conspicuous as they were in the big cities, but you have only to go a little way off the beaten track to see them sitting at dusk in the doorways of the little houses that are grouped around the temple area.

"The idea of allowing the young girls of the prostitute class to grow up in the atmosphere of the temples," writes a leading Hindu apologist, "is to instill into them some religion, some fear of God, so that when they come of age they may not indulge in promiscui ty . The prostitutes of India are, therefore, one of the most God-fearing and loyal class of mistresses known to that unfortunate profession."

JMumbo Jumbo IF THE average British or American

citizen were told that syphilis could be cured by drinking a cup of tea, he would be skeptical; if he were told further that this same cup of tea would also cure tuberculosis, brain fever, malaria, go'norrhea, and bron-chitis — he would be inclined to

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throw the cup of tea into the face of its inventor.

The cup of tea — or rather, a small tin of it — stands before me as I write. It has just come back from the analyst's. It is quite harmless, and, of course, utterly useless for any of the diseases for which it is recom-mended. Its basis is an herb that resembles the South American mate; it also contains thyme, cardamoms, cloves and the dried petals of a few common flowers. It might perhaps have slight digestive properties, but that is all.

This stuff was presented to me by one of the leading lights of Hindu medicine, a system of Mumbo Jumbo which goes under the name of Ayur-veda. The Ayurvedic system, with its blend of astrology, witchcraft, and religion, and its claims to have re-discovered ancient secrets which are far in advance of Western medicine, is spreading throughout modern In-dia; students are being enrolled by t h e t housands ; in many parts of India the number of Ayurvedic doctors is between 20 and jjo percent greater than the number of allopathic or " Western" doctors.

The main impetus for the growth of this gigantic quackery is, quite simply, Hindu nationalism, of which it is the medical expression.

The things Ayurveda does not attempt to do are even more signifi-cant than the things it does. It dis-dains the microscope and ignores the whole field of bacteriology. It rejects surgery, and gives the cancer patient a pill. It has no disinfectants ade-quate to deal with any but the simplest cases of sepsis; to prevent the spread of cholera it hangs a bunch of flowers over the doorway. It delib-

v e r d i c t o n i n d i a

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erately rejects countless remedies that have unquestionably proved their worth in Western medicine, such as sulphonamide preparations for pneu-monia or insulin for diabetes.

On the other hand, one branch of this "science" has shown remarkable progress. In the manufacture of aph-rodisiacs, Ayurveda reigns supreme. Firms of Ayurvedic chemists are le-gion; they have a huge mail-order business with catalogues setting forth in lurid language their claims to stimulate the sexual appetite.

Such is the system which in the name of nationalism is attempting to assume responsibility for the health of nearly one fifth of the human race.

The Other India IT HAS always seemed to me quite

futile to plunge into Indian politics before making any attempt to under-stand the Indian people. The lack of factual and atmospheric background is the cause of the unreality of so many debates about India, whether they are in the House of Commons or the columns of the American press.

A number of commentators, for example, write as though the India of the Princes did not exist. Actually, of course, the Princes exist to the extent of ruling over nearly two fifths of the entire territory of India and their subjects number no less than 80 millions. Moreover, their States, which number over 600, are sewn so firmly into the main fabric by the threads of history and of self-interest that any attempt to tear them out might cause the whole thing to fall apart. Some of these States, of course, are very small; they shine on India's quilt like tiny specks

February

of gold; but others are nearly the size of France, governed by rulers with wide powers and lusty ambi-tions, who have not the faintest in-tention of retiring.

The Elusive Indian "Have you ever met an Indian?" This startling question was put

to me by a friend when I had been in India for nearly a year, and had traveled thousands of miles — from the snows of the Northwest Frontier to the markets of Madras.

M e t a n Indian? What did the man mean? I had, of

course, met many. To speak to . . . at least a thousand. But supposing we looked at India from a more general viewpoint?

First, the 180 million caste Hindus. They were Indians all right, the very core of India. But wait a minute . . . were they? What about the 60 million noncaste Hindus who were groveling in their dust? Were they Indians too? According to the caste Hindus, they were not even men and women! They were "untouchable." To drink from the same cup would be spiritual poison; their very shadow was pollu-tion. Could these 60 million — re-garded by their own brethren as a good deal lower than the lowest ani-mals — be described, by a Westerner, as "Indians"?

Or, if the Hindus were "Indians," what of the Muslims — nearly 92 million of them — with their dream of Pakistan, a separate Indian empire of their own? These vast bodies of men, the Hindus and the Muslims, are so acutely conscious of their differ-ences that they not only refuse to eat together or think together, or pray

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together, they refuse even to live in the same unit of territory.

To begin at the other end, with India's smallest community, the Par-sees, was no better. Although there are less than 115,000 of them, judged by their achievements the Parsees as-sume a position of importance out of all proportion to their numbers. Wherever there are riches in India you will find the Parsees. To give only one example: the vast network of Tata industries is entirely Parsee, in conception, in execution, and in pres-ent-day direction. The firm of Tata's is industrial India. Its steel works at Jamshedpur, employing 30,000 peo-ple, are the largest in the British Em-pire. Its hydro-electric system is the largest unit in the country. Its air-craft industry in time may challenge the biggest combines of the West.

India without the Parsees would be like an egg without salt. And without a good deal of its yolk too.

But — and it is a very big "bu t " — we cannot really call them "Indians." Even if they themselves claimed the title — (and a large number of them do not, preferring to regard them-selves as a separate community, living on tolerance) — the vast majority of Indians would deny it to them. They say that the Parsees are really Per-sians, as their name implies. And they say it in terms which are by no means polite. For the Parsees have aroused great envy; thousands of fingers are itching to get at their gold.

Then there are still other large communities, running into many mil-lions— the Sikhs, the Jains, the Bud-dhists. The five million Sikhs, for ex-ample, are among the true aristocrats of India; they are virile and clean-

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living, swift of brain and body. They are also implacable enemies of the Muslims. If the Muslim dream of Pakistan should ever be realized, the Sikhs, who nearly all live in the Pun-jab, where the Muslims hopelessly outnumber them, threaten to set up a separate Sikh state of their own and call it Khalistan.

Where, then, is the man who can say with real sincerity, without hypoc-risy and without any thought of self-interest, " I am an Indian"?

Bel ow the Bottom Rung A man of about 50 . Waiting for me in a

wicker chair on the veranda of his house. Bulky, dynamic. Very charming manners, but nervous, inclined to fiddle with his shoe-laces. Seemed to be on his guard, as though ready to parry taunts from all directions.

So runs an extract from my diary. The man is Dr. Ambedkar, labor

member in the Government of India, and one of the best brains in India. Then why this nervousness, this sug-gestion that he would be ready to take offense?

Because Dr. Ambedkar (M.A. Lon-don, high honors at Columbia Uni-versity, special distinction at Heidel-berg) is, in the eyes of orthodox caste Hindus, "untouchable." A person to bring pollution if his Mayfair dinner jacket should happen to brush against their dhotis.

A large number of people in England and America seem to imagine that untouchability is on the wane. They have read with approval Gandhi's denunciations of it, they have seen photographs of him with his arm round the shoulders of the outcasts. "Surely," they say to themselves,

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"such a powerful example, in these enlightened days, must be having some effect?" It is not.

Admittedly, one or two dramatic gestures have been made in the past few years. Certain temples, for ex-ample, have been thrown open to the untouchables. But what happens? As soon as the untouchables flock in, the orthodox flock out. The temple be-comes an "untouchable" temple, it is tainted, unholy, and as such it ceases to be an object of reverence even to the untouchables themselves.

The life of the untouchables is largely a matter of negatives. They may not use the public wells, which means that they are often condemned to drink impure water. Their chil-dren may not enter the schools; they must sit outside. They may not go near the bathing places. Hence they are usually filthy.

One evening I was talking with a British subaltern in charge of a train-ing camp for young Indian engineers who was having trouble with re-cruiting.

"They come in fast enough," he said. "But I have to send 'em away again. Look over there."

We saw two fine-looking young Indians standing in the shadow of a eucalyptus tree, staring at the dust.

"Those chaps are two of the best who've ever come my way, physically and mentally. They want to join my lot; I want to have them; and 1 can't."

"Why on earth not?" "Untouchable. Sweeper class." "But that's preposterous!" "Of course it is. But it's India. My

men would just down tools if I took 'em on."

February

As for Gandhi being the untouch-ables' friend, let us listen to Dr. Ambedkar who is their undisputed leader.

"Gandhi," h e said to m e , "is the greatest enemy the untouchables have ever had in India.''''

This will come as a violent shock to most people. Gandhi has ceaselessly proclaimed his detestation of un-touchability. He has untouchables in his ashram, and has even adopted an untouchable child. What most peo-ple, however, do not know is that Gandhi has fiercely opposed any at-tempt to give the untouchables an independent voice in Indian affairs.

"Give the untouchables separate electorates," he said, "and you only perpetuate their status for all time." It is a queer argument, and those who are not bemused by the Mahatma's charm consider it a phony one. They suspect that Gandhi is a little afraid that 60 million untouchables may join up with the 92 million Muslims — (as they nearly did) — and chal-lenge the dictatorship of the 180 mil-lion orthodox Hindus.

The future of the untouchables de-pends largely on the British. To leave their fate in the hands of a Congress dominated by the Brahmins, as we would have under the Cripps propos-als, Ambedkar declared, "would deal a death blow to our interests."

Some people challenge Ambed-kar's right to leadership. They would not do so if they had ever attended any of his meetings, such as the great rally at Nagpur where 75,000 un-touchables acclaimed him with a fervor that even Gandhi might have envied.

"The keynote of my policy," said

t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

'945 Ambedkar, "is that we are not a sub-section of the Hindus but a separate element in the national life. In every village there is a tiny minority of untouchables. I want to gather those minorities together and make them into majorities. This means a tremen-dous work of organization — trans-ferring populations, building new vil-lages. But we can do it, if only we are allowed.

"We are as staunchly nationalist as any of the Congress. But we do not want the British to quit India till our rights are safeguarded. If they do, our fate will be more terrible than the fate of any of the oppressed peoples of Europe."

The Stormy North T R A D I T I O N A L L Y , the Northwest

Frontier is the most volcanic area to be found in the whole of India. Even when the various tribes are not shoot-ing at us, they are shooting at each other.

How thin the veneer of civilization is in those parts is apparent as soon as you leave Peshawar, the provincial capital. You lunch in a country club surrounded by pretty women in gay dresses while a smart little orchestra plays prewar jazz. An hour later you are far off in the mountains, in the world's grimmest country, jagged and treacherous. The road over which you are speeding is a thin ribbon of safety threaded through a blood-soaked fabric of danger and death. And before teatime you are at the Khyber Pass itself.

My guide up the Khyber was a young officer who had seen four years' service in the tribal area, where there is a babel of tongues but where the

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tribesman's chief means of self-ex-pression is his rifle.

"May I have a month's leave, sir, to go and murder my cousin?"

Perhaps the question is not phrased quite so bluntly, but that is the gist of many earnest requests which are put to British officers by their Pathan troops in these parts.

"If I refuse," said my guide, " t he man just deserts, taking his rifle with him. And that means another good man gone, and another sniper to worry about on dark evenings."

To be sure, economics also plays a part.

As we stood there we saw, far be-low us down in the valley, the dust of camels and caravans moving in a long procession.

"Look down there," said my guide. "There's wealth for you — bags of it, waiting to be seized in a single raid. In those caravans there'll be silks from Bokhara and Turkoman carpets and plenty of precious metal for the goldsmiths of Peshawar.

"And now look round you," he continued. "Wha t is there up here? Rocks and dust and thorn and scrub. No water. A handful of goats. And a hole in the rock for your home. Can you wonder that when they see a target like that the temptation's too much for a band of hungry men?"

Here was a land of wild tribesmen kept in comparative order only by the constant vigilance of a few British. . . . I found myself thinking how ex-tremely difficult it would be to ex-plain the situation to an audience of enlightened liberals at home who are so convinced that the British have only to march out of India for the whole country to blossom overnight

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with the benefits of representative democratic institutions.

The Congress Party IT is a strange paradox that the

Congress Party of India should be the darling of warmhearted Western lib-erals. The Congress Party is, to begin with, a 100 percent Gandhi dictator-ship. Not that Gandhi rules openly. Instead, he dominates through Sar-dar Patel, whom John Gunther de-scribed as "Congress's Jim Farley, the ruthless party fixer and organizer."

During the whole of my stay in India, Gandhi was in jail. The phrase "in jail" is somewhat misleading, be-cause the jail was one of the Aga Khan's palaces, and he could have walked out of it at any moment he chose, by signing, on a half-sheet of notepaper, a guarantee not to sabo-tage the war effort. He preferred to stay in jail.

At no time, to be sure, did Gandhi come out openly for Japan. He al-ways speaks with one eye on America, and if America had caught him in an overt flirtation with Japan, the conse-quences to his prestige would have been catastrophic. But he went as far as he could. He suggested that the Japanese were only too anxious for peace but that they were reluctantly compelled to aggression because India was defended by the British.

It is almost impossible for even the most skilled observer to discover when Gandhi is sincere and when he is not. Consider his economic policy. It be-gins, ends, and has its entire being in the charkha . . . the spinning wheel. If only the peasants will weave their own cloth, in their own homes, and go on weaving it, then the economic

February

evils of India will disappear. The doc-trine of charkha is about as practical as the suggestion that unemployment would disappear in the United States if only the American housewife knit-ted her husband's socks.

The other great plank in Gandhi's program, his so-called "nonviolence," has, in practice, invariably led to violence.

"What may be permitted for dis-organizing government within the limit of nonviolence?" queried a sub-scriber in Gandhi's newspaper, Harijan.

" I can give my personal opinion only," ran the reply. " I t will be non-violence without blemish."

So far so good. And the next sen-tence?

"Cutting wires, removing rails, de-stroying small bridges cannot be ob-jected to in a struggle like this."

In Congress bulletins theft, arson, riot and every form of sabotage were openly advocated, all in the name of "nonviolence."

It seems true that Gandhi's/>rac/ica/ influence is sharply on the wane, and is not likely to reassert itself. Gandhi is now 75 and he has stepped out of jail to find a very different world from the world he left behind. Britain is no longer struggling with her back to the wall; the Japanese are no longer ad-vancing upon India.

Most important of all, the tremen-dous gap between his mystic Mumbo Jumbo and the hard but exciting realities of the modern world is more than ever apparent. Every day that Gandhi has been in jail has seen a rapid increase in the number of young Indians who are being brought into the orbit of the war effort, which means into the orbit of the 20th cen-

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tury. From thousands of villages young men are flocking to the army centers where, for the first time in their lives, they are taught the rudiments of hy-giene and discipline, and are given their first sight of the magic of mod-ern machinery.

One of the most brilliant pieces of organization which Britain has achieved during the present war is the War Exhibition which has been moved from center to center in an ef-fort to teach India the issues of the war and the manner in which it is being waged. The Exhibition is not merely a collection of tanks and propaganda posters; it is a com-plete and self-sufficient picture, on an enormous scale, of modern engi-neering, aviation, transport, agricul-ture, radio, cookery, social service, botany, medicine.

In spite of the frenzied efforts of Congress to boycott it, the Exhibition has been an unqualified success, par-ticularly with the younger men. It has marked a turning point in their lives. They have come from sleepy villages which, if Gandhi had his way, would go on sleeping, and suddenly the whole wonder box of modern sci-ence is thrown open before them. They stare in amazement and grow-ing delight and soon they are walking in a new world from which even Gandhi's hypnotic voice can never recall them. For into this new world he does not fit.

Pakistan T H E MOST important Muslim in

India is 68, tall, thin and elegant, with a monocle on a gray-silk cord, and a stiff white collar which he wears in the hottest weather. He suggests a

gentleman of Spain, a diplomat of the old school such as one used to see sit-ting in the window of the St. James's Club.

Mr. Jinnah is a man to watch be-cause he is in a position of unique strategic importance. Not only is he president of the Muslim League, a compact and fighting organization which commands the allegiance of at least 85 percent of India's Muslims, but he is potentially the ruler of a vast new empire, Pakistan.

True, at the moment, Pakistan is only an empire of dreams, but in the minds of the Muslim it is none the less real for all that.

Literally it means Land of the Pure. In geographical terms it means a great block of land in the Northwest of India, consisting of Baluchistan, Sind, the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier, together with a block in the east, consisting of the greater part of Bengal.

It is proposed that these areas, which are predominantly Muslim, should be separated once and for all from the rest of India, which is pre-dominantly Hindu, and should pro-claim themselves an independent state. I am one of those who believe not only that this will happen but that it must happen. If it does, an entirely new situation will have arisen in Asia, which will shatter the existing balances of power, and dras-tically modify the policies of every country in the world.

It is often asserted that Pakistan is a mushroom growth, that hitherto Muslims and Hindus have managed to live together, however uneasily, and that therefore this summary di-vorce is too drastic a measure. This

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argument ignores the fact that Brit-ain has up till now been responsible for law and order. But with the ap-proach of national independence, communalism has flared up in a spec-tacular manner.

When by the act of 1935 repre-sentative self-government was estab-lished in 11 provinces, Congress found itself in a large majority in seven out of the 11 provinces in the first elec-tion. Instead of inviting the Muslims to share the fruits of office, instead of attempting any form of coalition, it rigidly excluded them from all re-sponsibility. In schools, Muslim chil-dren were compelled to stand up and salute Gandhi's picture. The Con-gress flag was treated as the flag of the whole nation; and in business matters the discrimination against Muslims, from the great landowners and merchants to the humblest tillers of the soil, was persistent.

The best proof of these allegations is the fact that, when war broke out and the Congress ministries resigned, the Muslim League called for a Day of National Thanksgiving to mark the end of the tyranny.

What is strange, in the whole Pakistan controversy, is the opposi-tion which it still evokes from sincere well-wishers of India. This is due to the strength of Congress propaganda. The Hindus, by persistent suggestion, have managed to persuade the world that they are "India," and that any attempt to divide "India" is a wicked "plot on the part of the British," act-ing on the well-established principle of "divide and rule."

Most liberals of the West have fallen for this propaganda, hook, line and sinker. Consequently we have

February

the extraordinary spectacle of British politicians pleading in the House of Commons the cause of Indian "uni-t y " in the joint cause of Indian independ-ence — sublimely ignorant of the fact that their insistence on this so-called "unity" is the one and only thing that keeps the British in the saddle!

Jinnah's own testimony on this point is explicit. "The one thing which keeps the British in India is the false idea of a United India, as preached by Gandhi," Jinnah told me. "A United India, I repeat, is a British creation — a myth, and a very dangerous myth, which will cause endless strife. As long as that strife exists, the British have an excuse for remaining."

White ana Off-Whlte PERHAPS the most singular feature

of British rule is the fact it is the rule of a mere handful. In peacetime (apart from the tiny standing army) the ratio was about ten thousand British subjects to 400 million Indians.

Many persons seem to think of a British withdrawal as a mass exodus, a sort of transfer of population, spread over many months and involving an immense disruption of transport. Ac-tually, it could all be accomplished over a week-end, and every man, woman and child could be removed from the country in a single convoy of modest proportions.

What if we attempt to assess the British as frankly as we have assessed the Indians, to inquire what sort of people they really are and how far they are worthy of their responsibili-ties?

Those ancient figures of comedy — the pucka sahib and his mem-sahib —

t h e reader's d i g e s t

'945 do they really exist? Do they yell for chota pegs at sundown, in the manner of E. M. Forster? Do they "go out in the midday sun," in the manner of Noel Coward? Do they indulge in illicit passions against a background of tamarind and sandalwood, in the manner of Somerset Maugham?

In some of the larger cities, yes. Fortunately they are by no means typical. The average British men and women are a "pretty decent lot," particularly those who live in remote districts.

Whatever else you may deny to this tiny handful, scattered over the country like a pinch of alien dust on a gigantic desert, you must grant them courage. You must grant it to the little garrisons of the North-west Frontier, living in the perpetual shadow of the sniper; to the judges, steering a straight furrow through a jungle of falsehood, trickery and vitu-peration; to the doctors, sticking to their principles in an enervating at-mosphere of superstition and hostil-ity; above all, to the women, nurses, missionaries, wives of country offi-cials, to whom such things as the sound of music and laughter and the swish of crepe-de-Chine are to be found only in the pages of a magazine.

Yet we cannot deny that there are a number of criticisms to be made of the British in India, if we consider them as individuals rather than as cogs in the Imperial machine.

Riding in my first Indian train, from Gwalior to Delhi, I asked a very red-faced colonel the Indian for "thank you." The coolies who had carried the luggage were waiting to be paid; it was very hot and they had

127

worked quickly and well; it seemed ungracious merely to tip them and send them off.

"Thank you?" ejaculated the colo-nel. "Thank you?"

"Yes," I repeated. "Thank you." "But, my dear fellah," he splut-

t e r e d , " y o u don't." "Don't say thank you?" "Certainly not. Nevah. It isn't

done." The British have got a lot out of

India, but they have never said "thank you." It is a pity; these things do help.

Again, it sometimes seems that the British who live in India do not live in India at all. Their heart is in the Highlands — or in Kensington High Street. What can you know about India, if after 20 or 30 years you have never seen an Indian film, never heard of the Bhagavad-Gita (which is as though an Indian coming to Eng-land had never heard of the New Testament), never spent even one night in an Indian village?

Admittedly, I did not do it often, but even a short experience taught me more than a dozen books. I learned, for instance, the strange sense of oneness which the Indians have with the animals; it seemed quite natural that four little goats should be sleeping in one corner of the hut, that a cluster of hens should be brooding in another, and that from time to time a bullock should push a solemn head through the door. It was not possible to get much sleep, and the bites were legion, but there were many compensations. The wail of the flute as the dusk was fall-ing; the lovely silhouettes of the women at the well, charcoal-black

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against a jade-green sky; the bowl of curds and fresh fruit which they brought me before going to bed; and the wreath of frangipani that they placed around my neck.

And then — the sudden dawn, very rich and red, a regular blood-orange of a dawn; and the singing of the peasants, as they set off to the paddy fields. There are few things more beautiful than a paddy field in the early light; it is like a quilt embroi-dered in many shades of green, from the pale stretches of the outplantings, thinly sown against the red earth, to the vivid squares of glowing emer-^ aid which mark the crop to come.

"Have you any real Indian friends?" I asked Englishmen again and again. The answer was always the same.

"Friends? Well — I know some very decent Indians. But I wouldn't exactly call them friends."

That is perhaps the major tragedy. And it is not all the fault of the Brit-ish. Here is an example. Most of the clubs in the hill stations are mixed; members meet on terms of perfect equality; provided that they pay their subscriptions, no questions are asked, no privileges given.

So far, so good — in theory. But in practice, what happens? The In-dian men refuse to allow their wives and daughters to come to the club. They come themselves, night after night; they dance with the wives of British officers, but their womenfolk stay at home.

One of the unhappiest consequences of this lingering color prejudice is to be seen in the lot of the 140,000 Anglo-Indians, who in many ways are perhaps the most luckless com-munity in the world. Not only are

February

they equally despised by both their half-brothers, the British and the Indians; they despise themselves.

Their one idea, which amounts to an obsession, is to deny their colored blood.

It would be funny if it were not tragic. I once knew an Anglo-Indian nurse. She was a nice girl, patient, efficient, and pretty in her dusky way. There could not be a moment's doubt about her origin, but to hear her talk you would think she could trace her pedigree back to the Plantagenets.

"These Indians!" she would cry, in contempt, when the bearer brought the wrong medicine or the sweeper was lazy in his work. "Really — these Indians! One can do nothing with such people!"

" I have been out here far too long." That is another favorite phrase of the Anglo-Indian girl. "I 've ab-solutely lost touch with home." They have never been "home" at all, poor creatures, but they would die rather than admit it.

The great ambition of these girls is to marry an Englishman, to be taken out of the country, and so to escape from the dubious halfway-house in which life has cast them.

For Anglo-Indian men the situa-tion is not so bad. A fair proportion of posts is reserved for them in the public services, particularly in the police and on the railways. Some of them, by exceptional merit, have risen to positions of eminence and wealth.

For the greater part of the Anglo-Indian community, however, the fu-ture is none too bright; with the tide of British power ebbing fast, they are left stranded on the beach, scanning the empty seas for a friendly

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sail . . . a sail which will never come.

Shaming the Volcano It is astounding, in retrospect, how

soon India gets into your system, how rapidly the initial shocks wear off. The flaming blossoms of the golden mohur trees, which scorched your eyes when you first saw them, soon lose their glory; today you do not even turn your head whereas yester-day you stared and stared.

It is the same with the horrors. I had not been in India ten minutes before I had seen a typical skeleton horse, limping and staggering down the road, a quivering mass of pain and sores. A visit to a railway station, the favorite rendezvous of India's beggars, is like a tr ip through the galleries of waxen monsters. Here are lepers, and tertiary syphilitics, and blind children — not born blind, but blinded by their parents so that they may prove a source of future income in the beggar market.

In the beginning, you extended your charity. But the flock of dreadful beings that were attracted by the clink of coins was too great; they seemed to appear from nowhere, gibbering, spitting, moaning, scream-ing, and pointing to their sores. You gave it up. You learned that the Hindi for "go away" is " jao" ; you said it reluctantly, you said it louder, and still louder, till at last you found yourself shouting it.

A year ago, at New Delhi, how-ever, I had experienced a very differ-ent kind of shock. This had been my first big Indian city; a very grand car was waiting for us at the station, driven by a giant in white and gold,

with another giant sitting by his side, for we were going to stay with the Viceroy. We turned to say a word of thanks to a coolie who had been un-usually efficient with the bags. As we did so, the words died on our lips. We had seen something . . . in letters a foot high, chalked on the wall a few yards away: QUIT INDIA.

I blinked at it, growing rather red in the face, not through anger, but through a sort of social embarrass-ment — as though one had been found gate-crashing.

O u t of the corner of my eye I scanned the enormous chauffeur. Sup-posing he saw it too, and turned and barked, "Well, you know what to do about it, don't you? Get out and go home!" But the giant stared impas-sively ahead.

Really this was a very extraordi-nary situation. Here was a flaming insult, an incitement to revolt, flaunted before the eyes of hundreds of people. But nobody was taking any notice of it. Passengers hurried past, British soldiers with rifles on their sweating backs, businessmen carrying attache cases, Indian women in sarees of green and silver, Brahman priests, peasants carrying hens by the legs, Indian sailors lugging kit bags. None paid the least attention.

And then I thought of another scene, far away. Gray trees, Novem-ber mists, sooty railings . . . Hyde Park and mob orators shouting, " Q u i t ! " They were shouting it to the King and Queen, to the lords and ladies of England, to all those who dwelt in gilded palaces. And nobody paid any attention. The policemen grinned, the mob chimed in with coarse but affectionate interjections.

128 t h e r e a d e r ' s d i g e s t

Had England, in India, performed another of her unconscious miracles? Was she once again shaming the vol-cano by ignoring its eruptions? It looked very like it.

To Quit or Not to Quit T H E R E is no doubt that most of the

British electorate, when they think of India at all, which is seldom, have a vague and generous feeling that we should quit, and they would probably vote accordingly even though they knew that they were voting against their own interests.

On moral grounds there can be no other choice. Yet, equally on moral grounds, our quitting must be condi-tional on the recognition of the equal sovereignty and independence of the two great Indian nations — the Mus-lims and the Hindus. Otherwise, we shall be in danger of giving freedom with one hand and taking it away with the other, of letting 250 million Hindus out of what they are pleased to regard as jail in the morning and shutting up 92 million Muslims in what they are quite certain is jail in the afternoon.

Only a wildly irresponsible person, however, would suggest that we can quit overnight; India would be left almost completely defenseless from aggression.

This quite fundamental matter of defense has received scant considera-tion from those who claim that "In-dia is eager to defend herself, if only she gains her freedom."

"Defend herself with what?" one may reasonably inquire. There is, for example, practically no such thing as an Indian navy. At the beginning of the war the entire Indian navy con-

sisted of a f ew small patrol ships. T h i s toy navy would have been totally in-adequate for a country the size of Denmark, let alone an area the size of England, France, Germany, Scandi-navia, Italy, the Balkans, and then some. Even the craziest optimist would hardly suggest that a navy could be built in much less than 20 years.

The same argument applies to the Indian army. Nobody will deny the bravery which Indian troops have displayed in the present war, but it would be ludicrous to suggest that these same troops are capable of un-dertaking, on their own, the defense of India. There is only a handful of Indian officers who have ever been entrusted with any wide powers.

And yet — presumably — in one way or another, we shall quit. Maybe in haste, which would be an unre-deemed tragedy, maybe in compara-tive leisure, which would at least give ourselves and the world a chance to adjust itself to the immense changes — racial, strategic and economic — which our withdrawal will entail.

But whether it is tomorrow or a day a little more remote, there will be one sense in which the British will never quit India and that is a spiritual sense. With all our faults of omission and commission, our occasional out-bursts of temper, our frequent lack of imagination, we gave India peace, and it was not the peace of the desert; we gave India law, and it was not the law of the strong; and — in the final judgment, we gave India liberty, for it was the ideals of Milton, of Locke, of Wilberforce, Mill, Bright and Gladstone that first kindled the In-: dian mind to an understanding of what liberty really is.

This Is aVital i FrontWarJob IN THE galley of the U. S. battle-

ship Pennsylvania, first class cook Arthur Petrie was whipping to-

gether the first hot meal that 2000 battle-weary men had tasted since the second battle of the Philippines had begun three days before. He paused to strain the sizzling grease from a skilletful of ham into a salvage container.

Repair parties were checking the ship for battle damage. Gun crews were storing away the empty shell cases that littered the firing decks. The ham grease would go to make the powder to refill them — so Petrie drained his pan to the last drop.

On hundreds of American war-ships, every day, even when in ac-tion, ship's cooks are saving every possible scrap of waste fats and grease because our wartime need for fats is urgent and growing graver. W i t h 3,700,000 mouths to feed, the Navy saved last year 16,000,000 pounds, or pounds per man. The Army, with all of its other responsibilities, saves 45,-000,000 pounds a year.

If the Army and Navy, fighting a war, still can take the trouble to save fats, surely we at home have little excuse not to do our part. If house-wives on the home front can save only half as much, per person, as the armed forces are saving, they may avert the threatening shortage. They must save at least 50,000,000 pounds more than they did last year. It shouldn't be difficult if the one half of housewives

I ARE WE G O I N G T O L E T I T H E ARMY AND NAVY DO I T | BETTER THAN WE DO I T ?

who haven't appreciated the serious-ness of the fat shortage will take hold now and help out the one half who, so far, have carried the burden. Nor-mally, we let 500,000,000 pounds go into the garbage pail and down the drain every year.

The reason for our shortage is sim-ple. When the Japs conquered the Pacific Far East, they got the coco-nut, palm and soybean oils which we used to import to fill out our needs. When the war came, we needed more, not less, fats — for the making of ammunition, synthetic rubber, vital medicines, lubricants, in fact for a hundred things including nu-trition — for the human animal can-not survive without fats in his diet. For fats there is no substitute.

The War Food Administration suggests the following procedure:

Keep two cans (not glass jars or bottles) on the back of your stove. Into one can pour your bacon, ham and sausage drippings and your chicken fat. Continue to reuse this in cooking until it becomes too black. Then strain it into your second can. Melt down your other fats, from chops and steaks and stews, and pour them into the second of your cans. Take this to your butcher as soon as you have accumulated a pound. For all of this, your butcher will pay you four cents a pound, plus two red ra-tion tokens. You'll take out the rest in satisfaction of a truly vital war job well done.

)

F E B R U A R Y ' 1 9 4 >

Assignment for 1945 By Quentin Reynolds

N o t e d war co r responden t , fo rmer associate edi tor of Collier's, a n d au thor of The Curiam Rises. O n r e tu rn ing f r o m the Pa -cific, where this d ispa tch was wr i t ten , M r . Reynolds began a series of weekly broadcas t s as master of ceremonies on R a d i o R e a d e r ' s Digest (CBS Sundays , 9 p .m. E W T , sponsored by C a m p b e l l Soups) .

By Cable from Honolulu

FROM my window I can see units of the Pacific fleet at anchor. They look lazy and harmless in the distance, like a flock of gray sheep grazing. It is hard to persuade myself that the quiet carrier I visited

this.'morning has accounted for four J a p cruisers. Or that the great bat-tleship beyond got it in the belly at Pearl Harbor, but was back fit and fighting when our men landed at Leyte.

It is always hard, when you are sitting snugly far behind the front, to realize that somewhere guns are slamming and wounded are lying with faces drained of blood. It is even harder to conceive that somewhere your friends are still leading their same old safe, amiable lives. Yet if military and civilians are to merge with no scar after this war, they can-not for an instant forget that in the last analysis they never ceased to be one. We dare not fail to put ourselves in the shoes of men and women we never knew, civil and military alike — to understand happenings, opin-ions and personalities which may have no precedent in our own ex-perience.

For that reason I take special pleasure in my new assignment as mas-ter of ceremonies for Radio Reader's Digest, the program that drama-tizes over the air the most vivid, memorable and helpful passages from this widely read magazine.

Among millions who will never meet, The Reader's Digest is a bond. T o the best of my ability I shall seek to project over the air the Digest's universal qualities of humanness and hope, of entertainment and inspi-ration, of varied, stimulating viewpoints on the vital topics of the day. I hope that I may help bring to additional millions the message that to me means Reader's Digest — the message that every one of us is a re-sponsible part not simply of the little world we see around us each day but of all' the shocking, bewildering, wonderful world that lies beyond the horizon.