Bemidji Daily Pioneer Newspaper, May 13, 1918, Page 2

) BEMIDJI DAILY PIONEER —— PUBLISEED EVERY AFTERNOON EXCEPT SUNDATY- THE BEMIDJI PIONEEER PUBLISHING CO. @. E. CARSON E. H. DENU TELEPHONE 922 { o - ter Entered at the postoffice at Bemidji, Minn., as second-class mat! under ncteof Congress of March 3, 18’;9. aid to annonymous contributions. ‘Writer's name must be lg%::x'e?ouot?lep editor, but not necessarily for publication. 4 : Communications for the Weekly Ploneer must reach this off‘cf no lager than Tuesday of each week'to insure publication in the curren ssue. 3 RIPTION BATES. m:o’zm ] : One year .. i Six ymonths; . . ' Three mopths ........ = : Db o LTHE WBBELY PIONBER 4 L . 4 pages, taining 2 the news o o week. - qur;?h-nmc::l sent p:Ihn pald 20 any sddress, for, in advance $1.50 OFFIOIAL OOU_*T! AND. CITY PROCEDINGS EVERYBODY SHOULD CO-OPERATE We are all prone to sit up and howl about the antics of the food administration and some of its unexplainable performan- ces, but as none of us common mortals can change conditions it behooves all to obey the mandate and i rtain directions, i ’ the mantle of self denial and mak- make the best of it, casting ing the best of it all. * We have asked many questions. We have asked them sincerely with the hope of enlightéenment and with the view of helping to enlighten others. We have agked them repeatedly of those in authority—and we are no wiser now than at any time. We have endeavored to fathom the mystery of wl}y the government sets a stipulated price upon wheat an]i nothing else in the grain growing line, and other production lines. We have asked why it is-that with flour supply cut to the bone, and the administration urging the use of corn, barley and other cereals as substitutes, the price of the substitutes desig- nated should cost twice as much as the flour that the consumers are deprived of, and when it is taken into consideration that corn, barley, etc., can be produced in larger quantity and 'more cheaply, and the price has always been cheaper. It doesn’t seem as if the powers that be have ever made an attempt to protect the consumers in this matter. Why, we don’t know. - No one does. Or at least sgem to. And we give it up as too deep for us, only, of-course,” ' we have a private opinion. s as g However, with such conditions confronting ‘the people, it would be the proper thing to._co-operate with the government in the spirit of loyalty. The campaign to help increase the food supply in Bemidji and southern Beltrami county,_under. the di- rection of the food commission and the organizating being per- fected, is intended to be helpful and beneficial for all. It is hoped co-operation will be their lot on the part of the people and that much good will be derived. 0. THERE IS NO COMPARISON So far as thefThrift Stamp campaign is concerned, we be- lieve Bemidji and’ Beltrami county will come up to stand_ard with any other county in the state, notwithstanding comparison in figures, which have been sent out showing the prize county in the state, down in the southern portion. The table shows Beltrami county averaging 13 cents and a southern county averaging 57 cents. Well, what of it? The county making this excellent showing is much more thickly’ populated than Beltrami; it is by far much older and it is re- ferred to as a wealthy county. j " Beltrami county is about one-third the length of the state. It pokes its nose up into Canada, the only part of the United States so to do. It is a new cowaty, with its county seat a city of only twenty years from its earliest. Beltrami county is not thickly populated. It has thousands upon thousands of unset- tled and uncultivated lands. [ kind who are blazing the trail and developing the country. It doesn’t seem right, somehow, to hold up some old time - salthy and fully developed part of the state as an illuminating example for a new county. But at that Beltrami will do her darndest for the Thrift Stamps as she has for the Liberty Loans :-d all other war campaigns. fii i ST HERE’S HOPING, COLONEL Colonel Roosevelt recently made some assertions concern- ing Postmaster General Burleson and his alleged “favoritism” toward certain publications at the expense of others. The postmaster general issued a challenge to Roosevelt to make his charges specific and the Colonel has announced he will do just that. § It will be remembered that the administration clothed the postmaster general, an ardent biased Wilson partisan, with powers of a czar over the press of the country, and it has been argued that should he so desire at any time he can forbid a publication from the mails, in dictation to fancied whim or fa- vor for his chief. _——— The National Federation of Women’s Clubs, we see by the papers, has decided against the adoption of a uniform for wo- men. We are pleased to make a note of this, for we shudder to think how some fat ladies would look in a costume designed for the slim ones. ; (N O Doggone it! Just as we were again getting into ® tran- quil state of mind, along comes an announcement in press dis- patches that the button supply of the country is running short. Conserve your buttons, or you may have to stay in the house. . g AL According to a war statement, a small piano is manufac- tured for use of the boys in the trenches. There’s considerable credit coming to a piano, one is that they -provide entertain- ment in the home and also annoy the neighbors. : —_ It’s a cinch there hasn’t been many aircraft built with that $64Q,000,000, and nearly $2,000,000 over-expended besides, but 1t is hinted just the same that what have been built have flown away with considerable money. —o We have read so much in the papers of millions and bil- thot sra Aanlt smaind $n dha Taaad = o ARBECETY 3 Her settlers are the red blooded | GERMANS SHOOT. DOWN 6 BALLOONS Twelve Observefs in One Day Trust to Parachutes in Leaps for Life. PERIL IN-BURNING GAS BAGS Flames Likely to Overtake the De- scending Observers—Many Nar row Escapes From Death—One i Relates Experiences. Behind the British-Lines In France.’ —Leaps. for life from burning observa- tion balloons when attacked by Ger- man airplanes were described by -ob- seryers of the British Royal Flying corps to an Assoclated Press corres spondent when he visited one of their camps behind the lines a few days ago. A balloon ascent at the front Is nev- er a light undertaking, and on one day recently when the correspondent vis- fted a station in a fairly inactive part of the line six balloons.containing 12 men were shot down by German air- planes, all within sight of one another. One of the 12 officers who were com- " | pelled to reach terra firma by the para- chute route told the story of his trip. “We were perched at 3,500 feet,” he sald, “and had been up only half an hour when a column of smoke two miles southward attracted our notice. “There goes:No. 16,” said my observer. “Two white flecks floating earthward told us that the two passengers of the balloon had got clear in time., Just then two similar specks appeared sud- denly from under, another balloon warning us that the Boche was out for a wholesale killing this time. Six more white specks now appeared, and, since it was evident that the entire line was being attacked, I gave the order to haul down. Sudden Attack by Airplane. “At 1,000 feet, I ordered the ‘winch stopped. No more balloons-had been at- tacked, and although ours was now the only one up, I could see Brifish fighting planes n'scendlng from the air- dromes -behind .us to chase away the enemy,’ So I. decided -to, ‘venture up again.;\We ascendedto 3,0007Feet thig' time, and soon were at work again. ‘% “Then suddenly something happen- ed. It happened swiftly as in a dream, We didn’t even see the-German Alba- tross approaching, but our ground offi- cer and his scouts gaye us the alarm Just a second or two béfore the hawk was onus;” T heard ‘my ‘observer, kt the telephone, say suddenly, ‘What's that? Stand by! - Good Heavens! Then_he turned-calmly to me and sald with a smile, ‘Sorry, old man, we must get out at once. -He helped ‘me over the side first. 1 “T dropped and heard a ‘wumph’ ds the para-hute left its case. This was the last sensation I attempted to ana- 1yze as T fell like a stone for 300 feet. 1 saw the balloon shoot violently up- ward, and then my view was blottdd out by 8 large white umbrella which suddenly appeared above my head, and 1 renlized that the parachute had open- ed.- I didn’t look down, as I felt my body swaylng easily in the breeze. The roar above told me that the Albatross had done its work and the balloon was afire. You -cannot, of course, maneuver a parachute, and there is always the possibility of the burning balloon over- taking you and burning your only means of ‘escape. “But before I reached the ground I saw far in front the Albatross crash- ing to earth minus a wing. She had heen hit by a cluster of antlaircraft shells. “The next thing T knew was that I was lying in the middle of a plowed field, while a short distance off I saw my observer coming across “toward me.” Narrow Escape From Death. All 12 of the officers of the wrecked balloons escaped safely on this occa- sion. They are not always so fortu nate. - At this same station a few days hefore an officer was shot and killed when- dropping in his parachute. His halloon had been set afire by a Ger- man airplane; and, as usual, he and his companion took to theéir para- chutes. They had hardly get clear of the balloon when the attacking alr plane swooped down on them, its ma- chine gun in full play. One of the offl- cers was killed, and, although the oth- er escaped, his parachute was. torn by a bullet The bhalloon commander told the story of an officer who had gone up alone and whose balloon was shelled when flylng at 4,000 feet. On these oc caslons it is dangerous to haul down, for the position of the winch is thereby given away to the enemy gunners. A\ last, after a cloud of shrapnel smoke had appeared almost under the basket and no response came down the tele- phone wire to inquiries as to whether everything was all right, the ground officer gave the order to haul down. Ten minutes later the car touched the ground, and the observer was found 1ying at the bottom of the basket, un- consclous but unhurt. It was a bad case of shell shock, from which the officer was several months in recov- ering. A few days ago, at'a nearby station, a balloon suddenly caught fire, for no apparent reason. The two observers tried to escape in their parachutes, but the blazing balloon overtook them, and they were killed. Theories as to the cause of the disaster were numerous, but the one most generally accepted oy t of M d A lma et Ung;ce};k;mnl)ain eAmericanRed Cross Ocean of’ through | —J *ok K kK Kk Kk Kk k i Busiest Budget i ‘Al the World Is a Red » Cross War Fund—Every Dollar Spent Alleviates Misery. : Last summer the public subscribed a hundred milllon dollars to the Red Cross. At the latest statement over eighty-five millions of it had been ap- propriated. ] Where has it gone? you ask. For many months -the' world .has been spendlng_' over ‘a: bundred ‘miltion ‘dol- lars'a day for the destruction of life, limb and means of subsistence. 'Call up what you have read aboit the war's devastation. The ‘American Red Cross’ enormous job is to do whatever it can to alleviate that—not after the war, not after governments have deliber- ated and -resolved; but right now, at the minute, on the spot. . It's amazing that it has done so much with so little money. . Last autumn the Itallan army fell back precipitately., On your war-map that meant rubbing out one line and drawing another half an inch further south. Over- there in' Italy it ‘meant thousands of poor families fleeing from their. homes. = Major Murphy, Red Cross Commissioner in Europe, rushed to the scene and wired : “Indescribably pathetic conditions exist, involving separation of mothers and children, cold, hunger, disease, death.” In No- vember and December the American Red Cross appropriated three million dollars for relief there—a large sum, yet small in comparison with the need. Condensed Milk for Children, Soldiers are only a part of the Red Cross’ work—probably the smaller part. Every instant, somewhere in the vast flood of destruction, a hand reaches up in appeal. It is pretty apt to be a child’s hand or a woman’s. th’.n the Red Cross commission ~ -~ oo . i By WILL PAYNE thing?” The government replied: “We must get condensed milk for the little children here.” The commission got the milk. At one spot in France farm work was stopped by lack of horses. That meant more hunger. The Red Cross got in a big tractor and set it to plowing for the community. ~“There are a million needs. Cold, wet and the deadly physical strain of the trenches undermine men’s: consti- tutions. A frightful scourge of tuber- culosis has developed in France. The Red Cross has built sanatoria, pro- vided over a thousand-beds and nurses. Thirty Millions for France. 1 have here a big sheaf of sheets filled with figures. One item is thirteen million and odd dollars—the amount which, up to that time, had gone to the local chapters of the Red Cross in the United States for local relief. Twenty- five per cent of the money subscribed through the chapters eventually goes that way. Over thirty millions have been ap- propriated for work in France. Here is a million and a quarter—in round numbers—for military hospitals and dispensaries ; over a million and a half for canteen service, where French and American soldiers, relieved from the trenches, can get good food, a cot, a bath, and have their clothes disinfected —and so go on for their brief holiday clean, rested, nourished. There are over three millions for hospital supply service; half a million for rest sta- tions for American troops. Aid of refugees—eleven thousand families—accounts for nearly three million dollars; care and prevention of tuberculosis takes over two millions; tricts, including care of five thousand families and sufficient . reconstruction to make houses habitable, required over two millions. Misery on an Unparalleled Scale. ‘These are all large items; but the Red Cross is grappling with human -smisery on an unparalleled scale—a world of it. The item for relief of the blind amounts to four hundred thou- sand- dollars, -The dispensary service sends supplies to more than thirty-four hundred hospitals. The Red Cross re- ceives and distributes more than two hundred tons of supplies daily at Paris. For this distribution and its other work it requires a big transportation service of motors and trucks. This transportation service has cost a mil- lton and a half, and its operating ex- penses run to a million dollars. Every dollar it spends means misery alleviated. Its work is building abroad for the United States the best good will in this world. It is building the best - good will among ourselves. Whatever else the war may produce, we shall be proud of our Red Cross. % %k v sk sk e ok ke ok ok ok ok gk ok ke I want to say to you that no other organization since the world began has ever done such great consiructive work with the efficiency, dis- patch and wunderstanding, often under adverse circum- stances, that has been dome by the American Red Cross in France. F kO kO % O b o 4 Defective |