Evening Star Newspaper, December 24, 1922, Page 40

Carpenter ListensIn While Europe’s Financial Jazz Band Plays BY FRANK G. CARPENTER. PARIS, France. E are on the banks of the Selne this morning, in the very center of Paris, on % top of the .great Eiffel ower. listening to the financial jazz jand of the nations. Each of us has adio caps on his cars and we can sear the financial publicity broadcast ‘rom London, 280 miles over the Lannel. We can hear the humming i the fasteet printing presses on -arth in Berlin, 670 miles off, as they roll out the marks by the billions. We can even hear Uncle Saf's cry for tair play and plain common sense from over the ocean, while from the chamber of deputies just below us the speeches of the French politicians, who demand that the Germans shall pay for the damages they have wrough® in north France, sound loud In our ears. ] What is that mournful dirge that comes from the Old Lady of Thread- needle Street? Methinks we Lave heard it before: 1t is & very good world to live in, To lend, "0 spend. or fo give in; But to beg or to borrow or to get one's own. It {3 the very worst world that ever was We can hear Uncle Sam clap as he llstens, while he bursts out with a quotation from Hamlet: Neither & borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. And then from far-off Berlin rolls in a trilumphant blast mixed with the rustling of paper: *A national debt is a national bless: ing!” And from the ehamber of deputies A representative of the Department Au Nord searches the Bible and givy us that verse of Solomon: “The borrower is servant to the lender,” And then adds with a shriek as he thinks of the German: “And, name of a name, he shall be!" £+ = a UT, seriously, I want to give vou some views of the flnancial ation’ In this part of Europe as it looks to the man on the street. In the first place, I am not an economist, although I studied political science at college. I am not a statesman, ‘ although much of my life has been spent at our National Capital. 1 am not even a scientist, although, some- how, I belong to the Cosmos Club, most of whose members can tell you the exact number of winkers on the erve of a flea, write volumes on the hip-bone of a gnat, and to whom every star of the milky way is as well known as the stones you tread on the path to your work. 1 cannot even think In millions and billlons, but have to et down to tens, hundreds and thousands to know what things mean. In short, I be- long to the plain common folk who work for their living and figure every item in dollars and cents. Moreover, although born in Mansfleld, Ohio, I am llke the man from Sedalia, Mo., In that I have to be shown. I say this that you may know what sort of eyes Vou are looking through as we study this financial muddle. Before starting out let us look at Santa Claus Has Brought Ma N epite of the fact that the White House has a special police force all its own, Santa Claus has never been troubled about making his entry whenever notes from children or grandchildren of the Presidents have invited him to pay a visit—because there are elght chimneys instead of the cus- tomary one, and these ‘eight chimneys are unusually large, allowing 2 bulky sack easy passage. The only thing that is troubling Santa is that he hasn't been getting notes in childish. scrawl from this mansion, which 13 the most talked-of man in America, as often as he used to. There have been girls and boys in the White House for Santa to visit, in- termittently for nearly 125 years. There have been fairy stories there that came true, more wonderful than any told in saudy books that Santa carrles in his | pack. There have been boys and girls thére who lived in the real spirit of Christmas—maXking the day happier for | others less fortunate. hoys and girls there playing about a Christmas tree, feasting and frolicking, who have made great names for them- selves in later life. In his pack which he ‘carried down the White House chim- neys Santa Claus has found rich and rare gifts from all over the world, and The found children in the White House ¥:‘h the same as children anywhere URISTS who have ‘“seen” the ‘White House, little realize what in- " tensely Interesting stories have Hisn lived there by the children of other yaars, and which Santa Claus pleasura- remembers, because he saw what was jing on and was a big part of it. Here a running story as gleaned from Santa’s dlary: During its entire 122 years of service as the home of the chief executive the ‘WhiteyHouse has intermittently hidden with ‘rich window hangings the Christ- mas celebrations of the favored few children who frolicked in its spacious nalls and magnificent roems. In fact, the White House was not finished. and was indeed not then a “White House,” when President John Adams moved in, and with him came four-yeai-old Susanna, the orphan of the President's son Charles. That was in 18300, when it was & brown house. When in 1814, the British burned it, the expedfent of paint- ing- it white to boliterate the marks of vandalism- was resorted to, whence its present name. History records that when Santa Claus brought this little Sysanna & beautiful set of dishes for hes dollles to eat from, a playmate, moved by envy, brushed the dishes to the floor. The lit- tle hostess, in resentment retaliated by taking & few bites off the nose and cheeks of a new wax doll, which opened and shut it eyes, of which the little visitor was perticularly proud. The Jit- tle girl who smashed the dishes. a cousin named Smith, and so in exclu- sive Washington soclety of the infantile class it is whispered that this is the of™ Zin of the expression “smashing to Smith-ereens.” Grandchildren's parties again enliv- ened the Christinas season of the ex- ecutive mansion during the. incumbency of Thomas Jefferson, with Mistress Dolly Madison, wife of his Secretary of State, who. was_for sixteen years mistress ot the President’s mansion, -planning”and ® % & K There have been | ythe wealth of the French. The pa- pers are full of their woes, and in that which follows I would not minimize them or abate by one jot the terrible losses of life and prop- erty they suffered in the war. Their loss of man power in the vast number killed, crippled and dead through pri- !vation and disease numbers almost 13,000,000, even including their gains from Alsace Lorraine. But to say the French stomachs now hug their backbones, and that | they are out at the elbow and down at the heel, is not true. The workers | are fat, sleek and well clad. This ls | shown by my pictures. The peasants, long famous as the thriftiest and richest of Europe, have never been Iricher or thriftier than now. Every one of them, I might say, has his woolen stocking hidden under the and he invests more and more every {week. 1 have before me figures ehowing the savings of the French | people during the first eix months of {this vear. They amount to almost 15.000,000,000 francs, or at the current irate of exchange, more than 1,000,- | 000,000 gold dollars. Of this, more ] than half has zone to the purchase of shares and bonds which, directly or | indirectly, will help in the rebuilding lof France. A great part of it has | been invested in short-term treasury bonds at 4% per cent interest. Every French captain of industry has his men hard at work or is build- |ing the machinery for new enter- Iprises, and the unemployment which Lloyd George says will force Great | Britain to put more than 1,000,000 of ts idle men on government doles |during this winter is unknown In | France. I am told that there are less than 50,000 people in the whole re- public who are out of a job. | Indeed, as to concrete wealth, T wonder whether the French people, as a going concern, have not gained rather than lost by the war. In this consideration I repeat I do not in- clude their terrible losses. These zre | beyond conception enormous and | should outwelgh all gains. But is it {not right to look upon the French | nation as a corporation whose mem- bers are individually liable and to measure its_ wealth by the total assets of all of the stockholders? If they owe only their own members it is like taking the money out of one {pocket and putting it into another. | The total assets of the nation remain {the same. This may not be so In | the financial assets of the govern- | ment, but is it not so of the people? | That is one way of looking at the { country. e |NJOW: France nas a debt, domestic H and foreign, of more than 60,- | 000,000,000 gold dollars, and of that more than seven-eighths is held by the people and s payable in francs. Only about $7.000,000,000, including | the $5.000.000,000 or $4,000,000.000 they {want us to cancel, is held by other | nations. and this $7.000,000.000 is all that really counts as an international |Hability. 1f the total wealth of France. as some claim, amounts to as much as $100,000,000,000, this debt fs caly 7 per cent of the whole. Agaln, inasmuch as the above sum of $50,000,000,000 was figured st the serving the array of goodies for six little grandchildren of Jefferson. * % ¥ % T was not until James Monroe came to live in the White House that the 4 child of a President enjoyed the dis- tinction of entertaining there. Miss Maria Hester Monroe was the first bona fide White House belle, and right royally she held sway. Born in France while her father was on a foreign mission, she ‘was much traveled, much petted, mature for her years, and yet lovably romantic and intensely proud of her most unusual ! privilege. | Maria Monroe was in her early teens | when ehe came to live at the iransion, glistening in its pristine coat of white | paint. Her third Christmas there was most romantic, for Santa Claus brought fer a lover, who first whispered to her “the sweetest story ever told” at a Christmas party—one who was for time private secretray to her father, | who .was her own first cousin, Samuel | Gouverneur of New York, and whom she married that winter, although she was scarcely sixteen. Santa Claus just sort of “overicoked™ the White House during the next re- gime, because there were no little ones about the fireside of the stately, digni- fled and unbending John Quincy Adams. | To make up for this, good old St | Nicholas received a very special invi- | tation to drive his reindeer and sleigh !in on the Whte House inclosure and | consider the White House his head- quarters when Andrew Jackson set up his menage there. Although wilh no chick of his own, Jackson was de- termined that the laughter, gay shouts and merry antics of children should dominate Christmas in the White House, so he commandeered the children of his adopted son, An- drew Jackson, jr.: of his private sec- retary, Andrew Donaldson, and all of his grandrnephews and grandnieces. That was the first real “peppy” Christmas frolic which Old Santa ever peeked in upon at the White House. “Old Hickory” marshaled his troop of drafted Christmas merrymakers into the state dining hall, while an orches- tra played “The President's March.” Delighted to see them vying with cone another as Fourmands, “Old Hick - lory” was deat fo protests from feur- {ul parents—but he had a trick up hig sleeve. When they had thorough- 1y spoiled the looks of every:thing but 2 big plle of what looked like snow- balls in the center of the table pre- sided over by an enormous gilded game cock, “Old Hickory"” started dis- tributing these. They were made of cotton-coated over with starch. He filled the arms of each little guest with these snowballs, then shooed them all into that magnificent parlor, “the east room,” which has witnessed many historic receptions, marriages agd affairs of state, and bade them have . a real snowball fight. Which they did in real earnest. Aided and abetted by his Vice Pres- ident, Martin Van Buren, he frolicked all day with the child-guests in games of blind-man’s-buff, forfeits, hide and seek, cross tag., puss in the corner, follow the leader and London bridge —until they were physically fagged oat. The two men were storm cen- ters of mass attacks to drive them under the mistletos bough tied to one of the great crystal chandeliers. , The closing scene-of the merry rout rafters, bulging with money or bonds, | Earth. ING. worth much less than half as much maining,. payable in frince, must be cut nearly two-thirds to get the pres- in good, hard American dollars. ‘This would reduce it to about $15,000,000.- you and me. numbers. I do not vouch for their accu- was one which “Old Hickory” trezs- ured during the rest of kis life. The little guests, tired but happy, much disheveled and somewhat begrimed, marched past ' n, throwing him kisses and shouthr individually 2nd collectively, “Good-u.sat, general, we had a great time.” Another picture of Christmas eve with President Jackson shows 1wo | young Jacksons and five juve aldsons hangipg their stockings at the fireplace in “uncle’s roo One irrepressible and mischisvous Loy came flying in with on= of th: gen eral's own woolen socks, and tied it to the massive brass andirons, shout- ing, “Now. let's see what Santa will | bring you, Mr. Uncle, General, ‘Old Hickory' Jackson, President of these United States.” It is reported that during the wee small hours of that Christmes eve bis secretary found “Old Hickory” cry- ing over a heap of trinkets which the | voungsters had surreptitiously tucked into his socks. not trusting to Santa Claus to do all they wanted done. For those little girls who are anxe fous for detafls regarding the sort ot gifts which Santa carries down the White® House chimneys—at the re- quest of Vice President Van BSuren, he left a dolly’s cooking stove for charming Mary Donaldson, and to sat- isfy Mme. Serurier, wife of the French minister, there was also set standing guard over this range, on which much pastry was later to be cooked for “Our General,” 2 big, awe- inspiring doll with red jacket and gold-braided trousers, stuffed into patent leather boots, topped off by a plumed chapeau and, true to the part of a French Zouave, with saber and spurs. * % k% N ARTIN VAN BUREN, first aide to President Jackson in his Christ- mas frolics, had no small children or grandchildren to have parties with him over the big feast day in the ‘White House when he became Presi- dent, but he participated in one of the most striking Christmas’ stories that have ever come true in this city. It is ia Christmas fairy tale. Ciiristmas eve found poor little Har- !riet Willlams. a Georgetown school- girl, crying at home, like Cinderella, because all of her playmates . had been invited to the greatest Christ- mas party ever giyen in the capital and she had received no invitation. Baron ‘Bodisco, the’ noted Russian minister, was outdoing fairyland in honor of ‘his two fiephews. _His man- sion, on O street, Georgetown, was turfied into such ‘a realm of childish delights as is indesoribable. shone and reflected everywhere, there were mysterious silken, shiny,’ daz- sling, alluring alcoves and recesses. There were swings of crimson and gold hangings and there was a pile of beautiful gifts which a real Santa Claus dispensed in person, while out- side the houss great fires blazed, after the Russian custom, for the comfort of the coschmen. Some one whispered to Santa Claus of poor Harriet Williams, crying at home. A hint was given to the baron, who, like a true nobleman, sat right down and wrote her a very abject apology because the note of invita- tion he had intended to send her had notibeen delivered.~ He begged that now, the forty-three odd billions re- | Lights,, | ipre-war value of the franc, which is | ent actual value of the domestic debt | Is camouflaging her true situation and The thrift of the , ness street of every French. while the rest of mankind is has a fence on each side, the golden 000, or $9.000,000,000 less than the, drunken with spending, is likely to | pickets of which consist of automo- $24,000,000,000 which Uncle Sam owes A make her the richest of nations. She | biles, each worth at least $500. It is not true that we amassed But it.is true France These are all in round > Pon- | | . Riches of the French as an. Unlimited Liability Comp: Us—Germany Owes, Outside' of Her War Damages, Only One Six-Hundredth 4s Much as Uncle- Sam’s Debt—Attitude of Great Britian—An American Plea for Fair Play—The Com- mon Sense View and Plain’ Simple Statements of the Man on the Street— Looking at the Financial Muddle Through the Eyes of One Who Insists on Being Shown—Unemployment in France at Low Fjigure—(}erman_v Has One of Best Industrial and Trading Machines on any—They Soon May Be Lendihg to “WHILE THE REST OF EUROPE IS SPENDING MORE THAN ITS INCOME, THE FRENCH ARE MAKING A NEW WORLD'S RECORD FOR SAV. THRIFT IS A PART OF THE SCHEME OF ALL FRENCH MEN AND WOMEN.” somea of my other friends on street. France before I show how Germany, that arch-juggler of national finances, escaping scot free. s economizing in every possible way, | while we Yankees are tossing our | wealth during the war. racy, but it seems to me the point of | dollars into the air so that they drop | that we spent it like water. € When Children £ With Juvenile the | automobiles. France goes about on |leather shoes and often i clogs. And now just one word more as to | America moves on rubber tires. each of which costs from $15 to §75, and carries other’ expenses that the rough path of poverty. Has Had Choice of Eight Large Chimneys ‘in Executives’ Awaited His Coming—Cinderella and Others Who Have Shared in the Delights of Fairy- land—*“Old Hickory” Driven to Tears When Youngsters Insisted on Filling His Socks Trinkets — A Resolution The busi- American city Families She was the great spending place of the allies, and, if I am correctly in- formed, Uncle Sam aion: paid more than a billion and a haif gold dollars to | for war materials here. He paid the peasant for atl the land Be destroyed, and they made mohey also in supp! ing the British and other allies. More over, the peasants laid up money in the midst of the struggle; they paid off their mortgages, they bought more lands and increased the size of their holdings. Today there are two mil- ;started into run the White House. | She had a younger brother. Tazew J|and with cousins and some of their | own nephews and nieces they stirred | up Merry Christmas in the Fxecutive | Mansion. Just to illustrate, one | Christmas Week the President direct- | ed a fancy dress ball in honor of his | granddaughiter, Mary Fairlie Tyler. with Miss Alice as hostess, and fussed up with silver wings and scepter nd other gauzy sheenery. presiding on a | \throne in the east room as Titania, queen of the faries, while the Lillipu- | tian courtiers paid obeisance and re- | cefved her gracious favors. | During a stretch of twenty vears, the kind-hearted Santa thought it the | better part of Christmas spirit not ;m carry any sack that might be filled | with regrets and repinings and sense | of 16ss to the White House. But when |two old favorites of his, Willie and Tad Lincoln. moved in Old Nick start- | ed in to resume his old habit of dodg- | ing the White House guards. Willie | was then ten, and enjoyed only one ! Whité House Christmas. But Tad. | with a heart like his father. had vitalized another fairy tale, for after being rebuffed and temporarily thwarted by the White House cook {in his scheme for bringing in a score ! or more of street urchins to feast on | turkey, cranberry sauce, plum pud- |ding and fixin's in the White House kitchen, he carried the appeal to the | President and. of course, as usual had his way. That story of Tad's Christ- mas party spread around the world {and beyond the skies. i * % X ¥ EXT comes the story of “the three little Andys” and Belle. The thres Andys were Andy Johnson, jr., and his cousins, Apdy Stover and Andy Patterson, while Belle was the |1atter's sister. President Johnson in 11868 gave a ball in the east room for | 400 little boys and girls, who went through the stately steps then taught |n a famous terpsichorean academy fashionable for the oclety., ‘When Gen. Grant was in the White- i House, little Jesse was encouraged to entertain his small friends at a Christmas frolic, and Gen. Sherman, his uncle. ysed to help keep things along. 3 ! Fanny .Hayves, aged ten. and her brother Scott, aged seven, had a Christmas tree and called in the chil- dren from.the cabinet families to en- Jjuveniles of ARCHIE ROOSEVELT WHEN HE PLAYED IN THE WHITE HOUSE ljoy it with them. They learned from GROUNDS. *(Copyright by Frances Johnson.) she would spare his feelings by com- ing to his relief. And he gave direc- tions that when she came she Was to be brought directly to him, because ho had never met: her before. She came, with eyes that shone the clearer because they had so recently‘ been washed by tears. From her disap- pointment and grief her spirits re- bounded and she was the gayest of the gay, witty and charmingly girlish, (little at the magnificent party. No wonder. tary officers in their gold lace. Perhaps it was- Santa Claus again, | the. children saved their coins spreading his -spirit through the | bought stockings and mittens ‘American people,- who wove another | sSmall toys for the less fortunate. fairy story about a little boy named | four years Fanny was belle of the Benjamin, aged seven, who came to |children's parties. It was at one Of | pinzeg ot one side. Some weaving in- the White House with his grand-|Fanny Hayes' parties that another|...s such as tra; apiders, employ father, planning for four glad Christ- | famous romance started. A charming |, gimilar dmee" “&-fl: Soming §6 o0 mases in the White House—and: then | little girl came on from Cincinnatl, | 514 or too good to it ertorts 1| e e e William'Henry Harrison died, and the } Helen Herron by name, and daughter | ymprovement. A B:'l:"_; Joweh Henrl thought ~ that 'his|of President Hayes' law partner. She { pjerick, invented & door of & new type, dreams of a White House Christmas |enjoyed her visit 50 much that when | consisting of two triangular parts whick Benjamin the practical’ example of their good mother to be thoughtful and genercus to'the poor. Mrs. Hayes always gave forty turkeys to meedy families and and and For republic than in our big one over the water. Deposits in the savings banks have increased and aiso the number of depositors. We have in the United States a little more than eleven mil- lion men, women and children who havé deposits in our savings banks. This is the figure for 1920. In 1918 Ftance had less than eight million depositors, but she has over 15,600,000 Jjust now. In other words, the French savings depositors have almost doubled in number within the last three or four years. ‘With our present era of extravagant spending I do not’ see how we can ' last. If Germany should recoup France by paying the damages she morally and legally owes, France will grow so rich from then on that she will probably soon be lending to us. * ¥ ¥ ¥ S an honest, plain-thinking man on the street, I find it hard to reconcile the financial conduct of Ger- many with that of private business or national honesty. Even before the war broke out, in 1913, Roland G. Usher, in his book op Pan-Germanism, | said the Germans did not care what notes they gave for supplies it they could create concrete wealth in the shape of public improvements, such {as railways, munition plants, or in equipping their army. I have not the book at my hand, and may not quote | him correctly, but this was the sense | of the statement. The same method | scems 1o have been employed by. the Germans throughout the world war | and in all their foreign transactions | since then. Germany still seems to i consider her contracts and bonds | mere scraps of white paper; and now, on the edge of bankruptcy, she is | spending lavishly on raflways, tele- phones, canals, roads and internal | improvements of every kind. She is adding steadily to her concrete wealth ! without regard to its cost; and as a result has, it is said, one of the best industrial and trading machines upon earth. Her factories are as intact as they were before she marched into | Belgium, and she has used the time | since the war to put in new machinery and perfect her organization. This | may have Leen done at the expense | of her people, but, taking the same | principle of a nation being an unlim- ited liability company, it is a question (u’ Germany is not rich today. | Suppose we get down to brass tacks { and figure out where Germany stands, | leaving out the matter of reparations of which she will surely. pay no more | than she is obliged to pay. In 1921 {her aggregate domestic debt was more | than 248,000,000.000 marks, and her debt in 1913 was just about ome billion | dollars. I do not know. but it was probably owned by Germans. So, for easy fig- | uring, we can lump the whole in the | mark-debt of today. | Two hundred and forty-eight billion | marks! It seems a vast sum. So it is upon paper, but when you divide it by the 7.600 marks which at this writing about equal one dollar, it becomes only £35.000.000 of actual concrete indebted- ness. This is just about one six-hun- | dredth of the money we owe, represent- |ed for the most art by the Liberty { bonds, which you and I and the hun- dred-odd million other American citi- | zens bought during the war. Looking at view may be the same as that of |down like rain. Take the matter of | added to her savings during war time.- lion more farm owners in this little |the debt of France in this way, it is ny Joyous Chri Perhaps the purpose to carry out her inner consclousness at the Hayes | Christmas celebration inspired Mrs. | Taft to make the Christmas frolics for | her own three children in the White | House so wholesomely memorable. Chatting with Santa Claus the other | day, the writer was given a retrospec- ftive glimpse at two sturdy young- sters in knickerbockers, named Irwin and Abram, who promptly rode their velocipedes through the corridors and spacious rooms where the august of the world are received. The two elder Garfield boys were then in Williams { College, and one of them is still there | as president, while the other is best | remembered as a member of the Roose- | velt cabinet. “Mollie” was the pride of the family and envied of all little |girls in this country. Truly may it be said that no little girl i ever filled the White House with quite mas season as did Nellie. * % % % AVING spent one term as a lonely bachelor in the White House, Presi- | dent Cleveland. when he came back, brought with him little Ruth, and only two months before the next Christmas, Santa Claus sent baby Esther. He must have tipped off all the rulers | princess {for from all parts of the carth came | dainty and costly and rare wearables and usables and playthings and trea Accuracy in Science. a vard is quite sufficient. We must know as much as that, because the metric system of measures is so wide- 1y employed that one constantly finds it necessary to turn meters into feet or yards. But the refinements of modern science demand a far higher degree of accuracy in measurement than is perhaps ever dreamed of in the ordinary walks of life. The pains taken to obtain’precise standards of measure are almost beyond belief of one who ‘is not familiar with scien- | tific methods. Every one knows that so-called “standard” bars, on which the exact lenth of the ,yard and the meter are marked, are in the possession of the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France and other coun- tries, but every one does mot know with what care these standards have been compared and with what pa- tence they have been minutely meas- ured again and again. Curious Form of Door. NE of the oldest forms of human inventions is _the door swinging on the baron fell in Jove with her at first | were ofer. But years afterward Ben- | she went home she confided to her | ciose together on & diagonal line, run- sight and—the fairy story of Cinder-|jamin came back to the White Houss | mother that she intended to marry a | ning from one lower corner of the dpor, ella came true in ail its nicest details. |and spent four Christmases there. They were married in the presence of the President, noblemen: and famous | swee! beauties from all.over the world, mag-|a nificent {n court costumes, and mili-*Alice Tyler, ) man destined to be President—and opening to the oppesite upper; coi “The fattest: little thing, and the|she did it. Some years later she came | The two parts, or leaves, are pivpted . test and worst you ever saw,”|to the White House as First Lady of | in such a manner that when opened they cdording to her father, was little{the Land, when Willlam Howard|swing into partitions in the ceiling, leav- aged twelve, when she Taft, now chief justice, was elected. ing an entirely unobstructed passage. Who held the pre-war debt? | Then came Nellie and Alan Arthur:{ the-same intense spirit of the Christ- | {of the world that a new American! had joined their roymi estate, | most of us the knowledge that | a meter Is 3.37 inches longer than | almost cight hundred times as great as that of Germany, and the debt of the British is more than one hundred and fifty times greater. . At the same time it is said that cer- tain of the German financlers and in- dustrial companies have been sending their profits out of the country and in- vesting them in foreign credits or de- positing them in foreign banks in pound or dollar accounts. The amount of these money exports is sald to be in the neighborhood of $2,000,000,000. It re- minds one of the bankrupt who puts all his money in his wife's name just be- fore failure. It made Lloyd George think of what the situation will be when the mark goes to nothing and the in- ternal debt of the Germans is entirely | wiped out. He said: “When that time comes England must beware of a well equipped Germany with sixty millions of people competing with such debt- laden countries as France and Grea! Britain, which are her industrial rivals" I may find I have a different opinion. after I havo traveled through Germany: but just now, sad as it is. I am re- 110 laugh!” I do not wonder that Ge:- many can undersell all other nations to such an extent that tourists now ar- riving in Paris tell me how they have bought silk evening dresses in Ham- burg for less than five dollars and stockings in Berlin for one cent a pair. H * * % % | " HE susgestion that America shoukd i cancel the. debt of Great Britain, which is worth one hundred cents on the dollar. in return for Great Britain canceling such debts as that of Ruseia and of several small nations whose paper just now has mo value in the world's markets, seems ridiculous 1o the man on the street. So also does !Lord Balfour's statement last August that Germany's debt to Great Britain is between £ix and seven billion dollars. We all know that almost two-thirds of { that debt, say four billions or more, in made up of a charge by the British for pensions and reparation allowances which, so far, we have had no offer from the allies to give Uncle Sam. Our pensions during this war have already amounted to claims numbering more than 200,000, on which we paid last year over a quarter of a billion of dol- lars, Would Great Britain recognize our right to the repayment of that out of the money to be got from the Ger- mans? This payment would be on ex- actly the same basis as much of Ger- | many’s alleged debt to Great Britain. | But we do not want any other nation to pay for our pensions. We did not {go into the war to make money, and { when the war closed we did mot capi- talize our support by demanding great colonles in Africa, oil fields in Asia, or the partition of the islands of the far east. We do not boast of our war | charities, although they aggregated ‘over four billion doliars. only & little |less than all the British owe us. W¢ | know that the war cost us nearly twice | the reparations now asked of Germany. |and that the money came for the most | part from both our poor and well-to-do. | who skimped and saved to buy Liberty bonds. We do not want anything but fair play and square dealings, and ask jonly that France, Germany and Eng 1and should lay all their cards on the ‘llhle and do what they can. ““Carpenter’s Wor D O . 1y Frenk O, Curpencary ooiod: stmas Days to White House sures for a baby. Many of these gar- ments, which one little princess in the White House could never wear, went to other less fortunate babes. Before the Clevelands' time in the White House { had expired there was a third stocking to bé hung before the great fireplace. that belonging to six-month-gld littie Marian. | During the McKinley occupancy of the White House Santa came to re- plenish his pack rather than to bring | gifts for little ones. He had an eagery co-worker in Mrs. McKinley, who used to knit and knit socks and other little garments for many children who loved her. “Rooseveltian” best describes the most gloriously frolicsome Christmas celebration in the White House for “the Colonel” brought in four of the liveliest and most strenuous boys and two of the most up-and-coming giris who ever stirred up Capital official- dom. Never before or since did Santa !find so many stockings hanging in a row by the White House fireplace to be filled. | What is said to have been the grand- | est Christmas party in the White House | since the civil war was arranged by President Roosevelt in honor of his younger daughter Ethel when she made her debut at seventeen. The Ma- rine Band furnished music, and the great parlors and ballroom were bril liant with the court dress of young diplomats and the gay colors and glit- tering gold lace of Army and Navy officers. | | “Close-Up” of Moon. T appears that, with the aid of the { world's largest telescope, not xo long ago installed at the Mount Wil- son Observatory, the moon has been | brought nearer the earth than ever |before. The reflector of the greai | telescope measures one hundred inches in dlameter, or more than ‘el[ht feet. The observatory in which this glass is mounted is one hundred feet in height and its dome is one hundred feet in diameter. The whole stands at an altitude of six thousand |feet. The photograph taken of the ,moon measures four feet in dimmeter and reveals details of the lunar sur- face never before seen by the human eye. With the aid of the great tele- scope it will be possible to obser: 300,000.000 stars. Ocean Robbing River. CURIOUS result of a study of the Blue Ridge mountain region in North Carolina and Virginia is the showing that .the Atlantic is slowly gaining some of the waters that have hitherto flowed toward the Missis- sippl. . This arises from the fact that the Blue Ridge, instead of being a crest Wwith strong slopes on ‘each side, is an ous upland on the southeast, and the high-level headwaters of the streams that flow toward the Mississippi are continually losing length by the re- treat of the escarpment, through the retrogressive erosion of the low- level headwaters of the Atlantic- seeking streams. From a practical point of view, of course, the change is very slow. minded of tfiat Japanese saying! “It is o r