Evening Star Newspaper, August 26, 1923, Page 77

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, AUGUST 26, 1923—PART 5. Famine Year in Russia Produced [HOW IT FEELS TO CRASH IN PLANE - Much Misery Throughout Big Areas| aima wow BY SIR PHILIP GIBBS. N October of 1921 I went to Rus- sia for the purpose of making a report on the famine to the im- perial relief fund. Much as 1 disliked the idea of see- Ing the grisly vision of famine after so many experiences of war and Its effects, T felt that It was an inescap- able duty to accept the invitation made to me, I was also drawn by a strong desire to see the conditions in Russia, outside as well as inside the famine area, and to get first-hand knowledge of the system of bolshe- vism which was a terror to the ma- jority in Europe, with some secret at- tractlon, holy or unholy, among men and women of revolutionary views. With regard to the famine it had been impossible to get near the truth. The Daily Mail said the tales of famine were vastly exaggerated. The Daily Express said there was no fam- ine at all. The Morning Post sug- ed that it was a simple scheme r deluding western nations in order to feed the red army. I wanted to know, and promised to find out and report impartlally to the imperfal reliet fund. The Daily Chronlcle agreed to publish a num- ber of articles written after my re- turn from Russla (in order to avoid censorship), and I arranged to send an account to the Review of Reviews, of which I was the rather nominal editor. A journalist friend of mine namec Leonard Spray was also under In- structions from the Daily Chronicle to go to Russia, for another line of inquiry, and much to my delight promised to wait for me In Berlin so that we could travel together. It would make a great diffcrence having a companion on that adventure, for I confess that T hate the lonely trail. It was a question of waiting for passports from the soviet foreign office in Moscow, I had applied to the Russlan trade mission in Lon- don, and was recomme ed by an as- sistant to Krassin, an well educated young who Russian ¢ ¢ 0 ¢ ¢ 0 0 10 g of Suffering. trom Ura, 3,000 miles away, and spoke tragle words about the people there. They were starving, and near death. Our train crawled forward through flat, desolate country. The pecople we saw at way e stations looked wretched and gloomy. A light snow lay on the ground and the Wwoo were black against it, and geim. Many times our engine panted and then stopped for lack of fuel. We waited while fresh timber was piled on. . The journey scemed interminable but for the laughter of the “Milk-fed Boy," and tales of Russian tragedy by Mr. Wilton. the king's messenger, who had a queer red glint in his eves and a sup- pressed passion beneath his quiet and charming grace of manner, when he | spoke of all that agony in the country he loved. So at last we reached Mos- cow, and a little while came to know its way of life. Spr: and 1 explored the life of Mo cow freely, as 1 must admit, for never once were we aware of any deliberate espionage about us, though often there S e * % ok ok had arrived in time to witness a I nistic system by what Lenin called the complete reversal of the commu- ntelligent and | professed devoteq adherence to com- | munism while doing himself remark- | with all the capitalistic I thought, pleasures of ably well, material luxur; credentials arrived, my passport was indorsed with the stamp of the soviet republic, and 1 had in this way a talisman which would open the gate of red Ru a and let me enter the heart of its myster: To of my friends it stemed the free admis- sion to a tige o e In Berlin 1 w advised blankets, cooking utensils, food as I could carry. quantities of insect pow this advice, and with I and a very useful lady stooa the we bought this cheap, reckoning which were then the English pound to Riga d half a ce pray called our and gt out express.” some to buy as much who under outfit remarkably in German marks, ] not quite 4.000 to UR journey was half a train the “get in We generall After a couple of weeks my | Himitable | 1 took | onard Spray | rman ways of shopping. | and | arvived at a new frontier in the dead | of night or in the early hours of dawn, after fitful sleep, Then we were awakened by armed guards demand- ing to see our visa for each =ide of the “Danzig corridor” for Lithuania, Esthonia and Latvia. : In Riga we put up for three or four days, waiting for a train into Russia and permission from soviet repre- sentatives In that city to cross the Russlan frontier. In. spite of our as from headquarters, those Riga bolsheviks were extremely insolent and put up a blank wall of indiffer- ence to our requests for raflway fa- cllitles. There seemed to be no chance of a place in any train, and very little chance of a train. 1 doubt whether we should ever have set foot in Russia if it had not been for the American Relief Admin- istration established in Riga and just heginning to send food supplies into the famine area. The chlef of the Riga headquarters promised us two places on the next food train golng to Moscow, and broke through all formalities by reckoning us as mem- bers of his staff. “What about the famine?" I asked, and he said, “There's a famine all right, with a capital F. We saw red soldiers for the first time at Sebesh, the Russian frontier, anemic looking lads, wearing long gray overcoals and gray hoods, ris- ing to a point like Assyrian helmets, with the red star of the soviet re- public above the peak. Here at Sebesh also we saw the first train- 10ad of refugees from the famine area, whom we met ip hordes throughout our journey. They were Letts, and in a bad state, after being three months on the way, in closed cattle trucks Many were typhus-stricken. All were wealk and wan-looking, except some of the children, who had a sturdy 100k in thelr ragged sheepskins. A man spoke to me in English, with an American accent. He had come RUSSIAN CHILDREN AT AN AMERICAN NOT. S0 ACUTE. THOUSAN! KITCHEN TO BE FED. FAMINE VICTIMS WAITING OUT ON HIS JOURN WORKER, "WITH A CAPITAL “new economic la On October 17, 1921, while we were there, Lenin made a historic speech in which he admitted, with amazing frankness, the complete breakdown of the communistic way of life which he had imposed upon the people. He explained, with a kind of vigorous brutality of speech, that owing to the hostility and lgnorance of the peasants, who resisted the requisition of their foodstufts and the failure of world evolution which prevented any in- ternatlonal trade with Russia, industry had disintegrated, factories were aban- {doned, transport had broken down and the system of ratloning which had been in force in the cities could no longer be maintained. The cardinal theory of communism was that In return for service to the state all individuals in the state re- celved equal rafions of food, clothes, education and amusements. That was the ideal, but it could no longer be ful- filled, for the causes given. “We have suffered a severe defeat on the economic front,” said Lenin. “Our only safety lies in a rapid retreat upon prepared positions."” He then outlined the *new economic laws,” which abolished the rationing system, re-established the use of money, permitted ‘“private trading,” which had been the unpardonable crime, and even invited the introduction of foreign capital. Even now I dare not write too freely about the people we met by hazard, or by introduction, lest any words of mine should do them harm. There was one OUP KiCCH DS OF CHILDRE TSSOSO IS TSSOSO TSSO | pe | stin 2> Newspaper Correspondent Gives His Im- pressions of the Conditions Under Soviet Rule. How Nurses Were Found Dying of the Di- seases They Could Not Cure, Without Fuel, Medicine or Food—Opera Presented in Midst S O N S Y Y S VY YN family, of noble blood, who lived in two squalid rooms divided by a curtain from a public corridor. The two daugh- ters had one pair of decent boots be- tween them. They took turns to go out “visiting” at the British mission, which gave Sunday afternoon receptions to a little group of ladies, and taughg then. the fox-trot d two-step and other dances which had become a mania in many western nations, but were utterly unknown in Russia, cut off from the world. The old gentleman, thelr father, and their charming mother, had dirty hands. There was no soap in Russia, and in those rooms no chance of hot water, except for tea. 1 marveled at their courage (though the old man wept a little), and at the courage of all those people of the old regime, who were living in divest poverty, in per- ual fear of prison, or worse than They saw the ruin of Russla, but had hope that out of all that agony, and all their tears, some new hope would dawn for the country they loved. So many people tola me, and among them one bedridden lady. near to death, I think, who said that that. FOR HEL! WORKER IN THE AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTR THROUGH RUS there would be a new and nobler Rus- “WHAT ABOUT ATION Tk SIA sia born out of all this ana tribulation. ow C .\I death, though always hungry. Rellef Administration opened a soup Kkitehen in the famous old restaurant, the Hermitage, thousands of children came to be fed, but, on the whole, they were not famine-stricken—only underfed and uncertain of the next day's meal. With its dilapidated houses, many of them wrecked by gunfire in the first days of the revolution, Moscow 1 a melancholy look, and few of its people, outside the commissar and soviet official class, had any margin beyond the barest needs of life. But the people in the mass looked healthy, and they were not deprived of all light and beauty in life. The cpera and two or three theaters were open, crowded every night by the “prole- tariat” in working clothes. In the imperial box of the opera, with its eagles covered under the red flag, sat a group of mechanics with their wives and between the mcts the foyer was crowded with what looked like the “lower middle class.” The opera and the ballet were as beautifi:l as in the old days, maintaining their his- toric traditions, though all else had gone in Russia, and it was strange to see this stage splendor in a re- public of ruin. .. . But not yet had I seen the famine. 1 came closer to the effects of fam- terror * ok k% not many starving in was to it were ~EVEN IN MOSCOW, WHERE FAMINE WAS , SAYS GIBBS, CAME TO THE AMERICAN SOUP 3 FAMINE? T RIGA. WHEN HE “THERE'S A FAMINE, ALL RICHT." ANSWERED THE When the American | ine in Petrograd. That city, grim but magnificent as I saw It under heavy snow, had a sinister and tragic look. During the war its population had been 3,000,000 and more. and I walked along the Nevski Pros- pekt, where all the shops but six or seven were warricaded with wooden planks, there were only 750,000 peo- pvle In the whole of this great city. Palaces, government offices, great banks, city offices, huge blocks of buildings, were uninhabited and un- lighted. Many of those who had been government officlals, rich merchants, factory owners, were shoveling snow upon the streets or dragging loads of wood on sledges over the slippery roads. They wore bowler hats, black coats with rageed collars of as- trachan, the clothes of a ‘“genteel” world that had gone down into the great gulfs of revolution. At every street corner were men and women selling- cigarettes. Some of those women, and one I especlal. ly remember, were thinly clad, shiv. ering in the biting wind, and obvi- ously starved. The very look of them made mo shiver in my soul. In Petrograd I went to a home for refugees from the famine region. All round the city were great camps of these people. who had come in a tide |of flight — hundreds of thousands — !when the harvest of 1921 was burnt as black as that of 1 in the awful drought. [Four thousand or so were in one of the old imperial barracks, and they had come three thousand miles to reach this refuge at the end of { their journe Outside, in Petrograd, there was a hard, grim frost. 1n these bare, whitewashed rooms there was no heat, for lack of fuel, and men, women and children lay about in heaps, huddled together in thelr | {auite easy ASKED GIBBS OF WAS STARTIN | sheepskins by for human warmth, tor- | mented vermin, fever-stricken, {weak. Too wesk to stand, some of | them, even to take their place in line | for the daily ration of potato soup. A | doctor there took us round. He point- ed to those with typhud and said: “There's no hope for them. They'll jthe men | sear | | as Stationed on Island of Guam Describes Disastrous Flight by Volunteers on Extremely Dark Night—-Craft.Hits Water at Speed of Seventy Miles an Hour~ BY DONALD EDWARD KEYHOE. LTHOUGH accounts of disasters in airplanes are common enough in daily newspape it 1s seldom, if ever, that one reads the story of such an accident as told by a participant who Is fortunate enough to survive. It is with the belief that the sensations experienced by victims of alrplane “crashes” will be of interest to the public that T offer the following description of an unusual accident which occurred to a seaplane of which I was the pilot. As one of the aviators attached to the marine alr station on the Island of Guam I was in charge of F-5-L, 3591, one of the large twin-motored fiying boats which welgh almost seven tons and are capable of carry- ing over a dozen passengers. Having had a fair amount of ex- perience with this_plane, including successful flying in moonlight. I un- dertook the more difficult feat of fiying on an extremely dark night, making such preparations as were considered sufficient and taking a volunteer crew of six men with me. Cutting loose from the mooring buoy. I started the two Liberty twelves and “taxied” slowly down Apra bay, from which it was the custom of all station pilots to “take off.” For illuminatipg the water in “taxiing” and in landing I had pro- vided a pair of small but powerful searchlights to be operated by two men in the bow of the plane. The two attending boats stood by at as- signed places to assist us with lend- ing flares should we signal for their aid. As soon as the motors were warm- ed up I pushed the throttles wide open and in an instant the huge plane was churning ,through the water, throwing up great clouds of spray and foam, which glistened white in the glare of the lights. Feeling the plane gain fiying speed, I pulled back on the elevating controls and put the. “ship” in an easy climbing turn above the harbor. Once In the air, T found fiving to be g0 I circled around for kalf an hour before attempting to alight. Then, throttling the motors down, T put the plane into a glide, in the bow pointing their chlights down Into the pitchy blackness of the night to pick up the | first sign of water. Straining my eyes along the light When Spray | | Ibeams in an effort to see the surface of the bay, I slowed the plane slight- intending to come down “step by ep”—that is, by fiving level, nosing down for a few seconds, then flying level again, and so on until the water came into sight. PR HINKING the “sh altitude of about one hundred and fitty feet I nosed down and opened the motors up for a moment to keep flying speed. The searchlight bored | | nothing but suffering and despair, hunger and pestilence. Kazan was now the capital of the “Tartar republic,” a province of sovict Russia, on the edge of the richest grain-growing districts of the Volga valley. where now there was no grain. It was a garden cf with many great houses where the | nobles of imperial Russia had taken | their pleasure in summer months, now inhabited by misery, hunger and disease. There were forty homes here for abandoned children—abandoned not be dead tomorrow or next day."” When we crossed a courtyard, he stopped a moment to thrust back a heavy door. “Our morgue,” he said. “Three days' dead.” Inside was a pile of dead bodies, men, women and children, flung one on top of the other, like rubbish for the refuse heap. Hands and legs protruded from the mass of corruption. It was the end of their journey. * ok ¥ ok OW aid they live, these people? I never could find out in actual detall. Russian money meant nothing to me. When I changed ten pounds in Moscow I recelved four big bun- dles of notes containing three million roubles. My first experience with the purchasing power of the money was when I wanted to buy a palir of boots in the market place. They were good top boots, splendid looking for snow and mud, but when I was asked one million roubles I was abashed. Yet, after all, it was not much in English money. But what did it mean to those Russians? I found out that the average wage |for & mechanic or soviet officlal or university was 150,000 roubles a month. That sounded well until I came up against those boots and later discovered that in Petrograd a pound of bread cost 80,000 roubles, a pound of tea 120000 roubles, ten clgarettes 60,000 roubles. How, then, could any human soul live on 150,000 roubles a month? I asked many of them, and some said: “We don't live. We die.” But others sald: “We supplement our wages by speculations.” For some time I was puzzled by that’ word “speculation,” until I found that it meant bartering. Secretly and at risk of imprisonment or death, until the “new economic laws,” there was a general system of exchange In g00ds. A man with a secbnd pair of boots exchanged them for a sack of potatoes, kept some and bartered the others for tea or bread or meat; kept some of that and bartered the rest for a woolen vest, a fur waistcoat or a tin of sardines smuggled in from Riga. And so on, in a highly complicated, difficult and dangerous system of “underground trade.” But in spite of “speculation,” lite was hard and almost impossible for elderly folk and the sick -and frail women. For years hundreds of thou- sands of them had lived on bread and tea and small rations of soused her. rings and milet seed. Now there were no rations, but still bread and tea for those who had the money. * Ok ok ok HEN we left Moscow and trav- cled across Russia to Kasan, and took a boat down the Volga, and sledges across the snow flelds to the villages where famine dwelt, we left buman happiness behind us and caw by cruelty of their parents but by their love, because they could not bear to see their little ones walling over empty platters. I went into a number of them, and they were all alike in general character. In one of them were 1500 children, naked or merely clothed In little ragged shirts. Their clothes had been burnt because of the lice in them, which spread typhus fever. There were no other clothes to replace their ragged old sheepskins and woolen garments. There was no heat in the rooms, for lack of fuel. There was no furniture. On the bare boards they huddled to- gether, these littie wizened things, with deep, sunken eyes and tight- drawn skin, like little bald-headed monkeys. 1 went into the hospitals. and they were dreadful. Because there was no fuel for heat, these people, strick- en with typhus, dysentery, all man- ner of hunger diseases, were hud- dled together in unventilated wards for human warmth. Many of the beds had been burnt for fuel, and most persons lay on mattresses or the bare boards. Those who had beds lay four together, two one way and two the other. There were no medicines, no anesthetics, no soap, no dressings. The nurses were starv- ing and dying of the diseases they could not cure. They came clamoring round the doctor of the American Re- Hlet Association, with whom I went, begging for food in a wild animal way which made his heart sick. But there was an opera, even in Kazan! It was true that the stench of it was pretty bad, and that its audience tightened their belts from time to time In lieu of supper, but “Madam Butterfly” delighted them and they thrilled to the “Carmen” of a Persian prima donna. We went down to Tetiushi, and und ourselves among the people of amine. After two droughts in successive years, there was no harvest of any mccount. The red soldlers had req- ulsitioned the peasants' reserves of grain for rationing the cities. With- out reserves they had no means of life. The soviet governpent had supplied them with seed grain for the next harvest, and they had sown it, not expecting to reap it. They had also sent, lately, some barges of potatoes, but these lay there rotting. To carry them to the villages, horses were needed for the sledges, but there was no fodder, and the horses were dying or dead. So we discovered the state of Tetiushi. It is sald that 2,000,000 of these people died. That is Nansen's fig- ure. That 20,000,000 did not dle Is due to the magnificent work of the American Relief Association and the Save the Children Fund, who, againat all pelitical prejudice and for hu- manity’s sake, achleved a great rescue of these stricken folk. (Copyright, 1023, by Sir Philip Gibby. Al vights Teserved.) steadily into the darkness, no an- swering gleam disclosing any near- ness of water. Then, with a suddenness which gave no time for action, there came a ter- rific crash and the plane dived into the inky waters of Apra bay at almost seventy miles an hour. Instantly the whole bow broke off, flying into fragments. There was a rending, tearing crash of splintered wood and fabric, lizht as the searchlights betrayed whirled about in w and then with a tremendou roar the propellers and motors struck the water, torn loose from their frames by the force of the impact 1 felt myself hurled violently for- ward against the instrument board, }a thousand lights dancing before m eves as 1 struck the gauges and con- trols before me. ing of some fearsome grave, the hull beneath my feet burst apart and I was swallowed up in the of the below. In my dazed state I still retained a death grip on the control wheel, which sank rapidly, its connecting wires apparently caught by one of the motors in its precipitous descent. Down and down 1 went until it scemed my lungs would collapse. Then, my all but paralyzed mind sud- denly coming to my aid, T loosed my clutch on the wheel and began to make frantio efforts to reach the sur- face of the water. us ves, T is surprising to learn that, in cer- tain portions of Egypt, chickens lical times, on a scale and by a method tastonishing to occidental poultry raisers, Tt is, of course, known to the ex- pert in such matters that incubation was conducted in ancient Egypt: but it is probable that few of the experts even know that incubation there is still accomplished by the same archaic means. In this relation an American expert attached to our Department of Agri- culture tells of a visit to a lonely village lying in the mlidst of dry Egyptian sands where such an in. cubator was in operation. The pro- prietor was an aged Arab. The Incubator, like the house that adjoined it, was built of adobe and shaped like a bee hive. One entered it by a small oval door. The place is filled with smoke, but one dis- tinguishes within the great bee-hive- like structure six objects resembling. smaller bee-hives, three on each side. Each of these is raised on a table above the floor and s plerced with a small oval opening. These are the ovens. They are supplied with heat from circular fireplaces beneath, in which straw and chaff are kept smoldering without coming to a blaze. In each oven there are usually kept no fewer than 6,000 eggs. There is Then, like the open- | blackness | are incubated today just as in bib- | My right arm was useless, a nerve having been severed by a deep cut in the elbow, as I learned later, but I clawed desperatcly with the other, shooting upward, only to be stopped with a jerk by some tangled wires which wound around me like the sin- uous arms of an octopus. Despalr took hold of me as I freed myself from this death trap, only to be stopped again by a seemingly impass- WRECK OF SEAPLANE v the above, wreckage which was everyw but the | somehow the well known instinct | self-preservati u- in strength to st til at last I broke through of broken wood and t ‘ s Which co the water. Here he is now!" camc appeared above the welcome hand reached down up on the edge of the top wing. which now protruded less than two feet above the water. It was Nelson, my | had been beside me pilot’s seat. As soon as I could speak {1 asked him about the other men, | dreading to hear the answer, for I be- {lieveq that two or three of them must | be still under the crumpled plane “They're all here,” replied Nelson, at which a at thankfulness swept over me. To make certain, we called their names again, and from out of the darkness came an answer to each one, in vo! rkably steady, con- iggle fren- B e, and a me | | in the assistant es rem Ancient Incubator Methods Now Are Employ=d in Egypt an open spot in the center where {one of the children of the proprietor crawls In to turn the eggs. One oven happened to be hatching when the American ar: ed and it was a wonderful sight for him to behold the chickens popping out by the doz- ens. A boy inside was busy clearing away the shells and also gathering up handfuls of chickens when dry- and tossing them out on a pile of chaff. Naturally the American was as- tonished by the sight, and still more amazed when he w assured by the Arab that his ancestors had incu- bated in this way as far back as human memory reached. The visitor asked the Arab what percentage of the cggs hatched out, and in turn the Arab put the same question with reference to {ncubation in the Unlteq States. When he was told that it was from 30 to 40 per cent, he laughed and stated that, in his case, such a yield would mean starvation. In Egypt, he explained, one must obtain 90 per cent. He added that he hatches for 40 neighbors for five months in the year, beginning in January, getting 6,000 eggs from each. He is paid $5 for his work by each of his customers. Further he is allowed to keep all the chickens over 4,000 hatched, which is the*source of his profit. Contrary to our method, the Egyptian never moistens the eggs. May Sign Ten Checks At Once With Machine IN modern business establishments every precaution i taken to guard the valuable time of the high-salaried executive officials. In one respect the president or treasurer of a great cor- poration is at times more burdened with perfunctory work than the least | important clerk, and that is in the laber of afixing his signature to checks, stock certificates and other pieces of paper that stand for money. At dividend-paying time important officers must spend large parts of sev- eral days in succession in simply writing their names over and over again, to the exclusion of other work. A machine has been ‘introduced to lessen this expensive labor by causing the movement of the pen, held in the fingers of the signer, to exccute ten signatures at once, The machine consists of a substan- tial steel writing table on ‘which is arranged s “monitor pen,” which is handled in the usual way. This pen however, does no direct writing. In- atead, it is connected by a flexible joint to & light aluminum frame, sup- ported on almost frictionless roller bearings 0 as to move with the ut- most freedom in any direction in the horizontal plane. Ten separate fountain pens are se- cured to the frame, spaced at regular distances apart and slanted at the best writing angle. The papers to be signed are placed on a flat bed below the frame. By a simple pantograph mechanism the frame follows every slightest movement of the monitor pen, so that a signature executed by the latter is simultaneously written by each of the ten pens, glving ten {dentical signa- tures. The writing bed consists of ' a rolling frame with spring receptacles for four piles of sheets. When the top sheets of two adjacent piles are signed by the single operation de- scribed the frame is shifted along on its rollers, to bring the two other piles of sheets under the battery of pens for sighing, while an assistant is removing the top sheets of tife first pile. sted | a cry, as I} to haul | crew chief, who | | sidering the unnerving every man had undergone experience * X ¥ * HINKING the disappearanc of the lights on the plane would give the alarm and would send a boat hurry- Ing to our rescue, we remainea almo unconcerned for a few moments, clinging to the wreck as it tossed up and down in the trough of the waves Then, as a swell larger than any of lls‘ predecessors broke over the plane. ledving us almost sitting in the wa- ter, vague doubts grew into active fear. A minute or =0 later there w no denying the truth. The wreck was sinking! Silently, one of the men kicked off his shoes and began to remove his clothing. In a moment others follow- ed his example. “It's & long way to shore,” I said bitterly regretting that I had ever suggested a night flight. “The boat may come and you had better stay here as long as the plane floats.” It was on the tip, of my tongue to add a reference to the sharks which are found sometimes in those waters but I refrained. After all, they might make it, and there was no ir starting them out with an added fea in their hearts. In spite of my advice the men went on undressing, and one by one they Jumped from the plane and disap- peared in the night. Finally all werc gone but one man named Snyder. “It it comes to the worst, Snyder,” I observed, “I'm going to try swim- ming, though I don’t think I'll get far with this stiff arm." “I'm not a very good swimmer, was his reply, “and anyway I think the plane will stay up for hours.” “I hope vou are right,” was my fer vent prayer, and we fell silent agai To add to our misery the high test &as evaporated from our bodies, caus- ing us to feel as though we wer | being burned from head to foot. Onco in a while we would yell a the tops of our volces to guide the boat If it should be near, but only the dreary swashing of the waves swered our cries I would rather go through another crash live again that time on the wreck. Helpless, drifting out to open knowing that the boat crews had little chance of finding us iln the darkness even if they were aware of our predicament, we spent ,‘”‘" most desolate twenty minutes of |our lives expecting nothing but to have the plane sink unmder us as wr {drifted nearer the heavy the Pacific ocean 4 sea, waves of | | ok HEN it was that I felt a great bit- terness at being saved from the first danger only to have my last moments of life dragged out in cruel, torturing manner. One mo- r I would rail at myself for be- ing so cocksure of my ability, the next I would think of the few loved ones who would regret my miserable end. Once I recalled that there was a “movie” at the station that night, and 1 pictured my friends sitting com- fort in their chairs before the screen, while seven of us were star- ring in an act which seemed about to end in tragedy. I almost envied the men who were swimming. At least there was action in that. Another wave broke over the plane, almost taking us with it. I de- cided to get ready to swim. Slipping oft my clothes, T let them drop into the water. The trousers floated sod- denly and 1 thought of a roll of bills I had in one pocket and of how little money meant after all when it came to the final act in the Great Pla Taking hold of my stiffened arm with the other hand I commenced to work it back and forth so that it | might be of some use to me, and s just about to suggest to Snyder We try to find some floating wood which would hold us up, when above the sound of the waves there came a faint throbbing. Soon the speed boat loomed up In the darkness. Excidedly hailing the coxswain, we sent the boat post-haste after the poor fellows in the water. Somehow I never had any doubt of their being picked up, and this proved to bg the case, though it was most remarkablo considering the circumstances. Sev- eral were exhausted and could not have held out much longer. Returning with the gladdening news that the five men were safe, the cox- swaln of the boat carefully maneuver- ed his craft through the debris-cov- ered water until the crew was able to lift the two of us aboard. Slowly the speed boat backed away trom the wreck, and as its search- light played for a moment among the rulns which had once been a gallant “ship,” it almost seemed as though the old plane, its last flight over and its crew saved from harm, bobbed in silent farewell as the sea, cheated of its human prey, broke angrily over the dylng leviathan of the air. few thi | men Electrical Coin Counting. J/ERY few of us have any trouble in counting our coin by hand. In mints, however, in banking houses, in offices of electric railways and in many other establishments vast quantities of coin must be counted and packed dafly. An electrical machine of the most improved type counts coins of any size from pennles to dollars, and wraps them at the rate of 420 a minute as long as the current is transmitted and the coins are fed into the hopper. An expert, while he s in good working trim, can count and wrap fifty coins a minute; so it will be seen tHat the machine does the work lof eight men. The services of a man are, how- ever, required to operate the machine, his work consisting of sorting the coins, picking out plugged pieces, blanks and buttons, which in soma cases seem to get mixed with good money. ‘The machine receives the sorted coins at one end and delivers them all smoothly rolled in bunches to suit and with the wrapper pasted. It is the invention of a man whosa business it was to collect coins from slot machines 'and to sort, count and bundle them. I