Evening Star Newspaper, November 11, 1923, Page 69

. AY STAR, WASHINGTON, Frenchmen Tell About Champagne Production and Present Consumers BY STERLING HEILIG. PARIS, November 1. HE new amendhent to the pro- hibition law of Norway has been in force eight months. Its admission of authentic French champagne among light wines is said to have quadrupled, by ex- change of commodities, the export trade of Norway to France. Who drinks the remainder of the ‘wine that pops and bubbles? When the German drmies entered Rheims, on September 3, 1914, the trade was at its height all over the world. In the subterranean cities of +«Rheims and FEpernay there were stocks of 90,000,000 guarts in bottles and 80,000,000 quarts in casks. As a fact (and contrary to their purpose), the German armies con- sumed little of this vast champagne stock. On September 4 (as soon 3s they arrived and before they had got set- tles they requisitioned 8.000 quart bottles from the Pommery house and similar quantities from each of the fifteen other foremost firms, giving requisition due bills for the same— which remain unpaid. Add the levy on the smaller firmg and some large pillage at Epernay, it comes out that the German armies drank above 200,000 bottles in four day None pints. uppose 30,000 officers it makes twenty quarts apiece. If any officer gave out ten bottles to his men, it means he arcely had three quarts a day for himself! they went wines!™ “Whom do you have to help out’ oftenest?” I asked. | “The French!" he laughed “They | imitate their guests, havingy a great admiration for their late a but | lack their cool heads. The: French- man is naturally abstemious ™ * ok ok ok TH,\T n Paris represents the bright- | pagne, s of champagne | the gayety of many people is the explasation to how the trade has not dnly held | its own at home, but doubled! | “Before the war, the commerce in | France represented away drinking light | wera and 3 ies, cham- Paris) to so * % %k BOUT September 9 they began to - run short at Rheims and set up Yieadquarters in the Pommery cel- Jars. But, as they quit Rheims hur- riedly on September 1 they drank 10 more that day. nd they did not return to either city. Yet at the end of the war the re- serves were extraordinarily dimin- ished. “A military as | about nine mil- Monsieur Cougrie, nd exportation twenty - millien Now, the yvear 1923 seems to be on the basis of about cighteen millions. As to the exportation, it does mnot attain more than half the pre-war figure.” The trade with England has come jback to its own again, tgken alto- gether, but “with appreciffble varia- tions due to changing customs duties and the economic is. The im- portations to Germany ahd Austria mply do not exist any more. The commerce with South Africa and South America has been ‘some littie touched by the development of local | industries and the abuse of labels ption gufe which the war permitted:” or the greal ChampagTe 'd”"k.xng On the other hand, th¢ production countries America had gone prohibi-|, "y 0o giderably lessiin quant tion, Russia had gone soviet, Austria (18 till coneiderably Joss in dudn had gone broke, Germany had BONe|g.. .o o¢ 1922 are not given; but away, and (to quote the London Times | 18U5es OF 1325 20 ToL BTN P of 1920) England had gone erazy.|Co. f WA B A L REE O “Almost prohibitive customs duties” fETER T (7 SEOHS LOE B ing) on Fren champagne “invited Ger- some of the less famous producers man sparkling moselles, ete.. less|oetp oy S particulsr, have heen taxed, to take their place.” A bottle |y, SRETIER (L ROE O ampagnes on of champagne “of respec ble mark” the market! cost 30 shillings London restau-{ one producing hou. rants—which meant 1 90 franes, |is known to mp (1 when francs per bottle was the | its name) guarantees top figure permitted by the prefect|the true legal zone, delivered to fam- of police of Paris even to the night|ilies in Paris from 5§ cents to §4 restaurants of the apital! cents per quart bottle—34 cents for @[ We are now i Almost four | grand vin of 1914! Thi same smaller years more have ps Who drinks | producers of E : aown the champagne today? How much [“second zone” champagne at 40 cents champagne is there to drink? per quart bottle—specified on the re- I have just enjoyved much-sought | ceipted bill as “wine exclusively from | interview and written answers to my | foremost crus of the ancient province leading questions from the great|of Champagne, but noflonger included centralized Commission d'Exporta- | in the Zone of Delimitation of 1909." tion des Vins de France, on request Of the more famous marks of cham- of M. le Comte de Mun, president of the | pagne, prices (by the magic of ex-| champagne hierarchy at Rheims. change) are characteri: by the Tt is astonishing how this product | same reasonablene There is a has held its own. mark ample; prominent i * & x4 | occupation of four years has notably decreased, but without exhausting, the immense stocks which these cellars guarded. Mayor Roche told us (a party of vis- Sting newspaper correspondents) in | 1920, “Furthermore, the vineyards | suffered from the war more than is supposed. Th reas actually unpro- ductive (1 ) represent 40 per cent of those of 1913. 1t will require years ¥O reco ute them. Also consumption suffered hea in r not give champagne of 19 ssed. on every first-class wine card of the world. Its general sales office is ju off the Paris Boulevard: and one can walk in there, and, by the or) single quart, wired: gold-fo, and wrapped in tissue-paper to put in an overcoat pocket (ohe on each side!) | CVHE Russians were the greatest | drinkers,” a very different per- sonage had already told me. day a Russian prince drank, himsclf, a double Jeroboam (eight | quarts). Tt was not rare to see a|their Imperial Brut of 1914 at §1.20; b n do his five bottles between their White Star: Sec and Grand midnight and 5 a.m.” { Cremant Imperial (Houx) at 96 cents, Adolphe said this. not the jand their Carte nche (Demi mission. So I must make it V&r}‘land Carte Bleu (Ddux) at exactly clear that T have also interviewed a |Cents per quart Lottle, by the ex specialist of the retail consumption | €hange rates of th= present writing! Adolphe, genial old diplomat of | * KK K ris night life, one time of the| nd Cafe and other establishments, | ca “One | all by | com- | HAVE given redl champagne prices {1 —as they look to an American! prosperous proprietor on s |y o#Y T OO T8 i ©wn account. Adolphe can be more| " qpere ig no doabt, here, when the | necdotical than the grave leaders | yorq “champagns” is found on the ©of the great production. | bottle, corl® or ‘receipted bill from So every time that the commission |the producers! Yet certain great speaks 1 will quote Monsieur Jean marks have the:coquetry (being o Couprie, its secretary, by name. For | well known) af actually to omit, | the remainder the trade has no re- |from some of their finest products, sponsibility. the magic word for which France “The commerce with Russia hashas mnot refraifed from sacrificing completely disappeared,” says Mon- | Many of her Joyal sons! sieur Couprie, “like that with the| The ancient pfovince of Champagne United States—because the quantities | W25 much larger than the present | imported to the latter country under |1°#al Zone and. many growers in it medical permits are insignificant.” | Produce juices and finished wine that He admits possessing no means to|Was true champagne before 1909. check off the contraband trade, but | pU% e otthel vineyards have not ‘does not think” that it plays a great | these fine qualities, the French gov- | ernment actuslly cut off a whole role. arritons. Yet, according to Adolphe, Ameri- | territory—for - the high name of cang came directly after Russians as | = 5 champlagne consumers, and then, in |, hammm"f.',“‘f:"";e F::n”“"‘hm‘:}:fl‘f erder, the English, Germans, South |y uceq Monsicur Couprie 3 Americans, “especlally the Chileans,” | won' lubel and. cork. | and, Tast of all these, the French—| . .u;¢ceq in 1913, “But now the French,” says | rom Adolphe, “are promoted!” “The German (when not in uni- form) was always calm, polite, never complaining, never beating down prices,” specifies the old night res- taurant expert. “He made an ideal customer (when not in uniform?, the German, well born, well to do, with money to distribute. The Russian was generous, bon enfant, but often boisterous and fanciful. He was the type that pours the vintage wine into the ‘piano and pitches quoits with Sevres dinner plates.” The American, it seems, is tyranni- cal, vet cold. Adolphe says “is” be- cause for the American multitudes (continually rushingy into Paris cham- Vagne means more in their trip than ft ever meant before. *™Phe American pays royally, but he must have the whole establishment at ms feet. The Englishman is watchful and suspicious. No won- der! Hc has been “done” so often in supper restaurants! The South American is very generous, a big consumer, but noisy, excitable and quarrelsome in the late hours. Most of the silly scenes in Paris night res- taurants are caused by fouth Ameri- cans—not North Americans, who long ago, by travel, entered into the gen- eral culture.” g Then he spoke about doughboys. “The Americsn soldiers picked up zood things quickly. A hundred 1imes I noticed it,” says Adolphe. “They may have asked for brandy when they came to France first; but it absolutely " he says, “that the wind comes from and has its origin in the champagne district as delimited in 1909 It was the year when the excluded areas all but brought off a revolu- tion in consequemce. The nearer | admitted “WE HAVE THE IMPRESSION THAT A LITTLE MORE CHAMPAGNE, IS CONSUMED IN PARIS THAN BEFORE THE WAR.™ “THE GLORIOUS SLOPES OF THE MARNE, WHERE CHAMPAGNE GROWS." are still Pritain’ and her exchange which Frenchmen call scandalous—when British tourists in multitudes grab merchandise with hoth hands! French profits are real and great. The interior value of the franec, vou see, is much more than foreign price, and solid beyond peradventure, And to all these we conquerors, “Pari: ) are synon- omous with the light wine that pops and bubbles, limpid. pale, straw- colored. - There are. regularly, 2 Doux (sweet), thirteen degrees of sugar. It is the French taste—that of a people who ought to know what champagne is! Such is the trade: but, before the war, it went enormously to Germany parts of Russia. Demi-Sec. (half-dry). of sugar. By some, it the American taste. ¢ (dry), four to two degrees of sugar. It used to be rdd the Eng- lish taste. The disposition of En, townships recognition. “The zone is capable of enlarge- ment by a certain number of com- munes of the ancient province of Champagne, if the courts finally ad mit them,” explains Monsieur Cou- prie. “This is by the law of 1919, | which permits them to make their proofs. The cases have not been de- | cided. | The old kings of France would have them. “It's our wine of Champagne!” they'd say. But the republic 'says: “This word ‘cham- pagne which means to tell all the world the sparkle and wholesome- ness of France, must be like Ceasar's wife, above suspicion!” With the real thing f. o. b. at 54 cents, the mear thing at 40 cents, grand marks at 75 cents in tissue paper and $1.40 to $2 in the silver ice-buckets of Paris restaurants, there pile down on France a mass of consumers from exchange-profiting countries whose enthusiasm makes champagne “come back” so notably (in spite of blow on blow) that con- sumption almost keeps pace with the reconstitution of the vineyards! * ¥ x * \'o'r only do Americans get six- 4N teen francS for their dollar. Holland and the Scandinavian coun- tries find a similar rate. A Swi franc buys more than three francs worth of anything in France. To South Americans it is a land of milk struggling for and honey. And colonies enjoy three sty and six degrees is classed as . class toward a ‘“dry” | rived from drinking champ | straizht through th al, ins af bringing it on at dessert. Brut (crude), or Nature (natural) 1t is declared by old French gourmets to be unnatural and brutal without some bottle cane-sugar liqueur, the wine of such hardn that cases find ples in it! de- zne ead wine is be dosin omes y hara BY ERNEST BRENNECKE. world, “is nothing more than s HAT the human body? ! tro-chemical mechanism, or electr! What really is this coll | battery, constructed on the pattern of tion of bones, blood, skin. | CONStituent electrical ‘cells’ (there are hair and tissue which each | 28.000.000,000,000 of each of one of us poss ¢s, this mechanism | Which is in itself ctro-chemical which moves about, “lives.” performs | Mechanism. The positive pole or ter- all manner of actions, and finally |minal of the whole human battery is “dies”? What is the strange force |the brain, the negative pole is the that drives it; that makes it act as it | liver, the connecting wires are the does? nerves, and the clectrolytic fluid which the mechanism is immersed in the blood which contains the body One of the most startling of all the answers that have been recently sug- gested is a theory with which an American physician amaze the Con- gress of the International Society of Surgery in London a short time ago. This is the theory that the human | body is nothing more than a compli- cated “storage battery,” and that the force which drives it and keeps it “alive™ nothing other than the mysterious but familiar force of elec- trici Love, hate. fear are but stimuli, loosing currents of electricity through certain paths, believes Dr. Crile. Man | s simply a mechanism, an extremely delicate mechanism, run by electricity | and chemical reaction, he says.| Whether the theory is trwe or not | will be proved when man succeeds in constructing the equivalent of a liv- ing human cell—when, in other words, we succeed in creating life artifi- | cially. | Most of us know what an old-fash- ioned electric “wet battery” or “wet cell” is—a copper rod and a zinc rod | immersed in a bottle filled with salt water. Chemical action takes place | in the bottle. Somehow this chemical | action, which eats away the copper, is changed into an electric current, | which will flow through a wire con- | DR. "GEORGE CRILE, WHOSE necting the zinc anfl copper rods. The | REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS HAVE copper rod we call the positive or ASTOUNDED THE MEDICAL “plus” terminal of the cell, and the| PROFESSIO zine rod the negative or “minus” ter- minal. A modern “storage battery, | such as is contained in a box which| supplies the current forgdriving an salts. This theory will explain many, it not all, of the phenomena of life.” Si is e re| electric delivery wagon or the lights \'m::f;' » e D;‘;::‘c';::‘l’: and self-starter of a motor car, ia! on O HEE oo B et of & nothing more than a combination of | 0" WG (O REC HEE FEOE O S many of these little “wet cells”| gitjonal medicine and surgery. joined together by wires, which ter- | y,o; of the older physicians of course minate in two heavy cables, ope refused to give their adherence to Itiveriandithe oftisr “ndEative Dr. Crile and his_ideas, but a small e | group of younger men has been deep- €6\ JOW, the human body,” says Dr.|ly impressed with the power of this George Crile of Cleveland, | new idea to explain many facts about Ohio, addressing that body of dis-|the human mechanism, which have tinguished scientists and medical ex- | heretofore defied analysis. perts gathered from all parts of the There have, of vourse, been electri- cal theories of the body before Dr. |crite's, such as the “electronic theory” iof Dr. Albert Abrams of San Fran- cisco, which created a great contro- versy, but few of them have been ad- vanced with as compelling logic as Dr. Crile’s. Its broad outlines are about as follows: Each tiny blood cell in the human body, -containing its minute share of ! precious bodily salt, is really the liquid element of a small electric “wet ! pattery.” Without the salt the cell could not produce electricity; hence the great importance of giving the body an adequate supply of salt. The chemical action,” which causes) the current to flow is spurred on by the action of oxygen, which is sucked into the body by the lungs, where it acts on the blood, which is pumped into that region by the heart. This action is known as oxidation. That it causes a definite chemical change in the blood is amply demonstrated by the fact that unoxidized blood is blue in color, While blood which has been | acted upon by the oxygen In the air is red. ,All the blood one ever sees exposed.to the air, even the blood trom a “blue” vein, is red in color. * ok x UPPOSE this oxidation of the blood should cease; what would hap- pen? Dr. Crile says that in that case lish and Americans of the pretentious | in | D. C OVEMBER BY PROSPER BURANELLIL LARGE canoe drifted on murky waters. A white man and three Indians in it cast out lines of wire and drew in fish. The water creatures were not large, being bout the length of a small-mouthed bass and as thick of body. But they were vicious, ugly brutes that threshed against the bottom of the boat and bit [savagely at wood, at each other, at hands that reached to take them. The men seized them at the gills, drew the fluke hooks from their mouths and tossed them into an aquarium tank at one end of the boat, preserving the [ while a wary caution. Once a boy made a careless move as he jerked at the shaft of a hook. The swift, strong jaws snapped the thumb between . knifelike teeth and with a powerful wrench stripped the flesh from the bone. These ‘fearsome creatures were the celebrated -~ piranhas or man-eating fiashes of the Amazon, probably the most ferocious of animal things. They were being gathered to act, even as pretty girls delight in acting, before the {motion picture camera. Arthur S. Fisher of Washington jour- { ARTHUR S. FISHER OF WASH. INGTON, WHO PUT THE PI- RANHAS'IN THE MOVIES. Electricity Called Real Life Force Of the Body by American Surgeon there would be no chemical action in the cells, no electricity would be gen- | | erated, and the machine would cease | working; other words, the body would die. And this is exactly what happens if we are deprived of air or in stop breathing for a few brief min- | utes, In an electric battery. wires are nesessary to connect one cell unit with its neighbors, to collect the ac- cumulated current and send it through cables to the important cen- ters or terminals, which then repre- sent the total pressure of the bat- tery’s entire electrical power. driving force between the two poles or terminals is known as the electri- | cal tension or the “difference in po- BY DONALD EDWARD KEYHOE. LTHOUGH the accounts of the recent speed tests at Mitchel Field have been complete from the point of view of the news, it is doubtful if the public has fully realized the meaning of the amazing records that have been hung up by Lieuts. Brow and Willlams of the naval air station at this city. Skillful design of planes and exhaus- tive tests of motors and propellers have made possible the incredible speeds at- tained, but it is to the personalities of these two pilots that the United States in general and the Navy in particular owe thanks for these gratifying records. Given the same planes, other skilled pilots would probably reach fairly high speeds. But, unless they possessed na- tures capable of being raised to a high pitth by an intense competition—in a word, unless they possessed the na- tures of Brow and Willlams—they would fall far short of the present rec- ords. For these records are only in- directly the results of technical skill and wonderful planes. Directly they are the results of a keen though friendly rivalry between the two men. Veteran fiyers both of them, products of the early war days of naval avia- tion, they have achieved the highest honor of their service in being chosen tb represent the aerial branch of the Navy against all comers, “both foreign and domestic.” It is small wonder, then, that, having vanquished every out- sider in the Pulitzer trophy race at St. Louis a few weeks ago, these two pilots should desire most eagerly to engage in the supreme test to determine whieh of them should wear, though perhaps for but a brief period, the laurels of world champion of the air. The encounters which have followed the authorizing of the tests have been subjects of nation-wide, even world- wide, interest, and still the question of the “greatest of flyers” ¢an hardly be called settled. At the time of writing this article 1 note that the highest speed is 266.6 miles per hour, credited to Lieut. Wil- liams, with Lieut. Brow close on his | heels, with a speed of 265.59. Also, Brow has to his credit a speed of 274.2 in ome of his laps, though this was not an average singe he was helped to thi§ somewhat by a slight wind. What the final figure would have been had they been allowed to continue we can but guess, for as the speed in each race increased so also } The | 11, 1923— neyed to South America to collect mu- seum speciments and motion picture studies for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Large among his ambitions was the project to get a cinematrographic record of the famous Piranha. The man-eating fish long has been a mysterious terror. Legends have been told of how it attacks and devours alive the unfortunate Brazilian Indian who | chances into its watery haunts. X-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, dur- ing his South American explora- tion, witnessed the incredible ferocity | of this fiish and wrote a vivid and spec- tacular account of it in his “Through the Brazillan Wilderness.” But still the piranha remained little known. Its ways of life were more invested with the fantasy and fright of myth than illumi nated with the clear precision of sci- ence. Now the ubiquitously prying motion picture camera was setting its film to record the secrets of the finny cannibal ‘Was the piranha as flerce and blood- mad as accounts would have it? A naked Indian came along, paddling a canoe. He swayed carelessly. The frail craft overturned and the man splashed into the water. A numberless | shoal of piranhas was instantly upon him. Myriads of sharp teeth nipped and | gashed the flesh of his legs as his arms | oared him to the surface. He kicked and struck out in frantic terror, but the I | | | swarming flends closed in upon him, snatching bits of flesh from arms, legs and trunk. The churning water turned into a bloody foam. Indian swam. Now one of his fingers was nipped off, then one of his foes. A fish leaped from the water and bit ravenous- ly into the soft fibers of the throat. {Madly the doomed swimmer tore it !away. His blood reddened the water | for yards around. A'leg muscle eaten through and the limb hung still. A score of fishes swarmed about and tore at it. Other assailants bit away fibers tof an arm-pit and the arm fell limp. {Still others tore open the unprotected abdomen. The convulsively struggling y sank In a cloud of crimson and at jthe muddy bottom of the river the piranhas completed their savage re past. Despairingly the! l | | HERE have been cases where the remains of fully clothed men have en found, naked skeletons within the garments. The piranhas, never biting at the cloth, fiad entered the openings {at arms, legs and neck and had gorged { themselves until nothing but stripped bones were left. “Even the most formidable fish, tential” between the “plus” and the current. Similarly in the body. the nerves, {those tiny fibers which spread | throughout the whole s stem, are the | connecting links between the cells. | They are bound together in small | bundles, just like the wires in com- plex electric cables. The nerves make it possible for the cells to act to- | gether instead of separately: they ada | the energy of one cell to that of its | neighbors and convey the accumu- | 1ated power to the great body centers | or terminals. | Where are these terminals or poles situated? Obviously, answers Dr. | Crile, in those places or regions | Where the electric tension is greatest | | | Washington Man Studies Fish Tribe That Takes Lives of Men and Cattle CROSS-SECTION, SHOWING JAWS WITH SHARK-LIKE TEETH. “the sharks or barra- cudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves, But the piranhas habitually attack things larger than themselves. They rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast: for blood in the water excites them to madness. If a piranha bites an ox— taking off part of an ear of perhaps a teat from the udder of a cow—the blood brings up every member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, and unless the attacked animal can immediately make its escape from the water it is devoured alive The Fisher expedition collected a large number of piranhas and placed Col. Roosevelt, them in a large aquarium which was furnished with water plants to simulat. living conditions. There the man-eat- |ing fishes were kept and studied wit the motion picture camera. The result of the study showed that the ferocity of the piranha has been in I nowise overstated. A trace of blood in | the water drew the fishes like so many flashes toward i They seized upon |large pieces of flesh and tore them to pieces in a frenzy. A mass of sheep's | entrails was put into the water and lquickly drawn out. The fish were | hanging to it and only after many sec onds did the fierce jaws release and they @ropped back into the water. —_—mmmm where the positive and ngative poten- tials are, respectively highest and lowest. Now, the highest positive po- tential will exist where the chemical action known as oxidation is stronx est, and the lowest negative potential where oxidation is weakest ‘Investigations have proved . “that the brain has the highest rate of oxidation, and the liver the lowest. Hence we cannot avoid being led to the hypoth the body's positive pole is the brain and its negative pole the liver. Be- tween these two points of greatest tension there is a continuous flow of electrical energy, conducted ovar the nervous system. The difference of potential between these two points is what causes life to be maintained. said This hypothesis is an adequate in- terpretation of the either the liver or the brain moved or destroved, animal organism perishes, just as when the cable leading to one of the is re- terminals of an electrical batterv is| cut or injured, the battery ce: functioning and the machine, -which it is driving stops. From this point the theory goes on to provide a most interesting series of explanations of the back-and-for- ward pull, which is known to exist between the brain processes and ‘he “splanchnic” processes; that is, the functions of the organs in the region of the liver, spleen, kidneys, etc. Mitchel Field. jincreased the determination of each pilot to be the victor at all odds, a | determination which was overcoming {every consideration of personal safety. | Foolhardiness will be the comment | of many who read these words. If |s0, it is to foolhardiness, then, that the world owes in this as in many iother things in the past its actual !xdvancament. An extremely reckless feat once achieved ceases to be reck- less in the eyes of the people. It has been done once, they say, and it will be done again. Soon it will be taken | up and added to the list of things | which, once miracles, are now a part | of our daily life. | * X ¥ % ITHOUT the great competition between these two Navy flyers in their struggle for supremacy, either man would have rested sat-| isfled with a lower speed, believing that he had done his best. Instead of that we have witnessed a series of thrilling contests, with the victor of one hardly having time to acknowl- edge the applause at his success be- | fore his laurels were snatched from him by his eager rival. Up and up ‘went the speed record until the chief of aeronautics at Washington wisely forbade further flights of the sort in the fear that the desire to excel imight grow into a mania which would | needlessly endanger the lives of both pilots. So for the time the record remains at 266.6, very little short of four and one-half miles a minute. Stop for a moment and ask yourself if you real- ize exactly what this means. In order to gain a mental image of such tre- mendous speed let us suppose the ‘Washington Monument to bé laid on its side and one of these racing planes to be flown over it full tilt. The Mon- | ument is 555 1-5 feet high. It would take only one and four-tenths seconds, or less than a second and a half, for the plane to pass from the base to the i tip. Were you to stand off to one side and watch closely you would not see more than a dizzy blur. Like the old story of the first auto- mobile speeder who went through a little village, it would take two men to tell about it—one to say, “Here he comes!” and the other, “There he goe Except that in this case the second man would hardly give the first one time to open his mouth. Agaln, suppose that you wsre to be standing at the corner of 15th| I street and Pennsylvania avenue, look- ing down toward the Capitol, and one of these planes were to flash past the Treasury straight on down the Ave- nue. You would not even have to crane your neck to see it. By raising’ vour eyed slightly you would see a blur somewhere above 13th street and before you could focus your eyes on this it would have traveled down | to Tth street. To be exact, in thirteen and one-half seconds the plane would | have passed above the dome of the Capitol, while behind it would begin to reverberate the peculiar cracklings and thunderings which follow the swift passage of these high-speed planes through the air. “What are the feelings of a pilot of one of these fast planes?” I have heard many people ask. Fortunately I am able to answer that, having in- terviewed one of the other Navy pilots | of the racing team which entered the Pulitzer race. In straightaway flying the sensa- tion is not much different from that of ordinary flying at one-third the speed, except that there is increased vibration and a painful suction on the eardrums from the vacuum created behind the plane. To lessen this pain the ears are stuffed tight with cot- ton, which is a common practice, even with slower flying “ships.” * ok ok X HE racing plane “takes off” at a higher speed than usual and lands at one still higher, from seventy to ninety-five miles 2n hour, butit Is in the turns that the racing pilot experiences his greatest thrill and where the greatest danger lies. If the “ship” is banked too sharply at a very high speed the pilot will lose conscious- ness, because of the centrifugal force which withdraws the blood from the brain. One pilot described this to me as it happened to him the first. time he turned his racer too sharply. “The first thing 1 knew,” he said, “my head and shoulders were being forcéd down into the cockpit and I felt as though my body had suddenly gained four or five hundred pounds in weight. 1 could not even move my arms, for they hung like lead weights and with no more feeling. Then a black curtain seemed to be drawn down over my eyes and I felt my enses going. ““Luckily 1 was at a high enough altitude so that this could happen safely, for 1 was probably uncon- 3 that | fact that when | the human or! When a man’s brain is violently dis- turbed or stimulated, for instance when he feels excessively strong emo- tions or is tortured by pain of any kind, his digestion suffers. Interfer ence with one pole of the batters | puts the opposite pole out of order { Chronic fear or anger for this reason | causes a general failure of nealth whereas the faith and mind react favorably on the dition of the lower organs | boay. Sir Ernest Rutherford has just told the British Association that all mat- ter is probably electrical in struc- ture, fhe atoms of which it is com- posed being mothing more than col {lections or systems of electrical charges. Now comes Dr. Crile with {the unmistakable suggestion that | electricity may be the ultimate i force, the force that creates and con trols everything that lives. of Only Dictated It. From the Atlanta Chronicle. s|"An aged negro appeared as & wit- | ness before a congressional commit- tee. In the course of his exami tion these questions were put to th | man: “What is your name?" | “Calhoun Clay, sah “Can you sign your name? “I ask if you can write your name “Well, no sah. Ah nebber writes mu name. Ah dictates it, sah.” Washington Flyers Make History Sidelights on the Pilots Who Have Set the World Agape With Their Thrilling Achievement at scious several seconds. Then I re- | member hearing the roar of the motor |again and in another second the black | curtain began to lift slowly, though | it was all of a minute before I could see anything. Even then I was ETOERY for the next ten minutes. | “All the time I was blind T was fiy ing by ‘feel’ but I was fortunate | enough to get straightened out of that tight turn and fly level until 1 could see. It certainly was a dis- | agreeable experience and it taught me never to make such a sharp turn especially anywhere close to the ground.” 1 asked hm about landing at such high speeds. | “That doesn’t bother you so much.” he replied. “After you have been fly- ing at that rate for a little while you become accustomed to it and you make what would seem an ordinary landing in a slower ‘ship.’ All the difference s that you roll a long way on the ground before stopping. Of course it takes & big field.” “How high a speed do you think a man can stand without breaking down nnder the strain?” 1 inquired next. “I don’t know.” he answered, “but we're not anywhere near it yet. In straightaway flying a man can stand a much higher speed than 300, I am sure, but he will ‘pass out’ at lower speeds if he makes tight turns.” Before I left T asked him what he considered the greatest danger in the tests at Mitchell Field. “Diving,” he replied tersely. “Both of those boys are determined to beat each other and they keep on going up higher and higher, so they can get momentum from a dive. The other day ‘Al' (Willlams is ‘Al' ts almost every ome at the naval air station) went up 9,000 feet and dived almost to the ground so he could mave the highest possible epeed when he went over the wire. He didn't clear the ground twenty feet when he levelled off. Every one thought he was guing stralght in and one of these days some one is going Into the ground unless they stop ‘\ese tests or stop the diving from higl. sMitudes.” And now it is stopped. But prob- ably when conditions are better and pilots have regained a little of the caution which is supposed to exist to some extent in all of us, the order will be rescinded or modified and then it is not unlikely that the coveted 300 miles an hour will be reached—and passed! o