Evening Star Newspaper, December 7, 1930, Page 86

2 to bite them. Yeats-Brown did not know whether to laugh or tremble. He grasped his revolver, held it bekind his back and stood waiting. An old gendarme spurred up to him and ‘held out his hands, beaming with friendli- ness. The Englishman could do no less than extend his, and they shock hands like friends long parted. An Arab struck the prisoner a stunning blow with the fiat of his scimitar. The Turks drove him away. Meanwhile Tom White, who had been left alone, was surrounded by a crowd of screaming Arabs. He was bleeding from a blow on the head. gendarmes rescued him. They started with their dis- " armed prisoners for the police post a mile away, but did not get far from the plane lying on the sand, The Arabs from the surroumding country thronged around in an increasing procession that became constantly Jouder and more violent. They dashed in, trying to attack the prisoners. The gendarmes had more and more difficulty in keeping them off. The mob grew so’large and angry that the gendarmes held a long confab- ulation with several of the sheiks. The palaver ended with the Turks shrugging their shoulders in assent. They turned their prisoners over to the murderous-looking throng. “The, tribesmen seized on their prey with howjg iof glee. The Englishmen cursed their foll giving up their pistols, but put up the best fight they could with their fists. It was ghastly to be slaughtered unarmed like that by the swarm of bloodthirsty ruffians, but at least they could die like Britons, unafraid. The tribesmen tore at them with a fiendish delight. They wore down their victims’ resistance. Sev- eral dragged the flying coat over the pilot’s head. Others rifted Yeats-Brown’s pockets. The Arabs were bent only on robbing their prisoners! ‘They stripped them of everything they had, left them with nothing more than their trousers and shirts and returned them to the gendarmes. The journey to the police post was begun again, and the Arabs were left be- hind fighting over their ioct. AHON-!ARA-HISSAR means, in Turkish, “Black Opium Rock.” It is named for the fields of poppy that lie in the country around. Much of the dreamy drug is made in those parts, an isolated section of Asia Minor. A prison camp was there, and in this prison camp eats-Brown found himself confined. The day when the plane landed near Nimrod's Tomb was many months since, and many hardships intervened. At Black Opium Rock Yeats- Brown was regarded as a dangerous prisoner, one likely to attempt to escape. What excited the Turks’ suspicions the most was his daily calisthenics, his routine of exercises to keep himself fit. To the Orientals that was passing strange, and could be accounted for only by the fact that the prisomer was gifted with prodigious and overflowing physical energies; he was the kind of fellow to escape. . Yeats-Brown, indeed, was thinking of places of escape, but came to the conclusion that first e must dissipate the unfortunate opinion his jailors had of him. He must appear to have turned faint of spirit and limp of body, & man 50 far gone in nerveless enfecblement that he mldtnnowisetx’ytoget.aw;y,bntdedred only the limp idleness of prison life. Thnsitwuthnthemvestedasumolmy —he had got money from home—in a dark, viseous drug wrapped in a cabbage leaf, and, with theatrical pretenses of secrecy, proceeded to boil it in a saucepan. He took care to have thkbre'cooldnconnd&v'henthe'lmh stafl of the prison came to visit him. The acrid fumes of the brew could not fail to eatch theis notice, and he made lame explanations to ae- count for it. The Turkish officers smiled at each other. They were well pleased- with what they had discovered. A prisoner who had taken to smoking opium was likely to grow contented with his prison surroundings. A certain youmg Turkish officer of indolent Wl dreamy eyes was particularly inter~ - the .cookery .at which the eaptive He paid oceasional visits to the room the fumes of opium hung reeking. After persuasion ;on the officer’s part Yeats- showed him various other properties he had procured—two bamboo pipes, a a terra cotta bowl and the prepared He bound his :.n to many vows of which, he ca’_ulated, would not be “Let us smoke together some ¢ ,” the o vening, The proposa’ offered many possibilities, And, anyway, ta~ prisoner could not well refuse, One e .ning he was passed secretly out of the ison to an appointed house, In a thickly reclining g ik i “He said that for that evening I should smoke only the opium.of his own brewing.” “‘It is a joy to have found a fellow spirit,” I sighed. ‘When one has opium one wants noth- ing more.’ .“ “How many pipes do you smoke a day?’ he asked. u“;‘r‘ifiy.‘ I said boldly, ‘when I am in prace “‘That is nothing’ said the Cypriote. smoke a hundred. Come, let us begin. Time is empty, except for opium.’ m;But who will prepare our pipes? I asked “‘We will do it ourselves,’ he answered. “‘I can’t/ I had to admit. ‘T am used to an attendant, who hands me m i already cooked.’ P “‘There is no one here,’ he said, ‘except an ugly old woman. But I will show you myself, Half the pleasure is lost if another hand pre- pares the precious fluid. See, you take a drop of oplum’—— : “I watched him take a deep draught of the drug and lie back among the cushions with heavy-lidded eyes. For a full half a minute he remained silent and dreaming, then expelled the thick, white smoke with a sigh of bliss. L was my turn now, and not without some " dismay (although curiosity was probably a stronger emotion) I accepted a pipe of his preparing. Y inhaled in and in—I choked a THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., DECEMBER 7, 1930, From an etching by W. S. Bagdatopoulos. Courtesy of Kennedy & Co. The Bazaar—in such surroundings “Y.-B.” learned Indian mysticism. that was not simulated, for it had made me feel giddy. “‘You prepare a most perfect pipe” I through the acrid fumes. “But I had immediately that I had not an opium temperament. In all, I smoked ten pipes that first evening without feeling any ill effects beyond a heavy lassitude which lasted all through the following day. I was disap- pointed and disgusted by the experience. The beautiful dreams are a myth. So also is the deadly fascination.of the drug. I loathed it more each time I tasted it.” Yeats-Brown and the opium-smoking officer dny,whflemeyreeunedwflhmm the officer told him in friendly fashion that if Hospital, near Constantinople. The comrade- ship that exists between drug addicts had served him with an excellent turn. arranging for an escape from the or a place of refuge in the city until he could get away by sea. The soldiers who watched him on his shopping trips were amiable and easily deluded. Glasses of beer, which the prisoner salted with sleeping powder, left them drowsy and dozing on benches or at tables while he carried out his missions. He could She Returns. By Theda Kerfyon. She has returned : the old house seems to bloom To greet her, standing in the doorway there; She does not see the shabby, faded room, She does not smell the musty, shut-in air. Her hand is like a lover’s on the latch; Her feet go lightly, pacing old-time tunes; She takes a candle down, and strikes a match— Stretches wide arms : “Dear house! Dear house!” she croons. Delicate sounds and drowsy shadows stir To mystic life; clothed in forgotten grace Her point-lace grandmother stands watching her— The scent of lavender flows through the place. A clipper model on the mantel creaks Beneath her touch, as to a refreshing breeze; A painted gentleman bows low, and speaks, Living again sn her rich memories . . . Outside, a neighbor stops, frowns, passes by, Seeing her e the candle’s dreary come Of bight: “I-never would return, if I Were she! No woman ought to live alone!” - out of the prison building, through a window, perilously along a ledge and to a roof, while the guards immediately below in the moonlit street were held in conversation by another prisoner, & Russian officer who had volunteered to aid the two in their flight. After a while of lodging in the house of a Christian Yeats- Brown'’s companion left to escape by land into Greece. He was recaptured. Yeats-Brown, at the command of Miss Whitaker, arrayed himself as a woman so as to pass as a German governess. He made a gawky specimen of femininity, but that was not ene tirely out of the character of a German gov~ erness. He was rather excessively painted, but then, even German governesses sometimes want to look younger than they are. What he could his hands, and 80 he was condemned to pesr- petual gloves. As for the voice, the German governess had consumption, whence it came that she spoke in such low, husy tones. He lived in comfortable lodgings as a staid . and somewhat eccemtric lady. The chief dif- ficulties of his Mfe in petticoats lay in the atti- tude of the men about the streets of Constane tinople toward the painted and none too delie with an undaunted persistence, and generally made life wretched for the disguised British airman. Likewise, it was rather embarrassing for the stately Miss Whitaker to be scen in pube gaudy hoyden. It was a relief both when Yeats-Brown was able men’s clothes again, which he purpose of going down to the docks negotiate for & ship to take him away. It ppened that at this time he was recognized the Turkish seeret police and taken to prison But he made & second prison break, disguised himself as an Austrian mechanic this time and then did secret service work in Constantinople until the war ended. After a year or so in Lone don, during which I found him heiping edit & magazine to promote the League of Nations idea, he sailed for India to become a Bengal Lancer once more. gszsgssg ;55; fiégs i Gloomy Prophecy Upset, Pnovms of gloom are wont to give the general public a few uncomfortable mo= ments and then when other afairs divert the mind the prophecy is fergotten and seldoms comes to light again. This year, however, was to be the year whem one of the doleful predictions was to be borne out, but decidedly were the predictions wrong. Dr. O. C. Stine of the Bureau of Economies of the Department of Agriculture has pointed out that 30 years ago Sir William Crockes, & leading British scientist, warned that by 1931 there was to be a serious shortage of whea$ unless some means were found to greatly ine crease the yield per acre. Sir William’s pree diction was based on the course of the wheat market from the Civil War on. For a time after the war the wheat crop increased rapidly until finally the price dropped. When the erops were found to be greater tham the market could consume, the acreage fell off and naturally the production. This brought about a lessening of exports and a turn upward in the prices. ¥ With this situation in mind Sir Willlam wrote 30 years ago: “Practically there remains no .uncultivated prairie land in the United States suitable for wheat growing. The virgin land has been rap- idly absorbed until at present there is no land left for wheat without reducing the area for maize, hay and other necessary crops. ‘It i8 almost certain that within a generation the ever-increasing population of the United States will consume all the wheat grown within its borders, and will be driven to import, and like ourselves, ‘will scramble for a lion’s share of . the wheat crop of the world.” Sir William’s Nmit on wheat acreage has been found to fall far below what is actually available. - Already the world’s wheat area has been increased by more than the 100 milliom acres over what Sir William set as the limit, It is probable that unbroken land in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Russia and China could turn over many more hune dreds of millions of acres to wheat production. Statistics gathered by Dr. Stine show that the yield per acre of wheat has increased only about 1.4 bushels to an average of 14.1 bushels, since Sir William made his forecast. Just as the invention of the reaper and binder after the Civil War gave impetus to the expansion of the wheat growing, so has the tractor, combine and other equipment brought about expansion since the World War. The acreage now used in wheat production is below the high mark of 76,000,000 acres under cultivation in 1919, but since 1924 has been on the increase. Since Sir William’s prediction, wheat and rye production in this country has increased 40 per cent, while the population has inereased bu$ 20 per cent. In addition to this and contribute ing to a surplus rather than a shortage, per capita has dropped off in this country by more than a bushel. So, with these figures in mind, it scems that the specter of wheat famine may be laid for a while at least. 64 Excelsior Plants Running EXCKISIQE, which is taken more or less as & matier of course and something which rouses the ire of many a housewife when her ' husband unpacks packages in the living reom; is produced in @4 factories in the United States and represents a sizeable industry. The total’ output last year was valued at nearly $5,000,000. There was a slight increase over the 1927 fig ures, indicating, perhaps, that shipments of g:?leuuchmunwdmt_hmd