Evening Star Newspaper, December 14, 1930, Page 107

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER M, 1930. right of the cage, would watch every move of the man with amber eyes. Ramsay, who could purr like a kitten and strike like a demon. Chita, the black panther, would watch, too, her tail mcving gently, her golden eyes slanted and deadly. Why those two devils never sprang on Herr Schwartz was a mystery to me. Perhaps they feared his fearlessness. None so quick as & jungle animal, I have found, to recognize the soul that is unafraid. And I think that same idea was always uppermost in the mind of Herr Schwartz, for one day I suggested that he carry into the cage an iron prod or some- thing for protection in warding off attack. “Und let dose boys t'ink I'm afraid of dem? No, Bob, I couldn’t do dot. You see, I go in wid noding in mine hand but dot leedle whip. Und Chita, she hate me, she vant to shump on me, but she say to Ramsay, ‘Look, he ain't ®ot no gun, und no prod, und dot whip can't hurt much—vell, vot hass he got? Someding :u!.qt be los’. I don't yump on dot man, no, All went well with the act until one night Wwhen we were showing in the wilds of the Northwest. It had been a hot, dry day, the atmosphere filled with thick, yellow dust, and men and beasts were completely worn out. Herr Schwartz’ animal act, last on the bill, was drawing to & close. An attendant stood at the ring bank with Cuffy®the bear, on a chain, He Was a new man in the position and assumed that the little bear worked with the other ani- mals. As Herr Schwartz and the cats were tak- ing their bows at the conclusion of the act, the new attendant, all ignorant of the commotion he was about to cause, opened the barred door of the arena and checked Cuffy into the cage. A gasp went up from the other attendants, It took the little bear about 10 seconds to realize that he was in the same cage with his arch enemies. Then he went crazy—ter- ribly, maddeningly crazy. He shrieked like 2 human being, ran over to the side of the cage, tried to climb the bars, beat himself against them, frothed at the mouth with terror. The cats stood stock still; their talls twitching, staring malignantly. Not one of us moved, fearing to precipitate the impending catastrophe.. Herr Schwartz, white to the lips, moved tward Cuffy, talking gently, holding out a lump of sugar in his shaking hand. The little bear ran away from him—dodged. HERR SCHWARTZ turned his back, for one instant on that dangerous, malignant trio—and in that instant the yellow-eyed Chita sprang. There was a thud as the lithe mid- night body of the panther lit squarely on Herr Schwartz’' back and toppled him forward headlong. ) Then we, watching in terror, heard a mighty Yoar, saw a tawny body with great mane fly- ing, leap through the air to straddle the body of the prostrate man and send the snarling m ) The waiter saw the lion and immediately there was a shower of soup, hambones, chitlins and whatnot, while the brief tableau endured. panther back against the bars of the cage. It was Wallace! 'Then Ramsey, the Bengal tiger, leaped, an(] gallant old Wallace reared up to meet him. He caught the tiger full in the throat, held him poised in midair for an instant, then hurled him backward. Ramsey, snarling furiously, crouched as if to spring. But he did not spring—nor did Chita. For Wallace, the sullen old lion, stood guard over the man who loved him, who had cared for him in sickness and in health. His mane was distended into a great flare of defiance. They knew him for what he was—the king. And so they snarled and crouched until prodded back into the traveling cages. Then we tried to prod Wallace away from the still body of the little trainer he had tried to save. But he would not move. He only roared, struck out savagely, but held his ground. We were in a quandary, puzzling on the next move, when we heard Herr Schwartz’ feeble voice coming from under the lion. “Now, Vallace, get off me, do you hear, du dumbkopf? - You great big heffly poy you step r-ridt on my back! How I breathe, do you tink?” The great lion ceased his roaring. The light went out of the sullen, heavy-lidded eyes, He moved aside. Herr Schwartz reached caught the tawny mane in his hand and himself into a sitting posture. “Now you see, poys,” he said to the attendm ants surrounding the arena, “vat I tells you is§ so—Vallace iss always oop to the scratch!™ Some years ago Bill Rice had in his circus vicious lion. One day as the den was cleaned for the parade the animal men fi to lock the steel door of the cage. The cage went out on parade. The lion to pace its prison. A jolt and it struck the A second-later, while telephone poles were ered with human beings, while horses and plunged, while women reached for buggies and hurriedly trundled them out of way, while men seized their wives in their arm§ and hustled them to safety, the lion jumped pavement and stared dizzily about him for instant, while he tried to figure out what h Then came panic. On all sides, incl that of the lion. The cage had gone on. horses pulling the den immediately in the had engaged in a runaway. Everywhere were shouting. The lion scrambled made a false start or two, whirled, then straight for a small restaurant across the The restaurant had been full when started. But its windows had opened au cally through the simple method of the going through the glass, sash and all. the Hon came through the door, a Negro was just arriving at one of the front tables a tray of food. He saw the lion. There was shower of soup, ham bones, chitlins and 'ha not, while the screaming waiter made for kitchen. The lion, stung by the soup and the dishe§ falling on his head, ran for a place of hi And his path led toward the kitchen, too. chef went out the window. Also the wal The dishwasher hadn't been warned in time escape. He turned and saw the lion. a small door leading to the drain pipes the sink, he dived in. Just then, some person appeared in the front of the resta with a shotgun and fired. The charge wild, but the frightened beast leaped again sought retreat. | Happiness! A hole! Something to crawl intdf The gpening beneath the sink! { There the animal men of the circus them—a fear-whitened, speechless Negro ag an amazement-stricken lion, wedged in g gether, side by side, and neither making 3 first move to come out. The lion didn’t to. He was safe in a hole. The Negro washer couldn’t. Even after the lion had been lassoed, forth and dragged like some big shaggy into a shifting-den, the dishwasher could nothing but gasp and sit there beneath sink. Between the two I always thought lion was the more frightened. vk (Copyright, 1930.) AN F z;x;f/ztiflg One Hundred Years With the Foreign Legion for a Cent a Day: Continued from Thirteenth Page attack, while the 1st Regiment followed in re- serve, With fixed bayonets the French troops rushed forward and in a whirlwind charge car- ried the first line of German trenches. The Legionnaires stormed with bayonet and grenade the Wagram earthworks, the Eckmuhl trenches, and captured the machine guns and batteries of fleld cannon in the C-2 Wood. Charles Sweeny, who had just been made a second lieutenant, was shot through the chest; Edgar Bouligny, now a sergeant, was wounded for the third time (Bouligny was the first American wounded during the World War, in a midnight patrol fight, on November 15, 1914); Jack Casey, Tony Paullet, Emil Dufour of Butler, Pa.; Wilfred Michaud, Fred Landreaux and Nick Karayinis were all more or less gravely struck by bullets, shell bits and shrap- nel balls.. On the afternoon of September 28, the 1st Regiment made a blind sacrifice assault against the front of the Bois Sabot fortress, so that other troops might attack on the west flank and carry the important Navarin Farm heights. ‘The regiment was virtually wiped out in the at- tack. Among the many killed was Henry Farnsworth; Dr. David E. Wheeler was lamed by a bullet which tore away the calf of his leg; Brooke Bonnell's right leg was shot away near the hip; Billy Thorin of Canton, 8. D., a recent arrival at the front, was shot in the head and in the shoulder; Charles Trinkard was hit twice by machine gun bullets, and Frank Whitmore, Christopher Charles and Henry Walker, a Boston volunteer, were all badly wounded. All the officers of the regi- “ment were either killed or wounded. Y the time the Champagne offensive came to an end, on October 17, the Legion had been cut up so badly that what was left of the first and second regiments were grouped together in three small battalions, and the new regiment was named the “Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion.” The next great exploit of the Legionnaires was the storming of Belloy- en-Santerre, in the Somme, on July 4, 1916. This victory cost the lives of nine Americans: Alan Seeger, whose beautiful poetry has made his name a household word in France, England and America; Nelson Larsen, Charles Boismaure, Maurice Leuethman of Brooklyn, N. Y.: Frank Clair of Columbus, Ohio; Siegfried Narvitz, Joe Jackson of St. Louis, Mo.; John Charton and Wilfred Michaud. .At Auberive, in Champagne, during the French offensive of April, 1917, the Legion won its fifth citation in the Order of the Army, which read: “A marvelous regiment which is animated by hatred for the enemy and the very highest spirit of sacrifice. “April 17, 1917, under the orders of Lieut. ©Col. Duriez, launched itself to the attack of an enemy forewarned and strongly.entrenched and eaptured his first Mnes. Halted by machine suns and in spitc of the disappearance of its chief, mortally wounded, conunued the opera- tions under the order of Chief of Battalion Deville, by an incessant combat day and night, until the point assigned was attained, fighting body to body throughout five days, in spite of heavy losses and considerable difficulty in re- victualling; captured from the enemy more than two square kilometers of terrain. Forced, by the vigor of this progression, the Germans to abandon a strongly organized village, where had been broken all our attacks in more than two years.” FRANK E. WHITMORE of Richmond, Va. was killed the first day; the first American citizen to fall in the ranks of the Legion after the entry into the World War of the United States. He was wounded in the head early in the battle, but had the injury bandaged, and continued the assault with his comrades. Later in the day, he rescued two wounded Legion- naires from between the lines, only to fall mor- tally struck himself. He was buried in the same grave with Col. Duriez of the Legion. James Paul, & young volunteer from St. Louis, was slain the next day by a German whose life he had just spared, and who shot the Ameri- can the moment his back was turned. The Legion fought at Verdun, in August, 1917, and Guy Agostini was killed, bringing in a wounded comrade from between the lines. Wil- liam Paringfield of Butte, Mont., was killed in a trench raid in Lorraine, on November 10, 1917, and Ivan Finney Nock of Baltimore, Md., was killed during a raid near Flirey, January 8, 1918, the last American to die in the Legion’s uniform during the World War. During the terrible fighting in 1918 the Legion distinguished itself on every occasion. It saved Amiens, and thereby Paris, by breaking the German advance at Hangard Wood on April 26 and the following days; held up the enemy on the hills above Soissons late in May; smashed a German assault along Ambleny Brook on June 12. When Gen. Mangin, that wonderful geiner- of victories, announced to his men, “The mo- ment has arrived to shake off for all time the mud of the trenches,” and threw his cohorts forward on July 18 in the assault that ushered in the final era of allled victoiies, the Legion- naires were in the first wave of attack. Flanked on one side by the 1st United States Division, on the other by the 2d, they sprang from the shelter of the Villers-Cotterets Forest, bowled over the enemy and started him back toward the Rhine. Finally, on September 18, after a long stretch of fighting of unequaled ferocity and desperation, the Legion broke the Hinden- burg line on Laffaux Plateau, won its tenth citation in army orders and was sent to recuper- ate its strength in Lorraine, where the armistice found it preparing to attack. Over 45,000 officers and men served with the Foreign Legion in France during the World War, coming, the official records show, from exactly 100 countries. The Legion won for its all the decorations possible—the Cross of , the Military Medal and War Cross with 10 palms. A distinctive emblem of merit, a double fourragere, in the colors of the Legion of Honor and of the War Cross, was instituted for it. The Legion was one of the first corps to be allowed to cross the old German lines after the armistice, when it entered into restored Lorraine on November 17, 1918. It marched to the Rhine, along which it kept watch until the Summer of 1919, Since the World War the Foreign Legion has been stronger than ever before. 8o many volun- teers have flocked to it that there are now four regiments instead of two, DURING the Riff war in Morocco in 1925, the Legion bore the brunt of the first assaults of Abd-el-Krim's tribesmen, and if Morocco is still French territory today, it is because the Legionnaires allowed themselves to be cut to pieces rather than fall back. The Foreign Legion has been pictured often as a corps composed of cutthroats, thieves, fugitives from justice and outcasts from society. With just as much truth, # might be described as an organization consisting of princes of royal blood, arisiocrats, millionaires, poets and writers, lawyers, priests, doctors, scholars and idealists. 1t has had, and still has, all sorts and conditions of men in i, Many of its members probably have enlisted because they were unable to make a living else- where; others are lured into its ranks by the mirage of adventure in strange climes; some are veritable descendants of the great mer- cenary soldiers of other ages, whose natures crave an active excitement that nowadays can best be found in the Legion; a few are rebels against the constraints of modern civilization. Contrary to popular belef, the Legion au- thorities will surrender any man ‘who is wanted for crime, whenever he is called for, and while it is true that when a man joins the Legion, no questions are asked regarding the applicant’s past, and he is not even required to tell his real name, detectives from many lands often visit the Legion, and if they find their man, he is surrendered without question upon presentation of proper requisition papers. EV!RY political upheaval or economic erisis swells the ranks of the Foreign Legion. You find there today Russian “whites” serving alongside German and Hungarian “reds,” Italian anti-Fascists and Spanish terrorists; there are. adventure-seeking Swiss, who from father to son have served France for genera- tions; Germans and Central Europeans who lack bread in their native lamds; Prenchmen who are tired of their wives or in trouble over some woman, who enlist as Belgians under as- sumed names; men from many lands who are tired of a humdrum life, or have lost all faith in their own future, and enter the Legion as in older days world-weary men retired to a monastery. A A There have been more Americans in the Legion since the World War than before. At one time, I was told of some 256 who were serving five-year periods of enlistmsmt. While serving in the French aviation against Abda Krim, I often saw the Legion in Morocco, aiml came in contact with American Legionnaires, Current stories about ill-treatment of in the Legion Ry officers and non-coms are The Legion is officered by picked men, best graduates of the French military or foreigners, such as Prince Aage of the family of Denmark, who have entered Legion for adventure and military expe they look after the needs and welfare of men carefully, and every company and talion commander looks upon himself as head of a big family. The non-coms come in closer contact wi the men than do the officers, but not one dare actually mistreat his men. It is too for a rifle to go off “accidentally” while cleaned, or for an unpopular non-com to shot by one of his own men during a with the enemy. Many decades ago, the French Gen. after seeing the Legionnaires in battle, to them: “Soldiers of the Legion, the folds your flag are not broad enough to hold your claims to glory.” ' Bolivar Letter. Continued from Fifteenth Page L | antiquity—Homer’s Iliad and Vergil's What we now know as the Republic of Bol Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Vi uela were conquered and freed by him European yoke and all hail Bolivar as liberator. These countries are adorned many precious spots that tell of his victories. Angostura, Bogaca, Carabobo, bona, Pinchincha with Junin and Ayacuche reverberate with victory and triumph, must conquer or die! And we will conquer, Heaven does not want us in' chains,” so claimed Bolivar, and his dearest friend chiefest aide, Arturo Jose de Sucre, said, by the liberator, we can expect nothing victory.,” But with characteristic appreciati ness and sincerity, Bolivar replied, “To that I am to eonquer, it is enough to know are around me.” The year 1824 saw safe secure the independence of all America. Yet this greatest of conquerors was by the Winter wind of man's ingrati was rejected by those for whom he had freedom, he was abandoned by those he His last days were melancholy, his death the deserted Colombian shore was his delirium he called to his attendant: let us go away. They are casting us Where shall we go?” So died the great I —*“the noblest Roman of thém all.” And the elements so mixed in him Natute might stand up and say to ali wwid, “This was 8 man.”