Evening Star Newspaper, May 11, 1933, Page 8

THE EVENING STAR _With Sunday Morning Edition. WASHINGTON, D. C. THURSDAY.......May 11, 1933 THEODORE W. NOYES....Editor The Evening Star Newspaper Company Business Office: . ‘and Pennsylvania Ave. 20 ke Michiean Bundioe 4 eot $t.. London, ieago Sorentan gt e Rate by Carrier Within o Brenine Star, e Evening and 8 ( 4 Bui ™ ndays). . .80¢ and Bundsy Btar undays) [ the City. 4bc per month w) per month ne W. ening when 5c_pe TR einn mede at the end of each month. Qrders may be sent In by mail or telephone NAtional Rate by Mail—Payable in Advance. Maryland and Virgina. 1yr.,$10.00: 1 mo., 88c ily only . yr., $6.00: 1 mo., 80 Sunday only yr. $4.00; {mol All Other States and Canada. \ly and Sunday...1yr. $12.00; 1 mo., $1. Dally amly Sonoeridye, 3800 1mol Sunday only I1yrl $5.00: 1mol Member of the Associated Press. P 1s exclusively entitled to'ne l\‘x'l.ao?o.l'"xdlnurh??cnlon"n(l il news als- g or pot otherwi - s (hfs baper and also the local news blished herein. All rights of publication of e yatches hereln are a0 Teserved. Preventing Threatened Injustice. The President’s decision, reached in conference with the director of the budget and the national commander of the American Legion, to review the con- templated program for redueing ex- penditures for World War veterans does not mean any backing down in the face of the widespread protests that| have arisen since the drastic nature of this program became known. As the ‘White House statement explains, “These conclusions (to review the program) are| in line with the President's original statement that the regulations and schedules would be drafted so as to| effect the most humane possible treat- ment of veterans truly disabled in war service.” It is only natural that there should be found, on re-examination, that a| plan drawn up for the most devastating slashes in the compensations and grants to veterans ever contemplated by any administration contains inequities and| inequalities, and that these should be removed by the process of careful re- view. The same process should appropriately be applied to some of the other econo- my programs affecting employed Gov- ernment personnel. These progrems, Jaunched with bewildering speed and drawn up in relative haste, are designed to bring about horizontal re- ductions in Government costs. In reaching that desideratum everybody, generally speaking, joins whole-heart- edly. Balancing the budget and keep- ing it balanced is an effective safeguard against uncontrolled inflation and is necessary if the burdensome load of taxation is to be lightened in these times of distress. But attempts to bring about an arbitrary and horizontal re- duction in Government costs are reach- ing the point where they have largely demoralized, with fear and doubt, thou- sands upon thousands of faithful and deserving employes of the Government, In some cases the attempts indicate the work of a wrecking crew rather than careful and considered efforts to cut unnecessary expenses in order that necessary expenses can be met. The proposed arbitrary retirement of | all employes of thirty years’ service, ex- cept those specifically retained by the President, has beep modified, and fortu- nately so. That proposal represented one of the most inhumane and illogical of the expense-cutting expedients. But on top of it is another proposal, that, under the iron rules of the House may be welded into the independent offices bill, for applying the impractical, un- workable and unfair apportionment of offices law in dismissing personnel. If that proposal were enacted, the chief effects of such a vicious acheme would be borne in full by scores of underpaid workers in the lower grades who won their right to earn a diving in the civil service on the basis of merit alone. It would turn them out on the street, not only to reduce Government costs, ‘but to provide future political spoils for victors to dispense. It would under- mine the very foundation of the civil service merit system. Tt is in keeping with the President’s character that he is unwilling to com- mit himself blindly to any arbitrary course of action and will make the con+ cessions to economy demanded by fair- ness and justness and humane econ- siderations. Done for the veterans, it should likewise be done for the active breadwinners in the Federal service whose lives and aspirations and ability to exist have been threatened by one ruthless plan after another. r——— The President shows courteous wil- lingness to consider communications from all comers, although by this time it may be doubted whether anybody can tell him anything he has not heard before. — —ee— Gaston B. Means has been so lucky and so secretive in some of his trans- actions that there might be a chance of picking him up for gold hoarding. ————————— The Plus and Minus of the Past. It is an obvious fact that the human race is engaged in a perpetual endeavor to preserve and at the same time to destroy the past, and it is natural that this should be so. Even when viewed with extravagant charity, the history of ages spent and gone is seen to be a mixture of good and evil, plus and minus. Skilled discrimination perceives that an idea, a custom, an institution 1s not neceasarily perfect simply because it comes down from remote antiquity. The men and women of generations long centuries dead were not any greater paragons of intelligence and virtue than their latter-day descendants happen to be. They, too, made mis- takes, suffered disappointment, met de- feat. Living in a world far less de- veloped than our own, isolated from " moquaintance with each other to a de- gree which it is difficult for us to appre- clate, they perforce blundered into errors of devastating magnitude. Seci- entists marvel at the spectacle of their vicarious survival. They speak of it as little less than miraculous that the human species managed to continue to exist through. centuries black with plague and poverty, anarchy and war. But humanity had one capacity which, wmmwm.mu uwnm:uordzrdoflmmm care” to insure its continuance on & not over- friendly planet. That was the power of memory, the power to learn by ex- perience. And the chronicle of the progress of the race through the dark ages, known and unknown, is nothing less than s caiendar of the incidents thus remembered. Of course, both gains and losses are represented in the reccrd. The former predominate. Were that not the case, we should not be here—homo sapiens, the creature with “the great toe not opposable” would have perished. The whole philosophy of human tradition has no other sig- nificance than that of the detection of the suryival values which it registers. To preserve and to maintain the plus quantities in the account is the ambi- tion of statesmen, educators and church- men. Their aim is to democratize the knowledge of the worth of the victories of the past, to make available to all the pecple a comprehension of the lessons which experience has taught. It is their ardent hope that, equipped with such protective instruction, we may avoid difficulties, accomplish progress otherwise impossible. The past they wish to destroy is that of ignorance and superstition, the past of fallure and SOrTOW. ‘There have been numbers of literary attempts to discuss the plus and minus of the cultural evolution of the race, but none yet published has been entirely successful. The desired book remains to be written. When it appears, as one day it surely must, it will be found to be simple, direct, plain, a catalogue of related causes and effects, a Bible of the pragmatic and ideal truth which man has lived and not forgotten. —————— When Culture Shrieks. When Gen. Washington's great Po- lish lieutenant, Gen. Kosciusko, fell in the War of the Revolution, it was said, in a famous tsibute to his memory, that “freedom shrieked.” Culture must have shrieked last night, when super-heated Nazi students, in more than a score of German university towns, made ceremonial bonfires of “un-German” books. “The process of purging German life of Jewish intel- lectualism is now complete,” exclaimed Dr. Goebbels, Chancellor Hitler's min- ister of enlightenment and propagands, as he stood triumphant at the literary ruins before the University of Berlin. It is difficult for the outside world to decide whether some of the things now going on in Hitlerized Germany should be taken seriously or dismissed THE_ EVENING STAR, WASHINGTO contract, but he declares: sustain to the uttermost limit my right to conclude my work without any mod- ifiication whatsoever imposed by the power of wealth, and I shell fight for the completion, reproduction and ex- hibition of my work; afterward they can do with it what they will” He declares that the suspension of the work is a violation of two fundamental, elementary rights, “the right of an artist to create, to express himself; and the right to receive the judgment of the world, of posterity.” A complicating fact in this case i that the painting, being a fresco, can- not easily be altered, for the pigments become integrated with the plaster to such a depth that changes cannot be made without an extensive destruction and. replacement. The artist, who has been promptly and passionately sup- ported by & number of people who are slways esger to mske an lssue on the score of Communism, may undertake by legal intervention to prevent any re- vision of the design. In such case the courts will be faced with & new issue— that of proprietary right in & work of art, the execution of which has been fully compensated even though not completed. Doubtless the artist will be urged by his radical supporters—despite the fact that he has been formally ousted from the Communist party, of which he was once a member—to appeal to the law. Such an issue would yleld & delectable opportunity for a trial fur- nishing & forum for a debate on capi- talism and Communism regardless of the immediate question of the artist's right to complete his design and to have it perpetuated. ——oe—a——————— A Pederal Board competent to super- | vise hours of work, wages and produc- | tion quantity would represent so much competence that each of lts members should be able to make & fortune in case of eventual decision to retire from official life and go into private practice. e ret——————— Putting Muscle Shoals to work has | been an unemployment problem on its own account for a long time. Its solu- tion may be the hopeful beginning of | a practical method of handling the entire economic question. as symptoms of political paranoia- aberrations destined to disappear when the Reich's rulers are brought to their senses. Meantime, nothing that has happened since the German Fascists seized power so graphically attests the extent to which reason has toppled in the vaunted land of Kultur as the burning of “non-Aryan” literature in public pyres under semi-official auspices. Authors whose thinking has stimu- lated German thought throughout mod- ern times were put to the torch in Berlin and other centers of learning. They were not all Jews, or even Ger- mans. The books consigned to the flames of Nazi fury bore names like Karl Marx, Ferdinand La Salle, Pried- rich Engels, August Bebel, Karl Lieb- knecht, Kautsky, Bernstein and Wilfer- ding among the Germans and Austrians. Lenin, Stalin, Zinovieff, Lunacharsky and Bukharin were among the fired Russians. Henrl Lichtenberger, the French philosopher, who has written sympathetically on Franco-German re- lations, went up in smoke along with American writers like Jack London, Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, Ben Lindsey, Morris Hillquit and Robert Carr. Thomas Mann, German Nobel prize winner, was reduced to ashes with all the German moderns like Einstein, Freud, Lion Puchtwanger, Emil Lud- wig, Jakob Wassermann, Arthur Schnitzler and Erich Remarque, the latter the author of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Bertha von Suttner, who won the Nobel prize for litera- ture by writing the disarmament classic, “Lay Down Your Arms,” went the flery way with Walther Rathenau, the Ger- man foreign minister, who was assassi- nated after the war by Nationalist gang- sters, and Hugo Preuss, who wrote the Welimar constitution, which Hitler and his cohorts destroyed several months before they burned its literary creator in efigy. One wonders if, on that inevitable day when modernism again supplants medievalism in Germany, the “sym- bolic significance” of book-burning day, as the minister of enlightenment and propaganda terms it, will be remem- bered with pride. At such a spectacls, staged in the name of German culture, there must be many Germans who stand aghast and are filed with a deep sense of shame. They will marvel, as millions of persons beyond Germany's borders do, that a nation saturated with a boundless pride in its Goethe and Schiller could ever have succumbed to such madness. The whole episode is incredible and incomprehensible. It leaves civilized mankind amused and amazed. ——————————— Lindbergh has asked but little of an admiring public; the right to be alone in hours of bitter grief. Yet the sym- pathy of the world was such that even this right could not be fully accorded. His sense of duty enables him to realize the inevitable concession to public in- terest that fame exacts and to make it with characteristic fortitude. —— e Art and Communism. ‘The great structural mass in New York City which, by dint of persistent “pub- licizing,” has become known through- out the country as Radio City, is now the center of a storm of criticism which bears upon the relations of art and Communism. A great mural decora- tion, sixty-three by seventeen feet, was designed for the main lobby of the in control of the forces of civilization.” The chosen artist, celebrated both for his artistic skill and his very liberal political views, had progressed in the execution of the work to the final stage, when discovery was made that the face and figure of Lenin, founder of the Russian Soviet Government, had been incorporated in it, in a conspic- uous position and a highly significant attitude. A member of the family whose riches have mainly supported this enterprise noted the feature and objected. The artist was requested to omit it. He refused to do so and there- building, depicting “human intelligence| ———e—s Reports that Gaston Means smiles continuously afford further evidence that & man with a twisted sense of humor is likely to develop into one of those practical jokers who never know where to stop. e According to various calculations the task of balancing the national budget would be considerably simplified if the Treasury's famous old Conscience Fund | had all that ought to be coming to it. —— e Chinese residing near Manchuria are | preparing to revolt and go over to the | Japanese. “Safety first” is & motto | which has force in politics as well as| in small affairs. oo Racketeers are frankly hoping to make legal beer profitable by bootleg- | ging the percentage of alcoholic con- | tent. R SHOOTING STARS. BY PHILANDER JOHNSON. Those Alleged Happy Boyhood Days. I'd like to be a boy once more! You'll often hear it said As men maturer cares deplore When years have swiftly fled. I'd like to be a boy again And hear dear teacher bluff And vainly struggle to explain A lot of Wisdom Stuff. ‘Which nothing but Experience Can truthfully reveal. I long to feel with glee intense ‘That stone bruise on my heel. And stomachaches and smarts stings Of chastisement deserved And all the various other things That leave a boy unnerved. I long with jocund song to go The rising sun to view, And Echo answers soft and low “You do? Tut! Tut! Pooh! Pooh!" Futuristic Politics. “Why do you show so0 much hesitancy about the way you vote?" “I'm looking to the future,” said Sen- ator Sorghum. “If anything goes wrong with & plan I am under political obli- gations to favor, I want to be able to remind my constituents that I had my doubts about it all the time.” and manager issued convention instructions Jud Tunkins says when the party |deed, last Summer he used the long-distance phone, but when he gives out political appointments he takes his time about using the mails and forgets a lot of addresses. Sporting Proposition. If all the labor men exert In digging coal or shoveling dirt ‘Were mentioned on the sporting page, Hard labor might be all the rage And wages humble soon be set At figures that Ball Players get. Obscured Significance. “I can't understand the words of some of the later songs,” said the com- plaining person. “That may be due,” said Miss Cay- enne, “to a singer’s faulty enunciation— or maybe to & sense of propriety.” “To believe you are right,” said Hi-Ho, tho sage of Chinatown, “means but little ! benefit to any one unless you can bring It may be long before again we see ‘Those days of which detectives like to tell— Mentioned off hand, as a mere bag- atelle. Upon the plans now getting under way A Hundred Thousand Dollars used to be | v\, Imagination with much favor looks. We shall expand the currency some day And, incidentally, deflate the crooks. “Opinions never kept anything worth while from succeedin’,” said Uncle Eben. “Some people don't like flowers, but, thank de good Lord, de flowers don't & D. C, THURSDAY, BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL. in Chinese symbolism, marriage, but it is not the real inmates of the means. ly acquired two ‘“Jack Dempseys,” hey are popularly called, and since that time have been having % mu::'wmil' n;unuv;l.y speaking, at- eep them happy. ’rgme small members of the Cichlid family swim around under the per- fectly astounding scientific name of Cichlasoma Nigrafaceatum, so it is no wonder that when they were introduced to “fish fans” name was thought desirable. A Philadelphia aquarist coined “Jack Dempsey,” since the popular pugilist was at the height of his fame at that time. ok One has but to take a single look at this interesting fish to see the fitness of the popular designation. Not only has it a powerful and pecu- liarly Euifl.llflc looking jaw, but the same iberally sprinkled with blue patches, somewhat reminiscent, at least in fancy, to the growth of beard which the great man always wore when he went into the ring. Since that day thousands of these fishes have found their way into the ‘Two fishes, mean a happy always so deep, by Recentl! all connection has been lost, except as & matter of history, | wh; between the name of the fish and the name of the man. The enthusiast who today speaks of his “Jack Dempsey,” therefore, does s0 without thought of the pugilist. It is simply an easier name to say, that is all. k% Every one who has made even the slightest study of aquarium literature— now extending itself by le: and bounds—knows that the Cic! are difficult fishes to keep in the home aquarium, being carnivorous, meat eat- ers, which means, without translation, fish eaters, of course. Most of the members of this tribe are highly intelligent, bringing up the q tion whether intelligence and savage dispositions go together in Nature. This would be an interesting question to trace through the entire animal king- dom. ‘With the exception of the ever-popu- lar el fish, Pterophyllum scalare, and a few others, the Cichlids do not make good inmates of the so-called “community tank.” Every home aquarist, even the new- comer, knows this, but still he wants to find it out for himself, ‘There is nothing like personal experi- ence, after all. * x % % Proudly we bore home the pair of Dempsies. They were of a size, about an inch and s half long, probably not more than a few months old, since this specimen commonly grows pretty large for an aquarium fish, One was very dark, the other lighter, each with the big head and jaw and mouth, characteristic of the variety. They were put at once into a gallon bowl of the type nobody likes, but of which every one has a specimen or two | sitting around. | This round bowl distorted so badly | that it made each Dempsey seem as big as a whale when it got to the other side of the vessel. . L The male spent his first half hour going through a series of remarkable color changes, an ability characteristic of the species. First he was almost coal black, with | dark blue spots. Then he faded out to | large black spots, with his dorsal fin | edged with red. After this display he went back to dark, with more dark red spots, while his blue sheen deepened in his charac- teristic blue jowl. late en: M'ulflgely he looked! emy. e ! The idea then came that if he were tank pl;-'uh;p'lh he vloulg ere, and the female wwmmhva’ unmolested. trepidation for her, 2 :oh“ belligerent Jack was went z Cicl paid tention he other, nor -pofi to the Barbs, which were about tbc’-me size, and therefore pretty well immune to attack, apparently. ‘What was our , therefore, in going to the aquarium one day, to the le Cichlasoma Nigra. awsy behind the * * %" He was just resting, we supposed. But no, he was hiding from the lady! For no sooner did he venture forth than—zowie! After went the female. Pretty soon she had his fins ragged, probably not s0 much by sheer nip- ping ability as by reason of the fright and attending reactions induced. ‘The tank bully, whether male or female, or large or small, is a nuisance in the community of fishes and should be removed, as nothing tears down the welfare of these interesting, small crea- tures more surely. Here were the tables turned, with a vengeance. Now the male was on the run perpetually. It seems in such cases that it is the fish which makes the first bel it dive con- tinues the fig] The bne whi first takes the offensive keeps it. is the law. to it, then, but It There was nothing to put the male back into a smaller tank, in solitary confinement. Then the female started pursuing the Barbs. She kept them on the swim. So out she went, into a separate container. ‘These fishes, intqlNgent, savage, tiful, interesting, will not live with each other, nor with other fishes. Yes, the books are right, as they usually are. High Lights on the Wide World Excerpts From Newspapers of Other Lands A MACEDOINE, Sofia.—Reports | of serious student riots, not pub- | lished in the newspapers, have reached us from various sources, | and are supposed to include the information and experiences of several | eye-witnesses. At the University of Zagreb, about 800 undergraduates barricaded them-| gelves in one of the buildings of the | institution, and hoisted the flag of the Croatian Republic. These patriotic con- | tingents were then derided and threat- ened by a larger number of chauvinistic | Serbian students, who assaulted the! building in which these Croatian sym- pathizers were lodged. Stones, ciubs and other missiles were freely ex- changed, until the arrival of the police | with fixed bayonets. These last suc- ceeded in separating the belligerent groupe. and after driving the Serbian | 2 nts out of the ding, arrested :‘he ring-leaders of the Croatian fac- ion. In the course of a similar fracas at Belgrade, a battle took place actually | within the university halls, the com- batants hurling books, inkwells and | even chairs and desks at each other. Fortunately, all the participants were able to avold these more or less cum- bersome bombardments, and no one was hurt, but the whole incident shows some of the sailent features of higher education in these peculiar times. L Soaring Public Debt Scored in Australia. ‘The Bulletin, Sydney—Our float- 90 millions when has been com- penditure to loan account, and putting men to do unproductive “relief work™ instead of pay them a dole out of taxation. State treasurers point—with what they profess is pride—to the wonder- ful improvement in their finances. For the first six months of this fiscal year, New South Wales Premier Stevens says his deficit was only two millions. It is to be hoped he does not believe it. At any rate, the plain truth is that during this year another seven millions will be charged up to a loan account; and there is no question that at least three-fol this cam defleit. Is it any wonder that the directors of the Commonwealth Bank, who are merely trustees for the public whose money they hold, were “concerned over the constant and continuing expendi- ture by state governments on loan works which are at best of a dublously There never was a time excuse was not forthcoming for a loan There never was a time which in order to absorb im- borrowed ‘e have ‘when was dear because our people wanted assistance, and when it was cheap because it would be stupid to miss 5o good & chance. ‘The result has beem always the same —to leave the people a little worse handicapped to face the future. The more we have borrowed, the more we have had to tax ourselves to pay in- terest that has not been earned. * ¥ x % Argentina Receives | Three New Submarines. La Razon, La Puz—Three sub- marines of the latest type and very best construction have just been com- pleted in Italy for the government of the Argentine Republic. These vessels were built in the shipyards at Taranto, and have been named, respectively, the Salta, Santa Fe, and San Bago Cestere. ‘These submarines departed from Tar- anto March 2, with their destination announced as Buenos 3 * %k Chinese Accept Dominican Law. Opinion, Santo YeArs. Don Reynaldo Valdez, in charge of tion office, anmounces that a thousand applications have made by our celestials ready to respond to fiscal obligations such as the one just cited, they have, in by far the majority of instances, conducted themselves as in- dustrious and law-abiding Maritime Eyes Look To Pacific three years has bullt eight limers for this special trade; these out of ai30-ship nee:‘. All told, the line operates 15 | . | There are just as many ways of killing MAY 11, 1933. The Political Mill By G. Gould Lincoln. report them promtply to the House and Ty become too,Seong. 10 prevedt a6 may prevent ac- tion st the present session. FPurther administration could scarcely ‘There are lots of ways of killing a cat beside choking it to death ‘with cream. and | gre used for be business he has been accustomed to for years. When the Federal reserve act was put through the Congress during the Wilson administration there was violent opposition to the measure, re- medial as it was and valuable as it proved to be. The Democrats, then in control, resorted finally to party caucus action to get the measure through. * k% ¥ The administration, in its efforts to reduction of governmental expenditures, 1is proposing to $53,000,000 from ex- penditures for Navy during the next fiscal year, and approximately $90,000,000 from the expenditures for the Army. When the Army and Navy appropriation bills were put through the | last expenditures for the armed forces of the United States had | been drastically cut. Now it is pro- posed to reduce these by another $143,- 000,000. A saving of $143,000,000 in governmental expenditures is not to be sneezed at. On the other hand, such s large saving must mean a cor- respondingly large reduction in military and naval efficlency. You can't have 801 for not) , as a genersl proposition, in this world. The ques- tion is whether it is to the interest of | the people to reduce national defense in order to save this amount of the taxpa! ' money. The American peo- ple might suffer in billions of wealth as well as in millions of lives if this coun- try became a prey to foreign enemies. * % & “Speak softly and carry & big stick” was a maxim of the late President Theodore Roosevelt. Is there less chance of war, and war involving the United States, today than there was in 1906, for example? The re- now for reducing military and naval expenditures look to appreciable reducu%m n:.nd t.\:ne‘u personnel of the Army, Navy rine Corps, organ- izations that have been cut and cut | again, until they are ridiculously small | | , | tance to be considered and .| While it is perfectly possible for Con- 1a fear for a nation the size of this. Not only do these plans call for reduc- ton of the perscnnel of the regular services, but they propose to cut out | training activities for military serv- ice regarded, awnn since the World War, as essen measures of pre- paredness. * % % 1In their efforts at economy the nations outside the United States have been careful to maintain as far as possible armies and navies which they deemed necessary for national defense. There | will be no general reduction of armed | forces until the world has reached lnj agreement to disarm. Yet the United States keeps right ahead slashing its budget for national defense. The Navy has already been allowed to drop into third place in several categories of war vessels. The great difficuity about get- ting behind in the matter of national defense lies in the fact that naval ves- | sels and naval personnel cannct be created overnight, nor can a trained army be provided without months and years of \frepcntinn. ‘The American people had an object lesson in regard to this matter just about 15 years ago. It cost them billions of dcllars. Further- more, had the United States been more prepared for war at that time, there would have been greater hesitation about drawing this country into that|in conflict. The present Roosevelt admin- istration may with advantage fl\: attention to the attitude cf the it Roosevelt administration toward national defense. L ‘The administration’s legislative -pro- gram for the special session of Congress is moving forward rapidly, but there are still several measures of major impor- among them the railroad bill and the public works and industries bill. The talk among the administration leaders is for adjournment by June 12, or even earller. This leaves just a month in which to dispose of the remaining legis- lation. Congressional committees are working on the railroad bill, holding hearings so far. The public works and industries contrcl bill is still in the making, although it may be sent to the Congress this week. Measures of such far-reaching importance ordinarily would require weeks of consideration in House and Senate. But speed is the order of the day. It may be possible to get them through in month still remaining before the opening of the World Economic Conference in London. gress to continue in session while the Economic Conference is at work, there seems to be a desire to give the admin- istration an entirely free hand in nego- tiations abroad at this conference, and with Congress in Washing- ton it might be used as a sounding board to u some of the plans for agreement Londen. * k x % The securities bill, providing for the fullest kind of publicity regarding the issue of securities by corporations in this country, has both House and Senate and is in conference. The Muscle Shoals bill also is in confer- ence. The District aj 11 ey ppropriation bi the conference stage, and the independent offices app! bill is due to pass the House d be sent to the Senate. The home mort- gage bill, which passed the House some cays ago, is before the Senate Banking and Commit| ‘When the success. Some of the Democratic lead- ers insist, however, that the Presidert has never had in mind for any than ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS BY FREDERIC J. HASKIN. ment is expected to stand as a model for the country at large. Q. Who was the godfather of the| President>—H. 8. A. Elliott Roosevelt, brother Theodore Roosevelt and father of the present “First Lady.” Q. What part of the gasoline taxes other iction and with road comstruc United States?—S8. H. connected repair in the A. The B8.50! to over $514,000000 in 1932. amount _expended for other than high- way purposes was about $48,000,000. Q. How does the average student nurse compare in intelligence with the average college or normal school stu- dent?>—S. N. A. A recent study of the intelli- gence test ratings of 10,000 student nurses t the country showed the average mental ability to be almost equal to that of students in normal schools, but somewhat below that of undergraduates in liberal arts colleges. Q. Who are some of the outstanding ject ven by the Evening Standard is as fol- lows: Somerset Maug! - . , Rose Macaulay, Aldous Hux- ley, A. J. Cronin, Louis Golding, Clemence Dane and Charles Morgan. Q. How many persons are employed in the Government Bureau :fw Nylr— cotics?—J. A. P. A. There are 310 men in the fleld and 102 in the bureau in Wi n, making a total of 412. The appro- riation for the bureau is $1,525,000 for this fiscal year. Q. What s the work of a lumber- #2% b . Jumberjack fells and timber !or‘ t:e mill. His war‘kwmelpyu: any one of the rm involved, from the chopping the tree in the forest to the delivery of the logs at the mill. The lumberjack may also have to cut roads through the forest or even build railways where there is no way of floating the logs. He must be a | judge of timber, and be able to estimate | closely the number of board feet in a log. He must have physical strength in order to stand the heavy work, long hours, and extreme cold, the thermome- ter often falling as low as 40 or 50 degrees below zero in the more northern Q. Where are the largest billiard rooms in the country?—C, A. 8. America says . | that the largest troit. The of | A. The National Billiard Association of that a recent survey shows billlard room is in De- reation (Chicago), 59 tables. Should a chimney be round or ? Doelp anroke 8o straight up or e Bureau of Agricultural En- says that while a -round is preferable to a square one, both are satisfactory. If a chimney is straight and the air current is strong, smoke is likely to travel straight If it meets an obstruction or if there only s light draft the currents carry it up spirally. Q. Why is the fan so important in Japan?—A. P. D. A. The use of the fan is very closely linked with the life and customs of the people. In Rhead's History of the Fan the author says that it is regarded as an emblem of life, widening and ex- panding as the sticks radiate from the Tivet. u& 's & part in almost every aspect of their existence; it 1 presented to the youth on the attainment of his majority; it is used by jugglers in feats |of skill; condemned man marches | to the scaffold, fan in hana. Q. Was the name of Sixteenth street in Washington, D. C., ever actually g:mln((ed to Avenue of the Presidents?=— A. It was changed by Commission- ers’ order to “Avenue of the Presidents™ | on April 13, 1909. The order affected only | that part of the street north of Florida | avenue. Again by Commissioners’ or- | der on July 23, 1914, this portion of Sixteenth street was changed back to its original name. In 1922 and again |in 1925 joint resolutions were intro- | duced into the Senate for the purpose !of changing the name to “Presidents’ Avenue,” but in each case they were unsuccessful. The official change of |the name of Sixteenth street above | Florida avenue from 1909 to 1914 in- | cluded the changing of the signs at the street intersections. | Q. Where is the Strait of Anian?— AM. - ins A A. This is the ancient name for the passage from the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean, now known as Bering Strait. The name Anian is found on maps as late as 1821. Q. In what countries do women have full suffrage’—E. M. O. A. In Great Britain, Canada, Aus- tralla, New Zealand, Iceland, Britisn East Africa, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Holland, Rumania, Bervia, Luxemburg, Germany, Austris, Hungary, United States, Poland. Es- tonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czechoslo= vakis, Jamaica. Before the World War, only four countries had full suffrage. In addition to those named the follow- ing countrfes have partial suffrage: Bragil, Belgium, Greece and Argentina. g. uDo' elephants breed in captivity? A. Elephants do breed in captivity, and in a number of the large z00s and in the larger circuses a number of births have been recorded. . Where was the first daily news- paper published?—W. N. A. The Frankfurter Zeitung, called the first daily paper in the world, ap- peared in Frankfort, Germany, in 1615. Q. In the last century of the Re- public, of what were the houses of S says: “The larger houses themselves were generally built of local limestone with facings of stucco, though the greater part of Rome was still, in this first century B. C., constructed of | sun-baked bricks.” Boys Who Averted Disaster Linked With Ancient Fiction Confirming the truthful nature of the most extravagant writers of juve- | nile fiction of all time, the success of several young wards of the Passaic Or- phan Asylum, who flagged a train un- der difficulties, are nominated by the public for the common hall of fame. The six boys, with ages ranging from 11 to 14, observed a washout on the line of the Erie Railroad, knew that a train carrying several hundred com- muters was headed for disaster, rushed down the track with their raincoats for signals, and stopped the engine within a short distance of the danger poin “Lucky orphans, and h?.luck. too!” ex- claims the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “May many gnore of life’s dreams tumble over each other to come true.” That paper also remarks: “There are certain disad- vantages in spending one’s boyhood in an orphanage, but there is hardly a boy America who would not gladly swap places with any of the six. Their ex- ploit assays virtudlly 100 per cent Ho- ratio Alger. The only thing missing so far is the distinguished future which always awaited an Alger hero. These six young men are not yet railroad pres- idents. But who wants to be a railroad president these days when the Recon- struction Finance Corporation may scale $100,000 salaries down to $17,500? The six win one reward which even the :gxry l;iook hg;m v;e‘rlr denied. Each of lem has a base autographed b Babe Ruth.” q g “Now that they have tasted the glory,” says the Jersey City Journal, “it is to be h the rewards that come to them will serve to make them valued and happy citizens of the land they have served so early in their lives.” The | Journsl comments further: “They have achieved a feat which has probably been the dream wish of most of the male citizens of this land. For what boy has not pictured himself as rush- ing down the track waving a flaming torch or hastily doffed coat and saving the limited from plunging from & burn- ing bridge or into an obstruction reared by desperate train robbers? At a certain age, naturally, the one and only had to be aboard the train to reward the hero suitably, but the mere saving of a train from destruction and the consequent acclaim by passengers and train crew was & dream generally in the mind of every schoolboy. Some may believe that the chance that came to these orphan boys to achieve fame and glory in such a spectacular manner was a case of pure luck, but the more thought- ful will realize that the boys won ac- claim through ability to make a deci~ sion quickly and to act upon it.” “The boys,” explains the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, “had seen the em- bankment, struck by the flood of a cloudburst, carried away for a distance of 20 yards and they knew the express was pounding down the line in the storm. They ran through the downpour for a quarter mile and stopped the ex- press carrying 500 passengers. When the train came to a halt the washout was but 50 feet away. A curve around which it travels at high speed cut off an early view of the danger and but for the boys who did the heroic thing boys dream of doing, there would have been 8 wreck. It required the combined whole thing payments due this by forel natiors until after the - | bappened quicker than you could say & | few Jack Robinsons. Most of the com- muters had no idea that they were in | the middle of the most exciting story for a long time on the main line of the | Erie. They take delays philosophically | on the safe-and-sure-to-get-there-some | time old road. No daily traveler would | have imagined that life and limb were |in any way dependent on the orphans | of the old stone house pleasantly ovir= looking the Passaic athletic field—al- | though a sympathetic eye could not fail | to notice now and again the alert-lock- | ing boys on the grounds under the | curved embankment. The names of the train flaggers are interesting as a cross= section °f young America—Merlniz:k, | Murdock, Fleming, Borsch and the brothers Mazzola. By using their heads ‘they prevented an accident that might | have orphaned boys and girls in several | towns from Passaic up to Suffern. Surely no first-class veteran railroad man could | have ‘clicked’ to the emergency any better than these six boys.” “It reads like a story from a more heroic age than we have thought our | own to be” declares the Proviuence | Journal, recalling that the boys discov= | ered the danger while looking out of | the windows of the asylum. The Jour- | nal also comments: “No judgment pf & general on a battlefield was ever more | prompt, correct, resourceful or effective than that of these quick-witted and nimble-footed boys. It gives one fresh confidence in human nature to read such an account of youthful heroism. | The six boys of the Passaic Orphan | Asylum are only a chance sample out cf | six million in America. We need not | fear when the boys of their generation | shall bave entrusted to them as men the fate of their country.” The Newark Evening News feels that “Qliver Optic lives again in the Passaic story,” recognizing that they “manfully stopped the train,” and concluding: “They are due to grow up and marry the boss’ daughter. We hope there will | be enough wealthy bosses witn lovely | daughters to go around.” — e Life Goes On. Prom the New York Herald Tribune, In St. Louis a fire brigade summoned to a garage blaze makes no attempt to put out the conflagration because the owner hasn’t paid his fire taxes. Tos jwindow boxes on the Goelet mansic on Fifth avenue are red, white anpd blue this year, and a very brave sho too. ‘From the rural reaches of Ohio come dispatches concerning a pig that Bas been born with four ears—Dexter Fellows should take notice. The last heath hen is dead at Marthas Vineyard. Count Vasco de Gama demonstrates his marksmanship on a chow dog in a Riverside drive apartment house. Scien- tists are told by a Smithsonian curator that the height of the brow is no index of intelligence, and the photographic editor’s delight, Gen. Gaishi Nngach. of Japan, who had a mustache spanning forty inches, is dead. Another news- paper play is scheduled for Broadwa< production and the Spring theater sea son is on with a bang. Princess Eliza beth of England is seven years old and extra postal clerks are engaged to sort her fan mail. The dreadful Federa) Hall in Bryant Park is in process of demolition. A Harvard undergraduate paper runs a poll to see who is least fitted to become next president of the university, Sclentists foresee that the sun and atoms may be man's future power The Macon _cruises plants. : | thirteen hours on her test flight, just for good luck. In Cambridge, Mass., a jury of newspaper men will be pub- lic library censors and there are Spring floods throughout New England. In short, life goes on and so does dying; there is Spring in the Northern Hemisphere of the wor'd and other = | things are transpiring in the day's news besides debts, politics and ezonomic dis- in | sension. Life doesn't entirely depeng on a gold standard.