The evening world. Newspaper, December 18, 1922, Page 26

6 ESTABLISHED BY JOSEPH PULITZER. Deny. “Bo Xs 03 Park Row. New 2. ANGUS BRAW. Treasurer, 63 Park Row. JOSEPH PULITZER, Secretary, 63 Park Rom, A4Grers a) rommanicstions to TBE EVE eSsiity etar!0., eacept Press, 4 cummed MONDAY, 1922 DECEMBER 18, SUBSCRIPTION RATES. Fatered wt the Post Office at New York as Becond Matter. Foes that is Uae ane, sath area Coe One Year Six Months One Monts Ad id Led HY BRANCH OPFICES. WN. 1393 Tway, cor. 38th. WASHINGTON, LEM, Ave. near Wyatt Bldg; 14th and F Bits. DETROIT, 621 Ford Bide. i SOS ORs SESE! CHICAGO, 1008 Mallee Bide. Washington st. | PARIS, 47 Avenue de (Opera PEP ae remine | PAR NOT ON TIP-TOE. T last the Harding Administration is going A to “enter the European economic problem.” Even the loyal Tribune proclaims it and rejoices that this is “the precise moment when an American solution has become possible.” How, then, is the American solution to start? On the one hand, we are told the Harding Ad- ministration does not regard reparations as related to loans made by the American Government to fits debtors. It proposes to treat reparations, for- eign debts and a possible loan to Germany as separate niatters. A loan to Germany would be financed by private bankers. On the other hand, we have a banker's view hus expressed by President Charles E. Mitchell of the National City Bank: ' “The international debt question must be got out of the way first. I am not advocating can- collation, but I think some adjustment, as to both principal and Interest payments, nivet be made before our Allies can possibly consent to any sealing down in reparations. Stabilization of German finances is a question that cannot be taken up until both international debts and reparations are definitely settled.” We have also the stated position of France and ‘Great Britain that they cannot arrive at a definite understanding regarding German reparations un- ‘less they can at the same time come to a depend- able understanding with their chief creditor—that creditor being the United States. Under these circumstances the all-important thing is not the order in which the elements of the problem shall be dealt with. The important thing is that the United States shall step forwatd and stand by with its full voice and influence until the inter-related parts of the problem have all been exhaustively examined and discussed. : If the first thing to find out is what Germany can pay, find it out in a way that will at least formally satisfy the United States and line up the United States once and for all with the Allies on that point. We have had enough of the impossible situation in which the United States waits for the Allied Powers to do something they cannot do without the United States, while every disruptive force in Europe is strengthened by American uncertainty , and inaction. If President Harding is at last to enter the European economic problem, pray Heaven he doesn’t tip-toe into it looking only for parts that he can separate from the rest. For Europe's economic problem has become America’s economic problem in a sense practical enough to appeal even to Americans who only know what foreign markets mean to American Prosperity. L The time for tip-toeing and peeping is past. The United States must make its new entrance ‘with a firm tread, announced by its full name, Yeady to speak its mind and affix its signature. “I say fashion is wrong,” an authority said fo a feminine audience. How many had rather be “wrong” than be President? > WET WEATHER WAYS. A PERIOD of bad weather works many changes in the routine of New York life. The New Yorker has no particular affection for “weather” and he avoids as much unpleasantness as hie can, _ On perhaps two hundred and fifty out of his three hundred working days the average New Yorker goes to his shop or office by his customary route. He takes the same side of the street morn- ing after morning, crosses at a given corner, and tuins at a certain point. But when the weather is bad he exercises his wits. The architects of New York have helped, {Vhe shortest distance between two points may be anything but the dryest route. So, in and out of unfamiliar doorways, through funnels, arcades, concourses, areaways, etc., the nimble New Yorker dodges. Perhaps the greatest stormways of New York center in the Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations, where the knowing New Yorker can walk for blocks under cover, But for real ingenuity in keeping out of the wet and cold the would probably go to the fe oo TH“ EVENING WORLD, MONDAY, weather dodgers of the financial district. In the towering office buildings near Broad and Wall Streets there is usually a way if you only know it. There are few signs to point the way and the messenger boys are the best pilots HIS PUNISHMENT. IIL: movement to unseat Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts might not worry the honorable gentleman much if he were less aware of certain deep shadows in the background. In his heart of hearts Mr. Lodge knows better than anybody else the full rebuke of that 8,000 majority. tle knows better than anybody else how many distinguished citizens of Massachu- setts, how many of the friends he has valued most and longest, refused to vote last month for the arch-treaty-wrecktr. Mr. Lodge’s skin may be impervious in some respects. But it is not impervious where the esteem of the Bay State intellectual elite is involved. Be sure he has felt his punishment. REGULARIZE TRUCK TRAFFIC. HE Interstate Commerce Commission order to the railroads serving the Port of New York directs them to “show cause” why the compre- hensive plan of the Port Authority should not be put into effect. The railroads have balked, the City of New York has balked, and the whole plan has dragged. There is now a more than fair prospect that Governor Smith will be able to promote co-opera- tion by the municipal authorities. It is to be hoped the 4. C. C. will be able to put pressure on the railroads. It is within the power of the Interstate Com- merce Commission to require far-reaching changes in the terminal conditions in New York. The hearing should include fair consideration of the “store door delivery” plan under which the rail- roads, or a trucking subsidiary within the port, should undertake the delivery of all Jess-than- carload freight consigned to the congested areas of the city. ‘This is a logical extension of the “belt line” idea. Undoubtedly the railroads would require an extra charge for such a service, but such a charge should prove a practical economy. New York isn’t yet “at the end of the rope” in traffic, even if Commissioner Enright is. If the Port Authority's comprehensive plan can be made to work, it should work a revolution in traffic conditions by regularizing and regulating truck traffic and spreading it out in short-haul zones instead of forcing it into chaotic congestion at the “bottle necks” of traffic. William Allen White, writing in the Tribune, says President Harding “has been in office ncar- ly three yea . No, Bill, to paraphrase an old one, it only seems like three years. REAL PRESSURE. ENATOR-ELECT EDWARDS of New Jersey promises not to let up on those he aptly termed in his campaign “the wet-cellar drys’ “{ have the utmost contempt for the po litically dry and the personally wet—you know what I mean. I've seen Judges taking a drink under cover of ginger ale and then sitting in judgment the next morning on some poor devil who went out for a drink. I'm going to Wash- ington and they are going to hear me on this, somehow and somewhere.” More power to New Jersey's new Senator. Once let influential and important members of the community find it less easy to get liquor than they find it at present and you will see a sudden new sympathy for the poor man’s plight under Prohibition law. We shall then have real pressure to amend the Volstead act. ACHES AND PAINS. Somehow these pocts bewtlder us. Here comes William Carlos Williams asserting in The Dial that “Balief’s actors from The Bat in Moscow seem as if from the centre of the onton.” We have met actors from foreign parts who ate garlic, but none that clove to it, Mr, Williams is more than cryptic, . Stewart E. McMillan, United States Consul at Port Limon, Costa Rica, says the climate ts such that no piano can survive it. This must bring other advan- tages. . . The dry agents have now declared that the hip pocket flask ts no longer de rigueur, Nothing like having styles definitely sctticd. ws Please excuse us (f we ask how it (s possible to get a nation out of debt by lending it more money? . “Better Times,” published by the United Neighbor- hood Houses, calls itself the smallest newspaper in the world, Might have to be bigger if tt called itself “Hard Times.” . “Life is an immense dream. Why toil?” So says LA Po, the Chinese poet, A question often asked but hard to sustain in the negative, * Confuctus said: “Within the Four Seas el! mon are brothers.” This leaves three of them open for step- brothers We may not recognise Russia but we seer ognize Russian art. Our foal. to ree artlessness is purely polit JOHN KEETZ. ® His Ear to the Ground ! 4 sees — a: at DECEMBER 18, 1922. t, 1928, (New York Evening World) Presa Pub. Co. By John Cassel “y From Evening World Readers What kind of letter do you find most readable? Isn't it the one that gives the worth of a thousand words in a couple of hundred P There is fine mental exercise and a lot of satisfaction in trying @e eay much in few words. Take time to be brief. Babbitt Ought to Be Bitten, To the Editor of The Evening World: Your recent editorial on the ‘futile field" for satire, chosen by Sinclair Lewis and certain other young Amer- ican novelists, makes me furiously to think and, if I may, to dissent If any figure In the American scene needs to be bitten by the acid of Satire it 1s Babbitt. He's no simple soul who has “‘lived faithfully a hid- den life." He is the smug aleck of our civilization, convinced—most of the time, anyway —that he Is the best thing in the best of all possible worlds, utterly unable to look around the corner of his own egotism or an inch ahead of his nos A product of “pep” and “punch, ho recognizes no beauty, no wisdom, no obligation which cannot be summed up in these two words. He wants, as Harold Stearns, another of ung American critics, phrases 0 remake the world In the image ansas."" And when you consider the bad art, the worse advertising, the hypocritical and {ntolerant mora! formulae which the booster mind and the booster methods have put over on us during recent years, you realize Babbitt is altogether too likely to succeed! Therefore, why Isn't he fair game for criticism? He has his own organs of passionate publicity, such as the American Magazine and all others edited on the principle that the end of man 1s, first, to make a million dollars, then, to tell all the other lttfe girls and boys to go and do likewise. Will Babbitt really suffer from a grain of analysis in propor- tion to a peck of adulation? In one sense, you are right in call ing the field ‘‘futile,”* since not one nor @ thousand satiric fictions would ever shake Babbitt's conviction that he is the American people, wisdom will die with him. Yet why not at least concede to such a dissenter from tho Babbitt tradition as Sinclair Lewis the satisfaction of freeing his mind?— @ satisfaction in which this one of his readers profoundly, if vicariously, shares, . MARGUERITE MOOERS MARSHALL, Ireland's Troublemakers, To tho Haitor of Tho Evening Wore I see we now have the “Competent Military Authority of the Irish Re- publican Army" operating in New York. That's fine, I suppose this is the same authority that beat up New York policemen a few weeks ago and started to set up an Irish Republic on Fitth Avenue, Wonders will never cease, wondering what the and I'm ant letter writers are doing in New York white their brethren in Troland robbing bunks and shops, Mowing ip brides burning down houses and murdonung people in thelr homes and on the road- ides, If they are so much in carnest about a Republic why the devil don’t they go over and fight for it? Ireland has had many crosses, but since the time of Cromwell nothing to compare with the bandits who are raping and looting her under the gulse of patriotism. At the same time I would suggest that the com- petent police authority of New York is perfectly well able to take care of those who degrade the name of Ire- land by pretending to have love for her. The most of them are of the same breed that ran like skunks from the Black and Tans, SEUMAS O'MPARA. New York, Dec. 16, The Kueer Kian. To the Editor of The Evening World My forefathers settled in America in 1790 and fought in the wars of the Republic, I am glad to note General Pershing’s opinion of the Ku Klux expressed. I regard him as a great military leader. I am also a Catholic I myself served in France. A Kucer Kombination, a Kluxer might say. Here {1 my {dea of how the latest n bull must have appeared Klan Kode for Kleagies: “'Kollect Kale Kautlously, Klean up kuickly before kops kucer kombl- nation with krack on koko. Kuber Kountry where klucks kant kompel folks to krumple at sight of kalico kostume. Kollect kuickly and go back to Kookooland where Georgia Krack- ers kollapse at sight of kostume. New York too kueer. Kops’ klubs more powerful than Klan klubs.’ “Kling Kale Kollector. NATIVE, 15, 1922. ft the Bine. To the Editor of The Evening World: Now that Ireland has gained her freedom, as a Government of her own, under a flag of her own, perhaps sho could be persuaded to transfer to America her song, ‘The Wearing of the Green,’ which, with a few changes, would be well adapted to our present needs. For example, a 1 remember it; ‘Then { met with Napper Tandy, and 1 took Him by the ha And | raid, “How America, and how now setul country that e'or They ar Ing hen and women for the making of home bre.” REGINALD Richmond, Va., Dec. 14, 1 Questions on Tnolation, Evening World der of this paper, per- As an old re mit me to At this time tupon to decid ture as to our poll would like to kno How many readers think we are waong in following the principle of suggest a few questions, ‘alled he fu ation, I whe tude in of isc 1) CENCE I UNCOMMON SENSE By John Blake (Coprright, 1932, by Johm Btake) THE POSTMAN. From now till well on after Christmas your postman will be doing three men’s work—for one man’s pay. Every year the volume of the mail increases faster than the number of postmen, FA Every year the work of the men, without whose labors modern living would be difficult, becomes harder and harder. A little thought about the postman and how much he does for you will make you more considerate during’ the holiday season. Indeed, it will do no harm at all to think a little more of all the people to whom the holidays mean much harder work and much longer hours. A beautiful thing is the Christmas spirit. It is marvel- lous that it is still as strong as it has been through the ages, that the instinct to do something for others affects even the most selfish, as it did Old Scrooge in “The Christmas Carol.” Perhaps you can do little for the postman in the way of lightening his labors, but you can at least refrain from blam- ing him when your mail is late. And you can make him a little happier by assuring him when you happen to meet him at the doorway that you be- lieve in better hours and better pay for postmen, and that as one of the stockholders in the institution which employs him—which is the Nation—you will do all you can to sce that he gets them. For you, if you are an average citizen, Christmas means a little more crowding for a week or two while you are doing, your buying, a little more skimping that you may buy things for others and, perhaps, a little heartache now and then be- enue you cannot do for your family what you would like 0 do. For the postman it means weary legs and back, long, long working hours and continued friction with irritable people who blame the man who brings the mail for some thing for which a late train or an overturned Post Office wagon was to blame. Keep the postman in mind Christmas time. holiday for others is a burden to him. ant word you can give him. What is a He needs every pleas- keeping busy with our own affairs, with so many vital questions (domes- tle) unsettled? Mow many can criticiso the path prescribed by our great Presidents who fought for our independence and against foreign entanglements? How many agree, reading the state- ments of European leaders, including the most recent ones of Clemenceau, that we are getting any recognition or proper thanks for dur help in their greatest crisis? We have gtv@m our blood, our money; howe hetped alleviate suffer- ing in all parts of the world. If any one of our readers can tell me where they get off in coming here with the audacity to tell us what we have not done, I am willing to listen; but until then, I stick to our idea of keeping out of entanglements and tip my hat to the wisdom of our great forefathers that showed us the path. J, B, RUDICH, Brooklyn, Deo, 14, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT WORD? 240—LAGOON. The words “lagoon” and “lake” do not resemble each other closely on the surface. But they are ldsatical words with only a difference in de- gree In their meaning. Both lake and lagoon trace their origin back to the Latin “lacus.” In Spanish occurs the word “laguna,” which also traces back to a Latin word, “lacuna,” a pool, which in turn owes its parentage to “lacus.” A lagoon, to be exact, 1s a shallow lake or sheet of water connected with the sea or a river, which sometimes almost dries up in summer, shrinking to a marshy ol, By usage, “lagoon” is beginning to apply to such bodies of water in the tropics, although there are lagoons in Holland. Fireside Science 1002 (New Tork Omens: ices Tube anne XV. ONE STORY BOTANY TELLS. Botany tells hundreds of interesting stories, but none more Interesting than the one we shall now try to make plain. The surfaces of every leaf are dot- ted with small holes, called stomata, meaning mouths, through which the Plant breathes. Unlike animals, how- ever, plants cannot thrive on pure air, which consists of a mixture of pure nitrogen and pure oxygen; plants thrive only on a poisonous gas, carbon dioxide, called carbonic acid. Throughout the earth's atmosphere this acid is thinly diffused. It is be- ing daily produced by fermentation, by decaying substances and by breathing. It also comes from vol- canoes and from slaking lime and many kinds of decomposing sub- stances. It is the nauseous smell that comes from putrefaction. Every hu- man being exhales about 450 quarts of this gas daily; for, while a mix- ture of nitrogen and oxygen goes into the lungs, a mixture of pure nitrogen and carbonic acid comes out. The amount of carbonic acid being poured into the air constantly by all the human beings and animals on the carth is enormous, but the yolume of pure air is so ,reat that the per- centage of the poisonous gas remains very low. It would increase at a deadly rate, however, except for the purifying work done by plants. Plants inhale this gas and break {ts molecules apart, using the carben atoms in the building up of tho plants and liberating the oxygen atoms inte the air. As the carbonic acid mole- cle contains two atoms of oxygen for every atom of carbon, the plant gives back in pure air-making oxy- gen two-thirds of the carbonle acid gas. So effective is the work of the plants that never more than one part of carbonic acid gas is found in less than 2,000 parts of air The fundamental difference between animaiy and plants results from the fact that antmals, while breathing. manufacture carbonic acid, whereas plants break down the acid into car bon and oxygen atoms, Plants can- not breathe, however, except In the presence of sunlight. light the better they thrive. That plants do liberate oxygen may be seen by placing any kind of a plant (a water plant gives clearer results) in a bowl of water under a glass. A# soon as the immersed plant is placed in the sunlight, bubbles of oxygen be- gin to rise out of the water and the escaping oxygen collects in the top of the glass container. That the gas thus collected is oxygen may be proved! by touching it with a match; it burns brightly, giving the oxygen flame. Deprived of sunshine, however, the work within the plant ceases. Shades plants do not immediately die, be- cause they get some light. l[very gardener and farmer knows that crops will not yield unless exposed to the sunshine. After separating the carbon from the oxygen of the carbonic acid, the plant sets the oxygen free, then takes ( the atoms of carbon and compounds them with other kinds of atoms, thereby building up roc stem, branches, Icaves and frpits or grains. While performing {ts creative fune- tions, tha plant uses up a certain amount of sunshine, sunshine being as essential to its labors as mortar te a mason, ‘There is in cach of the leaf-cells surrounding the breathing pores, or stomata, a tiny grain cf chlorophyl which absorbs certain rays from a beam of light and uses these rays in the compounding of vege- table products. As no such grain of chlorophy! ex- {sts in an animal cell, animals cannot manufacture thelr own foods, but must look for them already fabri- cated in plants, Working in the pres- ence of sunlight, the plant takes the carbon atoms out of the inhaled ear- bonic acid and uses them as building stones, together with atoms of hydro- gen, oxygen and nitrogen, found in the soil and air, in manufacturing all the countless forms belonging to the vegetable kingdom. In a gun-lighted room, planta are plainly healthful; they purify the alr rendered impure by breathing, Plants are not unhealthful in a sleeping room at night, uniess in a state of de- cay; they are simply inactive, hun- gering between meals for a beam cf light. ae WHOSE BIRTHDAY? DECEMBER 18TH—CARL MA- RIA VON WEBER, German musical, composer, was born near Wubeck. Dec. 18, 1786, and died tn London June 5, 1826. Weber showed an early inclination to music and, as his father was a musical director, he had the opportunity of studying un der some of the greatest masters of the day, principally Michael Haydn at Salzburg and K rat Muniey When he was fourt completed his opera, which was soon after put In 1804 he became con the opera at s later was engaged ; ruhe, in Silesia, by Prince 1 Wurttemberg. He was Musical Di rector of the of at Prague tro 1818 to-1816 and latter year founded the Germun opera at Dres- den His most us opera, "Der Freischutz,"’ was brought out at Ber- lin in 1822 and soon after was pro- duced at Vienna, Paris and London, In 1823 he completed his ‘'Euryan- the," which was given, amid mucl) enthusiasm, in Vienna. Soon after he accepted an invitation to visit Lon- don, where he produced his famous “Oberon."’ He died while in London but his body was removed to Dresden, where a beautiful statue of him was din 1880. Other composition. Germany, of is Include “Abu Hassan,” "The Hunter's Bride," ‘The First Tone," “Preciosa"’ and the beautiful ‘Ipvitas tion to the Walts.’’ ‘ he The clearer the)