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'STAMPS. BY D. H. DAVENPORT.
Alvin W. Hall, director of the Bu- reau of Engraving and Printing, made Available some interesting statistics relative to the output of stamps dur- ing a radio address Thursday evening According to Mr. Hall, 13,800.000,000 stamp*, having a face value of *458,- 775.500 and requiring 830 tons of
paper, are printed annually. About 50 tons of Ink and 60 tons of gum are
Used. If the year's production was dis-
tributed equally among the entire
population of the United States each man, woman and child would get about 110 stamps.
* * * *
When the sale of the famous col- lection of the late Arthur Hind closed this last Thursday a total of *880,- 000 had been realized.
Two stamps were sold at the London session for a total of *18,000. These were blue Hawaiian missionary stamps, 2-cent values, issued in 1852. One
brought £2,050, while a similar one, not as desirable a copy, brought £1,500.
* * * *
George B. Sloane. official expert, American Philatelic Society, has re-
ported on the result of his examina- tion of faked center line and arrow j blocks of the recent imperforate issue,
alleged to have been made by a den- tist residing in Detroit, now in cus-
tody on a Federal charge of using j the mails to defraud. His observa-1 tions are recorded for the guidance j of prospective purchasers of these premium items:
"I have had an opportunity to ex-
amine blocks of the Mother's day and
Wisconsin imperforates with center
lines and arrows drawn in. “At first appearance the blocks are
likely to deceive any one off guard, nnd I consider them well done, and j the color of the drawn-in lines well
matched. But a close examination reveals many points which will prove their undoing, things which are well to look for. As an example, in some
cases the ink of a drawn-in line over-
ran the edge of the paper and stained it through. Typical of lines drawn with a pen is the uneven thickness of the line as the ink on the pen begins to thin down, and this un-
evenness, and I might say slight raggedness of the line is best seen
when examined closely under a good magnifier. Frequently the drawn-in lines shows a lightness and a dark- ness over its course. These points, of course, may be laid to carelessness, as
in the case of one arrow which showed small specks and dots of ink where the point of the pen probably caught for an instant.
“An important point in my mind was in the case of blocks which showed printing offsets on the reverse
of the stamps. There was a center j line block which showed a very plain offset on the back from the next sheet in the stack, but the offsetting showed no center lines, and in the case of an arrow block there was no
offsetting of an arrow.
"There was another center line block where the faker selected a block which already showed a genuine guide line in one direction and he merely drew in one faked line to complete a
center cross line."
W. Hayden Collins, veteran collec- tor and dealer, has returned to this city after a several months’ sojourn j in Florida and has reopened his shop I In the Phillips Building, 927 Fifteenth i street. Mr. Collins is breaking up his I personal collection of over 40,000 gen- eral stamps.
* * * *
The postage rate of 3 cents for each ounce or fraction thereof on non- local first-class matter has been con- tinued by Congress for another two years, or until June 30, 1937.
* * * *
An air of expectancy was prevalent In the Post Office Department the latter part of this past week, but no
definite information could be obtained bs to the reason. One official, when ap- proached for possible news, passed a
remark about “the calm before the storm"; another vouched the infor- mation that “there may be some new
stamps issued soon,” while a third responded that “there should be some j new stamps soon—we haven't had a
new issue for several days now.” However, the only “official” Infor-
mation obtainable was that the
philatelic museum in the Postal Ad- j ministration Building has proved so ! popular that additional space will soon ! be made available.
* * * *
Frank A. Bickert was elected presi- dent of the Collectors’ Club at a meet- ing in the Thomson School last Tues- day evening. Chosen to serve with him are: Vice president, E. V. Haines; secretary. C. H. Just, and treasurer, W. E. Kingswell. After the election the retiring president, F. R. Rice, in- vited Mr. Bickert to preside, and plans for the coming year were discussed.
Committee chairmen were ap- pointed as follows: Finance. Walter H. Cottrell: sales, H. E. Galloway: auction. W. E. Kingswell; expertization, Alden H. Whitney; entertainment and publicity, William M. Stuart; mem-
bership, F. R. Rice; bulletin, H. H. Marsh; reception and house, Joseph Andrews: constitution and by-laws, J. F. Casey, and librarian, Mrs. Grace X, MacKnight.
All present and former members of the club are Invited to attend a "home- toming” Tuesday evening.
The group voted to participate in National Stamp Club week, November 4 to 10.
The group is planning to entertain the American Philatelic Society and American Air Mail Society while these two organizations are in Washington for their annual conventions.
* * * *
A meeting of the Washington Phi- latelic Society will be held Wednesday evening at the Carlton Hotel. The scheduled address by James Waldo Fawcett has been postponed until a
later date. The General Committee in charge of
arrangements for the American Phila- telic Society convention in Washing- ton, August 12 to 16, met at the Carl- ton Hotel Friday evening. This com-
mittee will meet again next Friday evening.
The subcommittee in charge of the program will meet tomorrow evening and the banquet group will meet
Tuesday evening. * * * *
The American Airmail Society has
requested the Post Office Department to release a new stamp during the annual convention of the group in Washington next August. A bi-col- ored printing of the current 16-cent airmail-special delivery stamp has
been suggested. This stamp, which
has proved to be most popular, due perhaps to its color, was first placed on sale in Chicago last Summer In
I
BY JAMES WALDO FAWCETT. Paris was the capital of the world
of stamps for many years and stiU has
claims to be considered in that regard. It was on the banks of the Seine
that the aclence of philately was ‘‘in- vented" and J.he very word by which the collecting and study of stamps is known everywhere on earth was the creation of a French connoiseur.
Also, it was in Paris that philately attained its earliest approximation of maturity. The story of its evolution may be heard from any veteran en-
thusiast at the open-air bourse in the
Champs Elysees on a Sunday or
Thursday afternoon. Two generations of collectors have
come and gone since groups of school- boys originally gathered under the chestnut trees of a little park area near
the Palais of the president of the Re-
public. To picture the scene, a Wash- ington reader need only to imagine half of Lafayette Square filled with a
throng of young people buying, selling or trading stamps.
But the crowds of the present epoch in Paris are not swarms of children exclusively. On the contrary, adults predominate; and the explanation is obvious enough. The juvenile ama- teurs of 1880 or 1900 have become the grown-up professionals of 1935. Briefly, the habit of meeting twice a
week in informal philatelic congress has survived its sponsors and most of its secondary practitioners and now at- tracts a third clientele. Aged devotees with gray beards or snow-white mus-
taches, returning with consistent regu- larity to the spot, proudly tell how they were introduced to it by their fathers five or six decades ago.
No one—not even Maurice Langlois, dean of French collectors, or Louis Francois, his colleague and friend- can be quite certain of the date at which the bourse was founded. ‘‘It was not deliberately started. Instead, it grew gradually from chance meet- ings of boys who were free from school on Sundays and Thursdays.”
To an American, the spectacle of the assembly is fascinating. The sales stands are portable tables or plain boards laid over rented chairs and there are scores of them, arranged in lengthy irregular lines along the paths. Dealers bring their stocks in suitcases; collectors carry their albums or ex-
change books under their arms. Each individual sets up or lays out his wares, then strolls about to inspect the offerings of his neighbors. A wife, a
sister, a daughter or a friend watches the property in the owners absence and "takes care of business.” The initial question invariably is: ‘‘In what country are you interested, please?’ There are few specialists in the throng: almost without exception French philatelists are concerned for the whole field of stamps, not rigidly for any single small fraction of it.
Prices seem fairly high to a stranger, but the people who know the bourse best say that they are “too low.” The Yvert and Tellier ‘‘Catalogue de Tim- bres-Poste," 39th edition, is the ac-
cepted criterion and selected specimens bring half or a quarter of the listed values. But there likewise are numer- ous "occasions” or "bargains” for cus- tomers who are not excessively par- ticular-stamps of very common vari- ties. off-center or damaged. Reprints, it- is worth mentioning, are plainly labeled; "Re-issues.”
iraae oramarny is orisK ana tne total sales of a seven-hour period, from luncheon to dinner time, surely must run close to 100,000 francs.
Sources of material include banks, department stores, publishers, railroad and steamship company offices, insur- ance offices, government bureaus, schools, hospitals (like those for vet- erans of the Great War) and convents. Each dealer has supply facilities of his own discovery or cultivation.
One surprising, yet wholly logical feature, is the great number of French Colonial stamps on cover or part- cover, canceled. The populations of the various scattered sections of France’s imperial domain, it seems, are more abundantly literate than might be supposed! A pile of several thou- sand assorted Colonial air mail en-
velopes at one stand and similar, if smaller, piles at many others is con-
vincing evidence of the postal ties be- tween the colonies and "home.” Proof of the popularity of airport service also is demonstrated by the circumstance.
Old covers, too, from the era of the President-Emperor Napoleon, 3d—Na- poleon the Little, as the poet Swin- burne called him—are on sale, in lots of 10 to 4 francs or separately at “prices various.”
collectors oi government postcards —France, Italy, Austria and Switzer- land, notably—find plentiful assort- ments for their inspection. But “mis- sion mixtures” are not to be had at any price. "The day of cheap miscellane- ous packets is gone forever.” an Amer- ican wholesale buyer explains. “I have been all over Europe, trying to find bulk lots and I am going back to New York empty-handed.”
Every boulevard, avenue, street and even small courtyards out of the main streams of traffic has stamp shops. The entire city is stamp-minded. Philately is a "side line” in nearly all bookshops, railroad stations, banks and hotels.
Collectors of the republic are or- ganized in a fraternity known as the Federation des Cercles Philateiiques de France, of which M. Langlois is honorary president and Ernest Dole executive president.
For especially eminent stamp schol- ars there is L’Academie de Philatelie, Henri Kastler, president.
Among the most important collec- tions of the philatelic issues of France is that of Etienne Motte-FUpo. An- other is the property of M. Dille- mann.
The Marquis de Fayolle has a mag- nificent collection of Mexico, 1856 to 1874; and Charles Favry is' cele- brated for his Belgian Congo.
An active force in stamp journalism •s Dr. Carroll Chase, an American physician, born at Windham, N. Y., who joined the medical corps of the French Army in 1915, served until March, 1919, and has resided in Paris continuously since 1929. A collector since boyhood, he is a past-president of the American Philatelic Society and an acknowledged authority on early United States stamps. He has earned by the exercise of his genius the Crawford Medal and the Linden- berg Medal, and is a member of the Legion of Honor, a corresponding member of L’Academie de Philatelie and a fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society of Great Britain.
connection with the A. A. M. S. con- vention.
A stamp has been proposed to com- memorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Adams on October 30. Inaugurated in 1797, President Adams was the first occupant of the White House.
i
Who Are You? Ths Romanes of Your Nams.
BY RUBY HASKINS ELLIS.
<5risu>ol& fT,HE exact origin of this surname
has not been determined other than the fact that it existed as a place name in England before the Norman
Conquest. The family of Griswold was
established at Solehull, Warwickshire, before 1400.
Among the first of the Griswold settlers In America were two brothers. Edward and Matthew, of the family home in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. They arrived in Windsor, Conn., in 1639. In 1667, Edward, the older
brother, moved to Killingworth, later called Clinton. Conn., while Matthew had established his home in Saybrook Colony, where he was first magistrate and governor’s assistant. He became a
landowner of considerable importance in the town of Lyme. Conn.
The coat of arms here illustrated Is
blazoned: “Argent, a fease gules be- tween two greyhounds courant sable. Crest—a greyhound passant proper.”
(Copyright, 1935.) ■■ ♦-
Party Forced to Back New Deal as ’36 Nears
(Continued From First Page.!
I men to express themselves and to live
up to their records of leadership, there are two courses. One would be the formation of a third party, a
constitutional Democratic party dedi- cated to defense of the Constitution, analogous to the “gold Democrats” who formed a third party when Wil- liam Jennings Bryan in 1896 cap- tured the regular Democratic party for himself and for free silver.
The other course to accommodate Democratic leaders dissatisfied with
Mr. Roosevelt's administration would be some kind of formal coalition be- tween the conservative Democrats and the Republicans. This course is so much called for by conditions that it will be difficult to avoid it. even
1 though Republican workers and local leaders don't like it. The conditions next year will be dramatic, and events are likely to be proportionately dra-
matic. (Copyright. 19.75 )
-DAILY SHORT STORY-
DOCTOR'S WIFE There Was a Chance in a Thousand That This Operation
Would Be Successful. He Took It. BY G. C. COLER.
_ _mmmmmmwtmmmmgmm 1 ——■
DR. MORRISON stepped out of the elevator
and moved toward i the front door of i the city hospital, 'buttoning his gloves and setting
j his hat at a more
! jaunty angle as he went. He hummed contentedly to him-
| self. Within the hour
he would be sit-
I ting tete a tete with Sylvia War-
j ren over an inti- J mate table at some
l discreet restaurant, | and he meant to ! propose marriage i to her that eve-
ning. After all, 48
wasn't so old. and he had been alone for so long. Twenty
There, it was done.
"Are you aware that we have a po- lice force in this
city?” The sur-
geon's voice was witheringly dry.
“Well. Hutchins
thought that he could handle it all right by himself. The husliand shot
through the door and he caught it in the chest. Looks like a .38 slug, lodged in the peri- cardium.”
"Um-m. Lose much blood?”
"Quite a bit. I packed the wound, treated him for shock and gave him a saline injec- 11 o n. He’s all
ready for you. Dr.
Morrison,” Evans said as the red TV .Maenilnn room
years! It seemea unoeuevaoie mai
his wife, Maris Hutchins, the famous artist, had left him that long ago
taking with her all his. dreams and their young son, James, jr. Morrison had wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps.
He wondered what had happened to them, smiling as he remembered the
day when young Jimmy, in an experi- mental mood, had brushed his initials upon his little palm with nitric acid he found upon his mother's engraving table. What a flurry had ensued!
Young Jimmy had always been like that—eager and questing for knowl- edge and new experiences, utterly fearless of consequences. He supposed that he was grown up now and prob- ably a staid business man somewhere.
He had no way of knowing Jimmy and his adored mother had vanished as. completely as though the earth had swallowed them. He had not even seen her name in the papers, though he had looked for years after-
ward, grimly hoping for some clue to her whereabouts. He wondered if she
were still living. And Maris—well, Sylvia was the
nearest approach to her perfection that he had discovered as yet! He wondered whimsically if he still had
ideals after the hard, grim years he had spent in rising to the post of head surgeon in the city hospital!
The unromantic voice of Miss Nor- ris, the head nurse, reached him as he was about to move through the re-
volving door, gently jolting him out of his meditations.
“I’m sorry, doctor, but the ambu- lance crew has just come in and Dr. Evans reports that Dr. Hutchins, the new interne, has been injured and is in a critical condition.
“Eh? Let Dr. Burnes handle it, nurse,” he impatiently suggested. “That is what I have an assistant for.”
"Dr. Burnes has an appendectomy waiting, and this is too serious for any of the younger doctors to handle—a gunshot wound near the heart.” Mor- rison's forehead wrinkled and he bit his under lip.
“All right, Miss Norris, prepare the patient and have them get my things ready.” He glanced at the clock on
the wall and made a wry face. A doc- tor’s wife would have to get used to these situations!
As he was washing and being ster- ilized he questioned Dr. Evans about the incident. "We went up after this Italian woman—some one called and said that she had been shot by her drunken husband. Dr. Hutchins was
on duty with me and he went up the
stairway first. The crazy husband slammed the door and refused to
’open it.
ilCWliCVI Jiuiii --
Morrison scarcely looked at the tall
young man on the table as he super- intended the anaesthesis, took the
waiting scalpel from the assisting nurse Bnd prepared to operate.
It was not a person he was looking at; it was a task.
He noted at once that this was go-
ing to be a delicate operation. It
would take all of his surgical science to accomplish It successfully. “A
chance in a thousand for success,” he guessed mentally. He'd take that chance!
His skillful fingers moved with sure
precision. He knew what he wanted done; those 10 slim, carefully trained servants of his knowledge did It for him—wielding the scalpel cool, de-
liberately. There, it was done! The bullet was
extracted. The patient was certainly saved. Irrelevantly Dr. Morrison thought of Sylvia waiting.
A bit wearily he straightened up. the nervous tension of the past half hour suddenly relaxed. He realised he was as good a surgeon as he had been 10 years ago. The murmurs of congratulation from his clinical as-
sistants fell pleasantly on his ears.
He could still take one chance In a
thousand and win! The floor nurse called to him as
he was going into the dressing room: “Dr. Morrison!”
“Yes?” He turned to her. “The young man’s mother is in the
waiting room.” She pointed to the stretcher being pushed toward the elevator. “I thought she should know her son Is safe. Will you speak to her? She’d think I was merely try- ing to comfort her.”
Morrison shook his head. “I’m in a hurry. The patient is past danger. Tell his mother that.”
He bent over the young doctor’s still unconscious body, lifted the limp arm to take his pulse. • His thoughts were already with Sylvia, composing the speech he would make to explain his having kept her waiting. The nurse turned to go.
"I’ll tell her, doctor,” she said crisply, "to come back tomorrow.”
Morrison glanced at his patient's hand while he felt the pulse. He bent over closer. Then his face suddenly flushed, and as suddenly''" drained white. He looked up.
“Nurse! Nurse!” he called. “Tell the young man’s mother to wait. Tell her to wait for me!”
He looked again at his patient's hand, seeing through blurred eyes in a pinkish scar the symbols: J. U.
And Sylvia was still waiting, (Copyright. 1935.)
\
Her Stamps Win Prize
Ten-year-old Marion Alice Lancaster, who won a first prize for her entry in the recent Na- tional Junior Stamp Ex- hibition in New York. Her exhibit was a por- tion of her young-folks- on-stamps collection.
America and Revolution (Continued Prom First Page t_
ity cutting off each other’s heads. The shadowed last act featured dishonest speculators bloated with the spoils of a ruined, corpse-strewn France.
French Components. Like the Russian, the French rev-
olution had a long prologue. There was a privileged class which no longer believed in itself, and said so. There was a great middle’class exorbitantly taxed. There was an industrial class
which had been ruined by the lofty but Impractical measures of the "phil- osopher'' statesmen In the 1780s, and whose unemployed workmen formed the revolutionary mobs of 1792. There
was a peasantry, exasperated indeed
by taxation and forced labor, but whose condition, on the evidence of Arthur Young, was Infinitely better than it was to be after the revolution had passed.
The French Revolution abolished provilege. But it was not the revo-
lution we naturally think of, with the guillotines and the tumbrels and blood-
intoxicated mobs dancing the Car-
magnole, which abolished It. At one
of the first sittings of the Legislative Assembly, In 1789. the abolition of all
privileges was unanimously and ec-
statically voted by the aristocrats and the representatives of the church themselves. They were in the era
of a "new deal,” a new deal which
was to establish the millennium. What then produced the horrors of
1792 and onward—that spectacle of France insanely destroying itself in wholesale fratricide? As in Russia.' there was a tiny party of determined quasi-professional revolutionists who were by no means satisfied with the \ first act of the new deal. That party was the secret society of the Ilium- j inati, vowed to the extermination of all monarchy and all privileges, pro- fessing egalitarian ideals indistinguish- 1
able from those of the modern Com- munist.
For years back, in an atmosphere of humanitarian "philosophy” whose
god was Rousseau, the Illuminati had
progressively captured French Free
Masonry, ruled by the Grand Orient.
They allied themselves with the con-
spiratorial clique of the Due d’Or-
leans, determined to dethrone Louis j XVI and substitute the Duke, and also with Prussia, unscrupulous to break the Franco-Austrian alliance, which was a barrier to Prussian ambitions.
England also, resentful of French aid! to her successfully rebelling colonies, was not displeased to see France de- posed from her position of the leading nation In Europe,
Ruffians Were Victors. For these people the “new deal" of j
1789, inaugurating the millennium j with the abolition of privileges and, Louis XVI accepting his new status of “constitutional King” amid the
adoring enthusiasm of his people, was
emphatically not enough. It was the agents and the money of the Due d'Orleans which organized the riots j of June and August. 1792—ten or
twenty thousand ruffians at mo6t, ; while the people of Paris kept trem-
blingly within doors—which swept Louis XVI from his throne.
Then came the struggle between the victors, which ended in the Due d'Orleans. vainly dubbins; himself “Philip Equality," perishing on the scaffold whither he had sent his cousin. And then came anarchy. And behind it all, in an obscurity which
history is only just beginning to
pierce, were the ignoble scoundrels who grew rich on the loot, and the bands of gangsters who terrorized and plundered the countryside in perfect Immunity.
The French Revolution is still full of lessons. The Bolsheviks particularly have made an anxious study of them, and are never tired of drawing the
morals. For them there were to be no romantic convoys to the guillotine, but anonymous execution in a cellar. For them—if they can help it—there is to be no Ninth Thermidor.
The chief lesson of the French Revolution, as of the Commune, and of Russia and of Hungary in 1918-19. and indeed of all revolutions, is that
| there can be no revolution unless facilitated by the ineptitude of the government. The proper business of a government is to secure the life and property of its citizens, to afford them the maximum of opportunity to conduct their legitimate affairs, and then to be as little of a nuisance as possible.
Steps to Revolution.
When, as in the years precedent to | 1789, it identifies itself with an un-
; assailable bureaucracy whose main ! function is to harass the citisens with a multitude of pettifogging restrictions (those of the ancient regime were in- credible in their petty complexity): when by ill-judged interference with trade and industry it produces hosts of despairful workless; when it piles up such a crushing load of public debt— as did the Bourbon ministers—that a violent annihilation of liabilities seems the only way out; when its financial
juggleries—as in the last years of Louis XVI—have utterly killed confi- dence—then it has created the condi- tions prerequisite to revolution and its own destruction.
But even then no revolution can
| succeed unless the government vir-
tually abdicates—does not resist while yet it has the power. If at the Tuil- eries, on that fateful August 10, 1792, Louis XVI had ordered his Swiss Guards to fire (instead of forbidding them to do so), that rabble would have
i run for its life, all France would have
enthusiastically applauded its beloved monarch and & million men would not have died violent deaths unnecessarily.
For in August, 1792, the Revolution and all the glorious principles it estab- lished was long ago peacefully won.
The King was hurled from his throne to the scaffold by what was nothing more than a gangster’s hold-up.
Similarly, in Russia, after the abor- tive Bolshevik attempt of July, 1917, Lenin, Trotsky and the other leaders were surrounded in their Petrograd headquarters bp the troops of the Ker- ensky government. A battery of guns was trained at close range on the edi- fice (the commander of that battery is, I believe, in New York). Kerensky sent an order forbidding the battery to fire. Had those guns spoken. Russia these 18 years would have been some
sort of Liberal Republic and the Bol-
shevik rising would havt been men-
<
Cleavage of British
And French Not Basic
(Continued From First Page.)
France and. unlike the Germans and the French, the British know It. But they are equally afraid lest Germany, recognizing this fact, becomes des-
perate and France reckless. The trou- ble a, however, that failure to pro- claim an obvious truth may make the Germans reckless and the French
desperate. And I am rure that not a few Englishmen would regard the latest French alliance with the So- viet Union as an evidence of despera- tion.
New Gesture* Likely. As long as British policy a Inter-
preted as being either pro-French or
pro-German, the kind of policy Im- posed by pro-British considerations must be overlooked. That policy a based upon the recognition of the fact that If Germany conquers France, Great Britain will thenceforth be in- defensible. Meantime, unless all signs fall, the Anglo-German naval agree- ment, like the proposal of the Prince of Wales for the fraternization or British and German war veterans, a likely to be followed by further and similar gestures. To make conces-
sions upon unessentials and thus to avoid a collision over essentials—that is the essence of British policy today. But while it is Anglo-German veter- ans. who are fraternizing, it a the Anglo-French general staffs which are
co-operating. It a safe to gamble that the new
British cabinet will continue the way It has begun. By following that course,
too, it will render its domestic posi- tion impregnable if, one day in the
future, Hitler resorts to an act of real aggression which precipitates another general war on the Continent. Neither labor nor the liberal lemnant can
charge that the Tories failed to make the effort and, as long as such a
charge could be made, the situation of the government in a new crisis would be uncomfortable If not danger- ous. Moreover, the British know per-
fectly well that the Germans do not want to fight them, that Hitler him- self has pronounced another Anglo- German war as an ultimate stupidity. They know also that Hitler is striving desperately to make every sort of con-
cession to remove the necessity of such a war.
If the ultimate objective oi Miner
is to persuade the British to stand aside and let Germany crush France, he will fail, but'meantime is there
any reason for not taking advantage of the present mood of Der Rcichs- fuehrer? If there be. London cannot discover it. All that has happened is that Germany is arming on sea by agreement and within fixed limits. On land, however she is arming with- out limit and without agreement and. from the British standpoint, what is worse, is that she is doing the
same thing in the air. But some
agreement as to the air program may be reached. That is the next
step and it will be undertaken, no
matter how much Rome howls and Paris protests.
British Stick to Reality. At its best, in a word, British
statesmanship is still the best in the world, because it is the only states-
manship which in foreign affairs does not divorce itself completely from reality and start by dismissing com-
mon sense. Until war is declared the
British insist upon acting as if it
were not going to be declared on the theory that there is just a chance that it won't be declared after all. The French say that since Germany exists-war exists and policy must be based upon this fact. They may be right or the British may be right in
asserting that such a course makes certain a war that was not other- wise inevitable. But, whether they are right or wrong, the British are
likely to continue as they have been
going, because that is the way they think.
Accordingly, none of Hitler’s letters to Downing street in the next few months is likely to- be returned un-
opened. In fact, he may find him-
self offering more than he expected or getting a too ready acceptance for offers he never meant to have
accepted. If. moreover, he misunder- stands the import of British action- then that is his very, very hard luck—as Bethmann-Hollweg might remind him if the former chancellor were still alive.
(Copyright. 1935.)
Wooden Snake Causes Death. Borrowing a wooden snake from a
friend. 12-year-old Mohamed Ibrahim of Tanta. Egypt, set It crawling across
the kitchen floor of his home to frighten his mother and sisters. The startled mother fell backward into a
bucket of boiling water and was badly scalded. One sister jumped through a
window and was killed and the other suffered a.paralytic stroke. Fearing the anger of his father, the boy locked himself in his bed room and tried to commit suicide by saturating his
clothing with gasoline and setting it ablaze. -- ■
Thieves Loot Policeman. CHICAGO (>P).—Burglars got Po-
liceman John Deshonga extra police badge, his two revolvers, his jewelry end $4. but they didn’t get one thing— his temper. That is, they didn't get it until, seeking solace, he turned to his refrigerator and found the thieves had scored a grand slam—the cup- board was bare.
tioned only in a historical footnote, as
the insurrection of Babeuf U men-
tioned. Tables Are Turned.
Lenin himself could never be suffi- ciently scornful of Kerensky’s im- becility. Trotsky, struggling for power with Stalin in 1927, thought to repeat his tactics of 1917. But when his
groups of armed and resolute men
went to seize the telephone and power centers, they found themselves out- numbered by Stalin’s gpually armed
and resolute men, waiting for them— and Trotsky went to Prinkipo.
Violent social revolution means the destructive supremacy of the lowest common denominator—of what an
American writer recently called “neo- lithic man" as opposed to a cultured human being—working for Interests he knows not of, as In Russia today. When, after appalling sacrifice and
the extinction of all that long ages have accumulated of culture, the hu- man instinct to create and build again asserts itself, we have, as In drab, de- pressing Russia, the spectacle of the
mass naively believing that its few new hospitals represent the ultimate In medical science, or that its new Moscow subway is the most “beau- tiful” (and the Bolshevik specifically abjured “beauty”!) In the world. It is an immense and pathetic futility.
Change there must be. The muta- bility of social structures is a proof of their life; only the dead is static—
end not then, for it decays into dust. But mass-scale social revolution, such as the parlor Bolsheviks prattle of, is a gigantic, violent suicide. It Is never
inevitable. It happens only when
j governments, bewildered and fatigued, 1 have lost faith in themselves.
(.
Germany’s Naval Threat (Continued From Third Page.)
laying down of large capital ehlpe— and there la every Indication that at least two will be built Immediately— then not only will the older British
battleships be replaced, but the Brit- ish battle fleet will be Increased by new vessels altogether—a real addi- tion.
French Attitude Undisclosed. The French attitude is at present
undisclosed; but the new Deutschland class previously referred to has already caused the laying down in French shipyards of two large battleships of 23,000 tons each. As Italy has re-
sponded by commencing two vessels
of 35,000 tons, and more powerful than the French battleships now
building, we may expect, in the ab- sence of any new international agree- ment, that France will lay down fur- ther battleships of the 30,000-ton type, costing in the neighborhood of
$40,000,000 each, and more powerful, because of modem construction, than anything now figuring in the Navy list of the United States.
Unless a new policy can be agreed upon the world is about to embark on
a feverish naval shipbuilding race.
Because of the German revival of submarine building, we may expect a
considerable increase in the destroyer flotilla of Britain. It Is true that Germany at present is commencing only 12 submarines of modern size. But submarines can be built in time of emergency more rapidly than the crews can be trained. The safe- guard, so long as the treaty of Ver- sailles was observed, was that though Germany could build submarines in secret, she could not train the crews
in secret. For once a submarine is
completed and put to aea there Is no
disguising her; the whole world would know of It.
Now that Germany la to have a flotilla of 12 submarines she can train' in them an unlimited number of sail- ors skilled In the operation of these diabolical war craft. Once she has the trained personnel Germany can then increase her submarine fleet as rapid- ly as she did during the great war.
New Code Laid Down. And there Is another Important con-
sideration. At the London Naval Conference of 1930 definite rules were
laid down for the future use of sub- marines In time of war. The Great War saw a radical departure from the
long established practices of war at sea
on the part of the German submarine commanders. In the days of the old sailing privateers, merchant vessels
captured at sea were brought into a
prize court for trial. If, owing to mili- tary exigencies, this could not be done, the captors claimed the right to sink such prizes; but in all cases the crew and passengers had first to be removed to a place of safety.
This naval code, which had existed for centuries, was departed from dur- ing the Great War. Unarmed mer- chant vessels were torpedoed on the high seas and the crews left to fend for themselves. They might carry neutral passengers, women and chil- dren and invalids—that did not mat- ter. Under the clauses of the naval treaty of 1930 the governments of the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan agreed on certain definite rules which to a large extent restored the old code of chivalry at sea. These rules would have prevented such inci- dents as the sinking of the Lusitania with neutral Americans on board, of whom 100 perished.
Acute Problems of Abyssinia Now Threaten Collapse of Duce‘s Regime
(Continued From Third Page.) !
Rome and Berlin. He hinted that he might be driven—by Franco-British
opposition in Africa—to making a deal with Hitler. It is possible that Hitler would recognize the Brenner Pass as
the Italo-German frontier in return for Italian neutrality vis-a-vis Aus- j trian independence. Hitler found it convenient to forget the hated Polish Corridor for a similar concession and he can easily do with the Brenner Pass for a decade. Furthermore. British Intelligence reports that the Germans have been extremely active in Abys- sinia lately, both politically and eco-! nomically. If Germany and Italy were to go to war the Germans could strike a wicked blow at their enemies in Africa. The Ethiopian Emperor would not be averse to driving the Italians away from his Somaliland and Eritrean doorsteps and gaining access
to the Red Sea. If those colonies were
lost all Musoslini would have left would
be a few square miles of burning sands ;
1 in Tripolitana and the figments of a
colonial dream.
In Abyssinia itself the difficulties the i
Italians will have to overcome are
gigantic. Campaigning under adverse geographical, climatic, sanitary condi- >
tions will tax the ingenuity of the
Fascist general staff. Airplanes and ; tanks and heavy artillery will be worthless in jungle and desert cam- | paigning, or on the high plateau which constitutes the greatest stronghold of
the Ethiopians. Furthermore, if the Abvssinians are not the aggressors, they would have no difficulty in get-
ting "aid and comfort" and plentiful war supplies from European powers— and Germany and Japan. The Turks, Greeks and Balkan states have no iove for Mussolini and would be glad to see
him “stub his toe” in Africa. Reliable reports indicate that the expeditionary forces already have encountered seri- !
ous obstacles and they have not yet i started their penetration.
Difficulties at Home.
At home, too, there is reason to believe that all is not bright for H
Duce. At Milan, according to eye- witnesses. the Black Shirt militia and local police had to be called out to
keep reservists and conscripts on the troop trains. Several “executions” for mutiny have been reported and j the Fascist press itself prints stories ! of many arrests of intellectuals, ex- j Socialists and pacifists on the charge of “obstruction” and “endangering the interests of the state.”
Industrial and financial circles are
opposed to the enormous expenditure entailed. They cannot accept Mus- | solini's assurance that it will be a
six-month campaign. They point to
Italy's previous experiences, to the
French difficulties in the Riff and | Spain's Moroccan campaign, which cost King Alfonso his throne.
The regular army, too, is said to be 1
hostile, believing that Mussolini should conserve his strength for a
possible crisis on the continent. Gen. Balbo. Italy’s premier airman and air marshal, is reported to have curtly declined the honor of leading air armadas over the Abyssinian jungles He wants to be ready to inherit II Duce's toga if it falls from his shoul- ders.
j Economically the African adven- | ture is fraught with consequences. ! The officially admitted cost is 200.- j : 000.000 lire per month. The “forced I
loan" of 1.000.000,000 lire to defray the first six months’ costs had to be taken by the banks, the public being chary of subscribing. Italy's bud-
getary deficit for 1934-5 is officially estimated by the finance ministry at more than five billion lire. Since 1931 it has never been below 4.143,- 000,000 lire, with the annual budgets ranging between 22 and 25 billion lire. Financially Italy is scarcely more
solid than Germany. In a country where the press is
censored, where criticism forbidden and opposition ruthlessly suppressed, there is no way of assessing the na-
tional stamina. It goes without argu- ment that the African invasicjp is unpopular, except perhaps among the youth. Mussolini may be purposely blind to the difficulties which beset him diplomatically in Europe. He
may be equally blind to opposition— underground—at home. For both Eu- rope and Italy the immediate future, in respect to Abyssinia, is filled with
dangers. It cannot bring a general European war, but it can easily bring the collapse of fascism. Mussolini has said. “I place my confidence in no man." He is going it alone, and when decisions and judgments rest in the hands of an individual as
reckless as Mussolini there is no way of telling what may happen.
Bones Puzzle Contractor. SPARTANSBURG, S. C. <A>).—R. A
Self, a contractor. Is puzzled about some remains he dug up during an excavation job.
He found human bones, rusted bar- rel hoops and a round piece of met a! that apparently was the base of an old stein.
He thinks an early inhabitant may have been buried in a barrel with a
beer mug in his hand.
Dog Saves Woman, 72. ELMIRA. Mo. C45).—The snapping
jaws of Tinker, a small dog, are be- lieved to have saved the life of Mrs Viola Clemente, 72, when an infuriated cow charged the woman and began trampling her. Tinker jumped to the rescue and drove the cow away bv
nipping at her legs. Mrs. Clemente suffered a fractured jaw.
Milk for “Laurel and Hardy." An Item ‘‘of one week's milk for
'Laurel and Hardy,’ 60 cents'* on the office expense account of the city of Bingley, England, caused the explana- tion that two cate named for the screen comedians had done such ef- fective mousing at a park pavilion that they were given official status.
STAMPS. _
THE STAMP SHOP T. S. and Foreisn Stamp*
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Bought and Sold Hobby Shop
716 17th St. N.W._Plst- 1372
WHITNEY’S STAMP MART 1107 Pa. Aw. Next to Star Office-
Reopenlnr. Simr Bids !»27 I.JttiSt- COLLINS STAMP SHOP Breaking up 4Q.QOQ variety collection.
STAMP ALBUMS Stock Books. Catalogues. New Set«. Blntle Stamps Philatelic Supplies. Call and aee
me I also BUY Collection*
Harry B. Mason, 918 F N.W.
VACATION SPtCIAL Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Only!
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