Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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McCORMICK MESSENGER, McCORMICK, S. C., THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1937 IVevtH Review of Current Events , lYANKS DESERT SHANGHAI Bombs, Shells Rain Death . • • Sen. Black Nominated For Court Post • • • White House Legislation Snagged This Shanghai scene of 1932 is being repeated today. ~^!&rfjuraJejdL J&lckjtuui V M STTMMARTZr.fi THE WHRT.r SUMMARIZES THE WORLD'S WEEK C Western Newspaper Union. lit Still Wasn't War EN. SHERMAN was the Yank who is credited with the re- IG markable observation that “war is 4hell.” Now the 4,000 Yanks in the 'North China danger zone are agreed 'that while the current “unpleasant- 'ness” may not be official war in the eyes of the Japanese govern ment, it surely is the other thing. » With shrapnel raining around their ears, Americans in Shanghai prepared to leave while the leaving was good, and the U. S. S. Augusta, flagship of Uncle Sam’s China squadron, stood by to help them make their getaway, as the great city of 3,500,000 inhabitants sweated in a crisis that threatened greater destruction than the fighting of 1932. 'At least three Americans were killed in the opening skirmishes, < along with about 600 others, mostly iChinese. Yet the American State department indicated that The Unit ed States had no intention of becom- ring involved, even if some American lives were lost. r The gravest situation in the unde- ( dared war to date arose when three ^Chinese bombing planes attacked "the Idzumo, Japanese flagship, as it .lay in the northern end of the Bund. The bombs missed their mark, but they drew the fire of the Japanese, and it was not long before, consid erable areas of Shanghai were set aflame by the incendiary shells. Ironically enough, most of the damage and loss of life was caused by the Chinese themselves. Chinese planes zoomed over the city in the direction of the Japanese ships, to the cheers of the populace, still mindful of the fact that the out come of the 1932 affair might have been different had the Chinese owned military planes at that time. But the cheers turned suddenly into screams of horror as bombs began dropping not upon the hated enemy, but upon defenselsss Chinese civil ians who. filled the native quarters’ streets. Frightful were the scenes which filled the bombed area, as 1,500 dead and wounded lay about, some of them blown to bits. Explanation for the slaughter, as prepared by Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Chinese dictator, was that the men flying the bombers had been wound ed by Japanese anti-aircraft and machine guns and their planes had been so crippled that the bombs were released unintentionally before the fliers reached their objective. Two of the airmen were killed. The planes of destruction had been purchased in the United States. However, the opinion of members .of the United States senate commit tee on foreign affairs was that a statement expected from President 'Roosevelt would not involve the neu trality act, with its power to outlaw the sale of arms and. the extension of credits to belligerent nations. Japanese authorities continued to insist that they meant no harm to the Chinese people, and that their aim was still for the “co-operation” of China, Manchukuo and Japan. They also revealed that voluntary contributions to the nation’s war chest, coming from all over Japan, had reached a total of $2,500,000. —*— South Demands Crop Loans C ONGRESS regarded adjourn ment as possibly farther off than ever as the wage-hour bill got all tangled up with surplus agricul tural control and cotton loans in what looked like a hopeless mess. With the Department of Agricul ture estimating a 15,500,000-bale cot ton crop, about 3,000,000 bales more than can be consumed, Southern representatives and senators were demanding surplus crop Ioeuis. The Commodity Credit corporation has authority to make such loans. In a press conference. President Roosevelt indicated that he had no intention of permitting a 10-cent cot ton loan until congress passed the agricultural control program and ever-normal granary bill which Sec retary of Agriculture Wallace says is necessary before the new session in January. Trouble is the house committee doesn’t know how to write such a bill and make it stick, in view of the Supreme court’s deci sion on the AAA. [ Now the southern bloc has made i. it clear that it will not push through the President’s much-desired wages and hours bill, as dictated by Wil liam Green, president of the Ameri can Federation of Labor, unless southern farmers get their cotton loans. Furthermore, the Southern ers under the capitol dome are now asking for loans as high as 15 cents a pound, and in some cases even 18 cents. The South is not any too well in accord with maximum hours and minimum wages anyway. The result of the whole affair is a complete stalemate. Somebody will have to give in; somebody prob ably will, and there will be old- fashioned “hoss - trading” on a wholesale scale. For congress wants to adjourn before the snow flies. Southerners in the senate were also worried when Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York succeeded in winning recognition to debate an anti-lynching bill, the type of which the South has been successful in blocking since the Civil war. Some were of the opinion that the bill, al ready passed by the house, might be defeated by filibuster (Senator Bilbo of Mississippi threatened to filibuster until Christmas) but more believed that the Southern members would consent to its passage to put President Roosevelt “on the spot.” They explained that if he did not sign it he would lose the negro vote so essential to the third term that is being whispered about, and that if he did sign it the Democratic South would drop him like a hot potato. Nominee Draws Rebuke W ITH his customary exercise of the dramatic, President Roose velt nominated Senator Hugo L. Black (Dem., Ala.) to fill the vacan cy on the Supreme court bench caused by the retirement of Justice Willis Van- Devanter. Senator Black had not even been mentioned for consideration previ ously, and the ap pointment was a complete surprise to his colleagues. For 20 years it has been a custom, when a senator is appointed to high office, for his nomination to be con sidered in open executive session. But when Senator Ashurst (Dem., Ariz.) proposed this in Senator Black’s nomination, objections came forth immediately from Sen ator Burke (Dem., Neb.) and Sena tor Johnson (Rep., Calif.). They asked that the nomination be re ferred to the senate judiciary com mittee for “careful consideration.” This was viewed in the light of a distinct rebuke for the nominee. Senator Black has been a militant leader in the fight for the Presi dent’s wages and hours legislation. As a justice he Would have the op portunity to pass upon measures regulating public utility holding companies, authorizing federal loans and grants for publicly-owned power plants, and fixing prices in the soft-coal industry. He was, as the chairman of the Black commit tee to investigate lobbying, the cen ter. of a storm of public opinion dur ing the early months of 1936. Strange Doings at Sea E'OUR insurgent airplanes dropped ^ 25 bombs upon the Danish ves sel Edith and sank it in the Medi- terannean, came the report from Barcelona. The crew of 20 and a French observer for the non-inter vention control were rescued by two fishing boats. The owners of the vessel, in Copenhagen, said it was their twentieth ship to be captured or bombed by the rebels. The captain of the French freight er Peame reported to authorities that a torpedo had been fired upon his ship by an unidentified subma rine which floated beside his ship for several minutes off the Tunisian coast. When the Spanish tanker Campea- dor was sunk in the Mediterrane an, the rebel command issued a communique taking the full blame. But the captain of the tanker in sisted an Italian destroyer sank it. Senator Black vn M>bu about Japs Balling Chinamen S ANTA MONICA, CALIF.— The formula still holds good. A Jap kills a Chinaman. That’s another dead Chinaman. A Chinaman kills a Jap. That’s a war. But before we get too busy de ploring Japan’s little way of disre garding pledges so as to gobble more Chi-j nese territory let us look at some records closer home. Since the republic was formed we have de liberately broken 264 separate treaties with the original Red own ers of this land. From these viola tions of our solemn promises border wars Irvin S. Cobb frequently ensued. When the Indians started fighting we called it an uprising. When we sent troops forth to slaughter the Indians it was a punitive expedition to re store law and order. If the white soldiers wiped out the Indians that was a battle. If the Indians wiped out the soldiers that was a massa cre. Those who make history rarely get a square deal from those who write history. • * * Keeping Undercover. T HIS is the land where, in self protection, you hide your place of residence and have your tele phone privately listed. The result is, if your aged grandmother hap pens along and doesn’t know your address, she can never reach you, but any smart stranger may ap proach the right party—let us call him a ’phone-legger—and, by pay ment of a small fee, get the number instantly. So, in about two calls out of three, you answer the ring to find at the other end of the line somebody with a neat little scheme, because here in movieland neat little schemes grow on every bush and gentlemen promoting them are equally numer ous. Through long suffering, I’ve be come hardened to this, but today over the wire came a winning voice saying the speaker desired to give me, as he put it, “a checking over for white termites.” I admit to a touch of dandruff and there have been times when I sus pected fleas—we excel in fleas on this coast—but I resent the idea of also being infested with white ter mites. I’ve about decided that, to mod ern civilization, telephones are what cooties are to a war—nobody likes ’em, but everybody has ’em. • * * Camera Sniping. CNAPSHOOTING of famous folks ^ from ambush may be upsetting to the victims of the sniping, but the subscribing public certainly gets an illuminating eyeful every time one of the photographic magazines appears. I’ve just laid aside the current copy of a periodical which could be called either “The Weekly Expose” or “Stop, Look and Laugh.” Among other fascinating, not to say illusion- ing, illustrations, I note the follow ing: A reigning movie queen with her mouth so wide open that her face looked like a “gates ajar” design. If I had tonsils like hers, I’d have ’em right out. A political idol taken in a brief one-piece bathing suit. Next time they snap him, he would be well advised to wear more than a mere g-string. A Mother Hubbard would be better. Or, anyhow, a toga. A statesman is greatly handicapped when he suggests a barrel of leaf- lard with the staves knocked out. A close-up of Mr. John L. Lewis with the lips pouting out and a con gested expression. Would not this tend to confirm the impression that lately Mr. Lewis bit off more than he could chew? This candid camera stuff is trans lating into the pictorial fact the nightmare all of us have had—that horrid dream of being caught out doors with practically nothing on. • * • f Field Days for Reds. I TNDER the warming suns of tol- erance and indifference and even tacit encouragement in cer tain quarters, many of our hot- nouse communists are changing from the pallid, timorous flowerlets of discontent into full-blown advo cates of the glad new age when Lenin will take over Lincoln’s niche in the gallery of the immortals and government everywhere will be of the Trotskys, but the Trotskys, for the Trotskys. True, there still remain some wavering souls who | are so pink they’d be red if they weren’t so yel low! But these quivering aspens shrink in number as their bolder comrades openly profess the blessed doctrine which is doing so much for the un dertaking business in Russia. IRVIN S. COBB. ©—WNU Service. Hityd ADVENTURERS’ CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELFI ★★★★★★*★★★★★★★★★★★★ « Circle of Death 99 By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter H ERE’S a tale of horror that you won’t forget for a long time. Down on the island of Trinidad, off the northern coast of South America, men built a death trap—without realizing that was what they were doing. Another man sprung that trap—by the simple process of stepping on an automobile starter. The ironical part of the whole tale is that that trap was built to save lives, not to take them. But Fate deals out irony with a heavy hand. Ralph L. Nieves of New York City tells us this tale. Ralph was work ing down there then. He had a friend named Jim, who had a job with a company that was drilling oil wells. And it is through Jim that Ralph came to have a part in this story. The part Ralph played in that incident, I might add, was a mighty important one—for Jim. It was November, 1927—a Saturday afternoon. A crowd of people from the oil company, including the owner of the field himself, were all at a football game. Jim was in that party too, and with him was Ralph. It was a happy crowd in a festive mood. Maybe it’s a good thing we mortals can’t see into the future. That gift would surely have ruined the afternoon for that bunch from the oil company’s offices. Circular Canal to Check the Oil Flow. Right in the middle of the game came a message from the oil fieldl The company had drilled two wells without striking oil. A third well was almost finished, and now the news came that it looked like a bonanza. Oil was expected to flow from it almost any minute. The whole crowd left the game, p^ed into three cars, and started for the field. The new well was in the center of a circular canal. That canal had been dug around it about twenty-five yards from the drilling point. It was built for safety. If the oil should catch fire when the well blew, that canal would keep it from spreading. At one point in the circle, a bridge had been built across so that trucks could bring up tools and supplies used in the drilling. The three automobile loads of people drew up at the field. Two/ of the cars stopped outside the circle and their occupants walked across the bridge, but Jim drove his car right into the circle. They were there hardly ten minutes before the well started to gush oil. It was flowing out over the ground—running into the canal. Most of the people in the party had on rubber boots by that time. Ralph wore a pair, but he gave them to a young woman in the.party who didn’t have any, and he himself walked back across the bridge onto the dry ground outside the circle. All Became Human Torches. Jim, meanwhile, had gone off to get a valve to stop the flow of oil. He had just come back and was carrying the valve over toward the derrick when someone—Ralph never found out who it was—got into his The poor devil was running straight toward Ralph. car, intending to drive it out of the circle of oil. He stepped on the starter, and that was the last thing he ever did in his life. The whole area there about was saturated with oil and the air was full of oil fumes. A spark from the motor caught in that field of combustible gas, and in the frac tion of a second the ground inside that circle was a ROARING, BLAZ ING HELL. And standing just outside the circle was Ralph, watching the whole terrible affair. “The minute that car started,” he says, “there was a blinding flash and the whole well was a mass of flame. There were twenty-odd people inside the circle and I stood there horrified while every one of them lighted up like so many torches and started to burn alive. “Then the fire, coursing like liquid flame, ran down into the canal. Already half full of oil, the canal blazed up. In an instant it was a solid wall of fire that mercifully cut off my view of the poor wretches burn ing to death inside.” The only thing Ralph could think of then was that Jim was in there. He screamed his name at the top of his lungs, and started backing away from the blazing death that was leaping up at him out of the canal. He had moved back out of reach of the flames—was standing there too horrified and too dumbfounded to speak another word when, all of a sud den, a MASS OF FIRE, shaped like a human being, came dashing across the burning bridge out of a solid wall of fire that had engulfed it! Jim Saved by His Friend’s Call. The poor devil, whoever it was, was running straight toward Ralph. Ralph ran forward to meet that running, blazing appari tion. He caught it—threw it to the ground. Someone brought up a tank of chemicals. The flaines that were eating up his clothing were put out. And there, almost unrecognizable—lay Jim! Says Ralph: “We rushed Jim to the hospital two miles away. It was hopeless to try to save the others inside that doomed circle. It took three days to put the well fire out, and when it was all over all you could see inside the canal were charred bones and the twisted frame of the car. I never want to see anything like it again.” It was three weeks before they’d let Ralph see Jim at the hospital. He was pretty well on the mend by that time, and the first question Ralph asked him was one that had been puzzling him ever since the day of the fire. “How did you know where the bridge was?” he asked. “How could you see it through that wall of fire when none of the rest could find it?” And Jim replied: “I couldn’t see it. It was the sound of your voice that guided me. When I came back with that valve you were standing right at the end of the bridge. So when I heard you call my name I just ran in the direction of your voice. Don’t you remember calling to me?” “Remember?” says Ralph. “How could I forget it?” ©—WNU Service. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ * ★ ★ ★ STAR DUST ★ ★ ★ ★ * ★ ★ ★ M.ovie • Radio * ★ ★ ★★★By VIRGINIA VALE★★★ I T IS children’s day in Holly wood, with contracts being signed in carload lots to exploit youngsters in films. The five tough young lads whom Sam Goldwyn imported to play in “Dead End” made such a hit at the preview that he prompt ly put all of them under con tract to make more pictures. Their next for him will be “Street Corners” after which Mervyn Le Roy would like to borrow them for a series. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s fa vorite is fourteen-year-old Judy Garland. They have lined up three stories for her. Universal intends to keep Deanna Durbin very busy for the next year, and Paramount plan to star the youngest of all, four-year-old Kitty Clancy, in “Call Back Love.” Rubinoff does not like to expose his priceless Stradivarius violin to brilliant studio lights any longer than is necessary, so duridg rehearsals and whenever he, was not playing for the sound track of “You Can’t Have Everything,” h e used a double. The husky virtuoso car ries a big insurance policy on the viohn and would feel lost if anything hap pened to it. He had it with him when he played at an open air con cert on Chicago’s lake front recent ly when more than 100,000 people listened to him. Rubinoff When Frances Farmetr arrived al New York, instead of pausing po litely to let all the news photogra* phers take pictures of her, sht rushed off to Mount Kisco upstate to go in rehearsal for her first stage engagement. Four nights later I saw her performance and sudden ly found myself wanting to burst into cheers. Playing a role quite unlike any she has done on the screen, a role simply made to or der for Lupe’ Velez, she displayed a cat-like grace of movement, a voice musically rich, and great variety of moods. —■¥— -- Ozzie Nelson and his popular radio orchestra are currently ap pearing at the Astor roof in New York, but soon he will move his activities to Hollywood so as to be near his wife, Harriet Hilliard, who is under long-term contract at the RKO studios. Ozzie is the hero of all boy scouts who want to make a name for themselves. At fourteen he was honored at a jamboree in London as the youngest Eagle scout. Cat’s Tail as Medicine It is considered unlucky in Lan cashire to allow a cat to die in the house, and still more so to allow one to pass in front of a funeral. Black cats are lucky—and the tail of one is a certain cure for styes if the the eyes are stroked with it, as serts a writer in Pearson’s London Weekly. But goats are unlucky and to be avoided, less for their butting abilities as for the fact that once every twenty-four hours they visit the devil to have their beards combed, and are consequently fond of bad company. Every day has its superstitions. Thursday has a lucky hour—the hour before sunrise, but Monday is usually considered un favorable, especially for first meet ings. Tuesdays and Thursdays make good days for weddings; Wed nesday is a had day to start a jour- aev. The Molecule A molecule can be pictured as a tiny particle of matter whose diame ter lies somewhere between a mil lionth and a ten-millionth of an inch, writes Dr. Thomas M. Beck in the Chicago Tribune. In a gas the mol ecules are drifting around in space at relatively great distances from each other. The molecules of a liquid lie closely packed and move in a completely disorderly arrange ment. In a crystaline solid they likewise are closely packed, but in a geometric arrangement. They do not move, only vibrate. The higher the temperature the faster a molecule moves; or, at equal tem peratures, light molecules travel faster than heavy ones. The aver age molecule in air around us trav els about 600 yards a second. Speeds of more than a mile a second arc attained by the lightest. Youngsters who were the original fans of “The Lone Ranger” are getting pretty grown up now, but they confess that they still follow the adventures with bated breath. The popular three-times-a-week se rial recently celebrated its seven hundred and twenty-fifth broadcast. Fran Striker, who has written this series even since it started in Janu ary, 1933, estimates that more than 3,500 characters have appeared in the adventures. All the summer radio surveys re ported that Edgar Bergen and Char lie McCarthy were miles ahead of every other performer in popular ity. Their salary is said to have sky-rocketed from $300 to $3,500 per week. “High, Wide, and Handsome,” a story of the early oil rush in Penn sylvania, is attract ing attention. It more than lives up to the promise of its title, for it is spec tacular, melodious and frenzied. Irene Dunne and Dorothy Lamour provide the beauty and melody; Randolph Scott, pit ted against as tough a lot of villains as you ever hissed—in cluding that incom parable Akim Tamiroff—provides the rough and ready drama. Irene Dunne ODDS AND ENDS—Randolph Scott ai tended his first film premiere in July 1928, standing on an orange crate watch ing the crowds arrive to see Collee\ Moore and Gary Cooper in "Lilac Time. His most recent premiere found him in ■ choice aisle seat u'atching himself as sla of "High, Wide and Handsome" . . Jack Haley has botved out of the "Shot Boat" program but he will have one a his own very soon . Adolphe Men jot and Kathrine Hepburn are bitter rivals 01 the golf course . . . Dorothy Gish, uhor, film fans have never forgotten, will pla the lead in a Mutual broadcasting systet serial called "The Couple Next Door".. When John Barrymore returns to radio, i wont be in Shakespeare, but in "The Am mol Kingdom" and "Accent on Youth, some time in September. Meanwhile he i making a picture at RKO with Iren Dunne. © Western Newspaper Union.