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I McCORMICK MESSENGER. McCORMICK. S. G.. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1940 WHO’S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON (Consolidated Features—WNU Service.) N EW YORK.—In war, both the Poles and the Russians seem to suffer from incurable romance. The Poles clung to their picturesque cav- k> »•«.«» airy against Russ, Like Poles, all the hard . Cling to Horses boiled mili- With III Results advice ir } Europe, and their horses made beautiful targets for machine-gun bullets. The Rus sians in the latest emergency sent in, not a strategist in modern war, but their most romantic cavalry gen eral, Marshal Simion M. Budenny, and reports of disaster follow swift ly. News stories chalk up another “dismal failure,” in the general’s latest assault on the Mannerheim line. In the late summer of 1919, when the cables brought the news that the Bolsheviks were whipped and in flight, and that the White Russian Denikin held all of southern Russia, Budenny galloped through the steppes, recruiting his army of wild horsemen. He was a Cossack, from the Don region, gaudily appareled, and with a huge blow-torch mous tache that flared magnificently in the wind. His little bands of free-boot- ers grew into a huge cavalry army. It swept back, not only Denikin, but his ally, Wrangel and stopped the Poles until the French came -»o their aid. The general was enshrined in legend. He became the hero of folk tales and songs throughout the land—his wife, too, who rode a«d fought with him. Lenin later put him in command of all the Russian cavalry. He is a man of extraordinary energy. “Proletarians, to horse!” was his rallying cry, as he became one of the country’s main incit ers of patriotic enthusiasm. He had all Russia thinking or at any rate feeling that the answer to all its troubles was in getting everybody on horseback. He was a peasant, without school ing. And there is no available rec ord of his having had any training or experience in mechanized war fare. He was a private in the Russo- Japanese war and a petty officer in the early stages of the World war. His wife, said to have been the best rifle shot in Russia, killed herself accidentally while cleaning a gun, in 1925. He married a famous actress of the Mali theater in Moscow, and their joint histrionics have continued to thrill the Russians. He has main tained a horse-breeding farm and encouraged his countrymen to do the same, evidently on the theory that a good horse and a good proletarian slogan would make any Russian un conquerable. ^ M ANY years ago, this writer shared an apartment with the late Willard Huntington Wright. If the Empire State building were an _ . _ ,, ivory tower. Prof Doublet at it would not Philosopher and have been tall Author of Thrills ® nou gh for Mr. Wright in those days. He was an aesthete, fastidious in dress, multi-lingual, a postgraduate of. many European salons, a distinguished art critic and a precisionist of ideas, to whom a primrose by the river’s brim was a simple primulacea and nothing more. I began to feel the altitude, and one day dived out of a 90-story window. It was not until several years later that I learned Mr. Wright had done the same and, con valescing; had become S. S. Van Dine, authoring bell-ringing murder- mystery stories to the end of his days. Somewhat similar is Dr. Ru dolf Kager’s ambidextrous life as a philosopher and writer of detective stories. As he is hired by the New York World’s fair— they may need to have a philoso pher around by next spring—it is revealed that this Kurt Steel who has been keeping us awake nights with “Judas Incorporat ed,” “Crooked Shadows,” and the like, is none other than Dr. Kager, associate professor of philosophy at New York univer sity. At the fair he will work as a philosopher rather than as a detective, palling together a lot of educational loose ends and ravelings which, it seemed, got into a somewhat untidy state last summer. His detective stories started as an anodyne for a feeling of loneliness in the groves of Academe—as in the case of Mr. Wright. In 1930, he had prepared his doctor’s thesis on “The Growth of F. H. Bradley’s Logic,” and had climbed where few or none could follow. He was all fagged out, and any two-dollar word made him shut his eyes and duck. A friend suggested that he bang out a murder story—anything that came into his head. “Murder of a Dead Man” was his first extra-curricular workout. The publishers yelled for mor» Men at Work—They’re Fighting Freedom’s Cause :V' . ^ v** '■ teair is®' mMS N; Three national leaders whose independence efforts have made news around the world: Left: Mohandas Gandhi, Indian independence leader, whose demands for autonomy from Great Britain have increased since the British request for Indian support in the war. Center: Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippine islands, who told the national assembly it must choose now between permanent subservience to the United States or an insecure independence in 1946. Right: Ignace Jan Paderewski, famed pianist and former pre mier of Poland, who has been named president of Poland-in-exile, with headquarters in France. Airplanes End Starvation for 50,000 Wild Ducks x ' ji r rwy ^ .. , More than 50,000 wild ducks were saved from starvation when Illinois sportsmen distributed six tons of grain from the air along the Illinois river in the LaSalle region. The feed was distributed by the-air planes in ice-locked sloughs and back waters. Top: Some of the hundreds of ducks already dead from star vation. Bottom: Loading shelled corn in the plane at the LaSalle-Peru, 111., airport. Bankhead Pledges Support to Bankhead vj| r , - < Census Chieftain Senator Lister Hill of Alabama pins a “Bankhead for President” button on the lapel of Senator John H. Bankhead, also of the cotton state. They are booming the senator’s brother, Rep. William B. Bankhead, speaker of the house, for the Democratic nomination for President in the 1940 campaign. Senator Hill is Bankhead’s campaign manager. City of Flint Crew in Home Waters •- -.w— ••••••••••• • m Commander-in-chief of 150,000 census takers is William Lane Aus tin, whose army will compile essen tial facts about 132,000,000 Ameri cans, 3,000,000 business firms, 33,- 000,000 homes and 7,000,000 farms during 1940. Austin, a native of Mississippi, began with the census bureau 40 years ago in a minor capacity and worked to the top. Winter Training ■f Members of the crew of the City of Flint turn thumbs down on the banner with the pinwheel cross. The City of Flint arrived in Baltimore, Md., recently after an epic cruise which lasted 114 days. This Nazi flag was hoisted by the German prize crew put aboard to take the ship to Germany after its capture by a sea raider. The ship was later freed by Norway. Joe McCarthy, manager of the world champion New York Yankees, lays aside baseball deductions for a snow shovel at his Buffalo, N. Y., _ home. McCarthy is busy laying j plans for the spring training season. “The Name Is Familiar— BY FELIX B. STREYCKMANS and ELMO SCOTT WATSON Solon Solon \\Z HEN we want to say that a man is wise we call him a solon and we call lawmakers solons, too. This doesn’t mean that we think all lawmakers are wise men— heaven forbid! The reason is that the world’s original lawmaker on a big scale was a very wise man and his name was Solon. That name isn’t just a first name or a last name— it is all the name the man had and all he needed. He lived so long ago that the popula tion was small enough to let men get by with one- word names. So lon was one of the original Seven Wise Men of Greece and was born in Athens about 640 B. C. He wrote or rewrote practically all the laws that were in existence during his time and was the first lawmaker to devise a code that gave people rights instead of merely pro hibiting them from doing this or saying that they must do that. Be sides regulating private and public life, his code reformed the calendar, the system of weights and meas ures, the monetary system. It re lieved the burdens of debtors with out curtailing the rights of credi tors. (He could be elected on either ticket today!) His laws were crudely written on wooden cylinders and set up in pub lic places for everybody to read. This must havq been just a matter of form, because in his day about the only ones who could read were the ones who wrote the cylinders. • • • Kelvin’s Law 'T'HE kelvin, a commercial unit of electricity; Kelvin’s law for measuring the most economical di ameter of an electric wire; Kelvin, or absolute, temperature scale, which begins at 561 degrees below zero Fahrenheit; and the Kelvina- tor, the first electric refrigerator for household use, were named for Lord Kelvin of Largs, Scotland, one of the greatest and most practical scien tists of all time. He invented flashing signals for lighthouses; designed an oil- floated self-level- ing magnetic compass which al lowed this instru ment to be used on steel ships; in vented the ultra sensitive detect ing and recording apparatus that made the trans-At lantic cable possible—and became chief executive of the cable com pany to supervise its laying; re duced temperature to a mathemati cal basis and announced absolute zero where there is no heat and where molecules stand still. His name was William Thomson and he was born in Belfast in 1824, the son of a professor of mathe matics at the Royal Academical In stitution of Belfast. As early as 1852 he foresaw the practicability of heating and cooling buildings by means of currents of air. When he built a mansion of his own in 1874 on the Scottish coast, he built in heating ducts and ventilating facili ties. When he died in 1907, he had received every degree a scholar could obtain and had made a for tune of many millions of dollars. • • * ‘Rich as Croesus’ W HEN a man is so rich that he actually reeks with wealth, we call him a Croesus. The word is pronounced like those things in a man’s trousers—and we don’t mean wrinkles, like in ours. But don’t misunderstand — we don’t call a rich man a Croesus be cause he is the only one who can afford them in his pants. Perhaps we never should have brought the matter up. Croesus is a word for a rich man and goes ’way back to 560 B. C., when the original Croesus, a Greek king of Lydia, was born. He was richer than any king be fore him, hence the use of his name. Living in the time when men wore togas, you can see that he didn’t even wear pants—or did they wear pants with togas? Now we are sorry we brought the matter up. Lydia, at the time Croesus was king, included practically all of Asia Minor, and his wealth was ob tained mainly from the mines and gold dust of the river Pactolus. Proud of his treasures, he carried his love of splendor to extravagance and thought he was the happiest of men. All of which proves it isn’t the number of pairs of pants you have that makes you wealthy. (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) Lord Kelvin Croesus Recreation Room Trimmed Nautical By RUTH WYETH SPEARS ’T'HINGS that have to do with -■■ the sea are a good theme for decorating a recreation room, a boy’s room or a summer cottage. A ship model has a salty flavor but is not a necessity. One young ster made a map of a desert island complete with a legend of hidden treasure. No one knew more than he about the island the treasure for he invented both of them. He also salvaged the steering wheel EMBROIDER ANCHOR CHAIN IN CHAIN STITCH BASTE AND THEN STITCH FABRIC STRIPS OR TAPE TO FORM ANCHOR from an old boat and hung it on the wall with ropes. A small fig ure of a sailor was wired for a lamp. His mother made a smartly tailored navy blue couch cover trimmed in a red anchor and a red cushion was adorned with a blue anchor. Straight strips of material 1-inch wide after the edges are turned under will make an anchor 12-inches long and 8 inches across as shown here. Bias tape may be used for the smaller anchor which is just half the size of the large one. NOTE: Mrs. Spears* Sewing Book No. 2 contains a complete alphabet to be made of straight or bias strips; also illustratiops of five processes of fabric mending; 36 embroidery stitches; making doll clothes; and numerous gift items. Ask for Book No. 2, enclos ing 10 cents to cover cost. Address: Mrs. Spears, Drawer 10, Bedford Hills, N. Y. Animal Obituaries In memory of the dogs, cats and other pets that are buried or cre mated on its grounds each week, a pet cemetery in Los Angeles pub lishes obituaries of these animals in a Sunday newspaper. Written and signed by the bereaved own er, the notices often include such expressions as “Bubbles—I could not have loved you more.”—Col lier’s. WOMEN Here’s amazing way to Relieve 'Regular' Pains Mrs. J. C. Lnwon writes: “I was uMderaon- ished, hod cramps, headaches and back ache, associated with my monthly periods. I took Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription for a while, gained strength, and greatly relieved of these pains.' POR won was over 70 yean, countless thousands at 1 women, who suffered functional monthly pains, have taken Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Pre scription over a period of time—and have been overjoyed to find that this famous remedy has helped them ward off such monthly discomforts. 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