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THE SUN. NEWBERRY, S. C- FRIDAY, MAY 24, 1940 AMERICAN POSITION WASHINGTON, D. C. Behind the President’s speech to the American Scientific conference was a very genuine worry over the protection of the Western hemi sphere. The President threw aside a speech which had been prepared for several days before, and during the tense hours just after Holland and Belgium were invaded he dictated a new draft which emphasized the im portance of Pan-American unity, plus force, to protect these conti nents. He even raised the question whether the American nations could stand idly by while dictators con quer the rest of the world. Behind all this were some very careful studies which the President and his naval and military strate gists have been making of Western hemisphere defense. It may sound like scare headlines, but it is no exaggeration to say that to the strategists who take out paper and pencil to figure on pro tecting the U. S. A., Nazi activities in Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium have meant the very defi nite scrapping (for the first time in our 164-year history) of George Washington’s Farewell Address on American isolation. Here is how the strategists figure it out. The keystone of Americar defense has been: 1. A big navy in the Pacific. 2. Friendship with Great Britain, which rules the waves of the At lantic. Assuming that the British fleet should disappear from the Atlantic, the United States would then have to maintain two fleets—one for the Pacific and one for the Atlantic. And it would take at least four years to build a new fleet for the Atlantic. • • • RIGHT ON FOREIGN FORECAST No matter what they may think of Roosevelt’s domestic policies or politics, some of his severest critics give him credit for being absolutely right on foreign strategy. Exactly two years ago the Presi dent told his cabinet in categoric terms that he was convinced war was inescapable in Europe, and that the results would be serious in the extreme for the democracies. Last summer, also, he informed congressional leaders that war was inevitable in the autumn—and got scoffed at for his warning. In view of the President’s con sistent record for accuracy on things international, his present views are very much worth record ing. By nature, Roosevelt is an op timist. But regarding the present allied position he is not optimistic. In fact, he is inclined to think that the allies are in for a defeat, that their situation is much more seri ous than the American public re alizes. Naturally, the President is not ex pressing these views publicly. Also they are subject to change. But the close study he is giving to the Mon roe Doctrine, the defense of the American continent, and especially to the possibility of enemy air bases in Iceland, Mexico, and around Panama, all indicate that he is figuring on the distinct pos sibility of a crushing allied defeat. • * • RED HERRING One of the weapons of moden. War is the red herring. Honor has departed from warfare. The Nazis used subterfuge to get into Norway, German aviators dressed in Dutch uniforms to land in Holland. Italy maneuvered in the Mediterranean to keep the British Irom sending too many ships to Scandinavia. Musso lini was the red herring. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to figure that if Germany ever want ed to land troops in the Western hemisphere, Japan would be the red herring, would send her fleet to ward Hawaii. Probably she would not land in Hawaii, but merely ma neuver enough to keep the U. S. fleet in the Pacific, prevent it from protecting the Atlantic coast. At present only four cruisers, plus one small airplane carrier and some decrepit destroyers, guard thr At lantic. Before the Pacific fleet could return through Panama to the At lantic, Germany could land all the troops she wanted in Trinidad, or Puerto Rico, or the northern tip of South America. Military minds calculate that Ger man troops even could be landed in Newfoundland, which has, at Bot- wood, one of the best airports in the world. And from Botwood, they could land in Maine about as fast as U. S. forces could concentrate against them. Germany, however, is not likely to bother with New England. Far wealthier, far more important are the oil fields of Venezuela, the tropi cal plantations of Brazil, the wheat fields of Argentina. Here there are large groups of German and Italian settlers. Important fact: The Low Coun tries now invaded by Hitler are among the most densely populated in the world, have no raw materials. Outside of Africa, the wealthiest raw material area in the world, also the least populated, lies under the Mon roe Doctrine General Johnson Jayr: DANGERS PARADED WASHINGTON, D. C. A digest of those “thousands of telegrams” drawn by the Presi dent’s Pan-American speech on Hit ler’s latest blitzkrieg would be valu able. Ninety per cent of them were re ported by Secretary Early to ap prove and the other 10 per cent to be from “peace-at-any-pricers.” An [ analysis would be valuable because I can’t see how you can approve a speech when you don’t know what it means. I have discussed this speech with several informed people. They don’t know what it means—and I don’t. From its condemnation of treach erous brutality of Hitler the approv al should have been 100 per cent and also for its plea for pan-Ameri can unity in defense. This unity the President called “our solution.” But then he said: “Is this solution— our solution—permanent or safe if it is solved for us alone? ... I think not!” • • • What does that mean? It may seem a slight phrase to be quib bling about, but no utterance by a President of the United States on our future course in a world at war is a “slight” phrase. This one wasn’t intended to be slight. It was coupled with an assertion that too many of us have been deceived by the “false teaching of geography” into feeling safe, “physically, eco nomically and socially,” from the impacts of attacks on civilization elsewhere. Then followed state ments that, from the point of view of conquest, Santiago, Chile, is clos er to Europe than Alexander found Macedonia to be from Persia or than the distance Caesar traveled from Rome to Spain—that is, four or five hours from Africa to South America as compared with four or five weeks it took the armies of Napoleon to go from Paris to Rome or Poland. I don’t know what that means but it sounds like "our frontier is in France.” The statement identifying airplane timetables with the pace of conquering armies or from the point of view of conquest is utterly mis leading—almost as misleading as it would be to say that the speed of a race horse compares with that of a telegram. An airplane can go from Africa to South America in a few hours. But an army can’t. It can’t go at all if our navy and air force are efficient and afloat and not chas ing boogey-men in the east Pacific. This aspect of the speech was cryp tic obscuration coupled with sensa tional and misleading terrorism. It creates an occasion to repeat the quotation from Lloyd George’s speech that upset Chamberlain. “The nation is ready as long as its leadership is right, as long as you say clearly what you are aiming at, as long as you give confidence to them that their leaders are doing their best for them.” • • • The President does the deliberate reverse of “saying clearly what he is aiming at.” His carefully guarded exterior seems to be full to the bursting point with some kind of in terior content he doesn’t often re veal but every time a new pressure comes, a little of it squirts out—like “frontiers in France” and “quaran tine the aggressors.” The whole country is behind him at any cost or effort to prepare this country for de fense of this continent. It is 90 per cent against any attempt at “de fending” America by attacking in Europe or Asia—with either men, money or materials. It would be a political—as well as naval and mili tary—catastrophe. For, even for the relative strategi cal ease of continental defense, Mr. Roosevelt has not prepared the mili tary and naval weapons to make good his position and the whole of recent history proves that bluffing on a bobtail is suicide. • • • FAT’S IN THE FIRE The fat’s in the fire and our navy is in Hawaii. Our miniature army is relatively equipped with bows and arrows. It is a pitiful Falstaffian insufficiency. We are quibbling about the design of a rifle already adopted and in production after years of experiment. It appears now that the navy has known the facts of its weakness against bombs from above, mines from below and secret foreign building programs for some time—without admission be fore the crisis. Surely there was no ignorance in this government about the absolute ly inefficient equipment of our army in almost everything needful for modern war and its own grotesque inadequacy. • • • Everybody is now squawking about our lack of tin and rubber and our failure of action in motorizing and mechanizing our army. This column has been squawking about it for five years. Seven years ago this writer had written into the Re covery act ample authority and ap propriations to do all these things as a combination measure of re employment, recovery and defense. That was the year Hitler started. It was the year that tl^ adminis tration gave most of that $3,300,000,- 000 to Hopkins for raking leaves. British Troops Hailed as ‘Saviours of Belgium’ “The Name Is Familiar— BY FELIX B. STREYCKMANS and ELMO SCOTT WATSON Although many other pictures have appeared since that day, none tells more clearly than the above the enthusiasm with which the Belgians welcomed the first appearance of Baitish troops to combat the second Ger man invasion of their country in a quarter of a century.This picture was among the very first radioed on that historic day. Mother’s Residence in U. S. Legalized by President James Watt The family of Fred C. Bucholz, a Los Angeles, Calif., war veteran, gives thanks for the action of Presi- 1 dent Roosevelt in signing his name to a document which kept the family together. The bill which the President signed was introduced in congress by the American Legion, and legalized the entry of Mrs. Bucholz into the United States for permanent residence. Canadian-born Mrs. Bucholz was about to be separated from her fam ily by deportation proceedings. Slothful Ways Are Natural to Him An animal that makes a habit of spring fever, regardless of the season, is the sloth, world’s laziest animal. Here one of them “speeds” up a pole held by its captor, A. W. Anderson, who returned recently to the United States from Nicaragua with two dozen of the slow-moving creatures in his charge. Mechanical Mutt Elektro, the mechanical man, and Sparko, the mechanical dog, get to gether in New York, where they are on display at the fair. Sparko barks, wags his tail and sits up. Elektro is equally versatile. He Boosts Willkie for G.O.P. Nomination ‘Fightingest Man’ Capt. Boycott Looking at a picture of Wendell Willkie, his favorite presidential candidate, is Russell W. Davenport, who recently resigned his position as editor of Fortune magazine in order to promote Willkie for President. Willkie, president of the Commonwealth & Southern Utilities, frequently has been mentioned as a Republican “dark horse.” Gen. Paul Rollet, 71, “fightingest man in France,” has requested ac tive war duty. Rollet was retired in 1937, after 46 years of service. He is one year younger than Gen. Maxime Wegand, allied army head in the Near East. Watt T AMES WATT, who devoted most *-* of his life to the invention and improvement of the modern steam engine, has his name commemorat ed in the field of electricity instead of steam. The unit of electrical measurement called the watt was named after him, and designates the amount of electricity used in doing work. He was a Scottish engineer who was bom in 1736 and died at the age of 83. In his later years he ex perimented with an apparatus for copying sculpture. Not many months before his death he presented cop ies of busts to his friends as the work “of a young artist just enter ing his eighty- third year.” The first use of Watt’s steam en gine was in pumping water from mines. Later, when others suggest ed making a wheeled cart of it and using it on rails to pull carriages. Watt would not listen to the plans. And so it is that the man who made the steam engine practical died believing that the steam rail road was impracticable. Maybe, after all, it’s just as well that a word in the electrical field instead of steam has been coined to commemorate him. » • » Galvanism NE day in the latter part of the Eighteenth century, while Luigi Galvani, eminent professor of anato my at Bologna, Italy, was at work in his laboratory, an accident oc curred that startled the entire sci entific world. Galvani had placed a dissected frog on a table near an electrical machine. His assistant accidentally touched a nerve of the dead frog while the ma chine was turning and sending out sparks. Immedi ately the dead frog jumped into ac tion and went through all sorts of physical con tortions. Galvani was a great professor, an authority on anatomy — he Lnigi Galvani must explain this phenomenon! If electricity could make a dead frog’s muscles move, then it must be elec tricity that made its muscles move when it was alive, he reasoned. Was there such a force as animal elec tricity? Was electricity the force that made all animals—and men— move? Wasn’t electricity life itself? Galvani thought so—and he told the world what he thought. The world believed him—even the medi cal world—and a new word, galvan ism, was added to every European language. It meant the force in 8 living body that gives it the ability to move and remain alive. And today we still say persons are “galvanized into action” when we mean they have had life put into them suddenly like Galvani’s dead frog. • • • Boycott T HE word “boycott” is a com mon one and is known to almost every modern language. Original ly it was the name of a man and that was only 60 years ago. In 1880 Capt. Charles Cunningham Boycott, who lived at Lough Mask in County Mayo, Ireland, and who was land agent for a British lord, was so severe and unreasonable with his tenants that they banded together and re fused to buy any thing from him or work for him. Their economic strike reached a climax at harvest time when no one would help him with his crops. A gang of Orange men were sent down from Ulster to aid in the har vest but they went under the protec tion of a military force from Cavan and elsewhere. Captain Boycott’s troubles attract ed wide attention and the Irish Land league successfully used the same tactics to force their demands in other localities, repeating the “Boy cott incident.” 3y the time of his death in 1897 a boycott had come to mean the same thing throughout the world. The French word is “boy- cotter”; the Dutch, “boycotten”; the German, “boycottiren,” and the Rus sian, ■ “boikottiroyat.” (Released by Western Newspaper Union) - ‘A Dog’s Tale’ Mark Twain’s “A Dog’s Tale” was first published in Harper’s maga zine in December, 1903. Subsequent ly it was privately printed by the National Anti-Vivisection society. In 1904 Harper’s brought out the story in book form. CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT BABY CHICKS CHIC KS! No^Jrfpples fStfcnuJ I *32». We Guarantee Live Delivery. W* Pay Poetmy. ATLAS CHICK CO- St. Loui*. Mo. PHOTOGRAPHY ri| Lie developed r I LIVIj and PRINTED AMY S!Z£ DOLL. SORB EXPOSURES-HIGH GLOSS PRINTS-POSTAGE PAID SKYLAND STUDIOS "LmAtf Vf Sh, Tlmhirr" ASHEVILLE. N.C. HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONS An ordinary blackboard eraser makes an excellent shoe polisher. * • • To remove ink from carpets, wash the stain immediately with skim milk. • * * After peeling onions rub the hands with a little dry mustard, then wash in the usual way. * * • Clear ammonia — pure, not household—will remove paint from windows even when it has been on a long time. Apply with a scrubbing brush. • • • A bay leaf or a sprig of dried thyme is sufficient to season tbe gravy of a pot roast. • • • Make a point of keeping the best pieces of old pillow-cases and sheets. They are handy for patok- ing and much better than new material. SIMPLE NEURALGIA PENETRO a Value of Books Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.—Sir William Temple. Pud the Trigger on Lazy Bowels, and Also Pepsin-ize Stomach! onaddiaA- - gas, coated j trigger on those lazy bowels. So be sure your laxative also contains Pepsin. Take Dr. Caldwell’s laxative, because its Syrup Pepsin helps you gain that won derful stomach comfort, while tbe Laxative Senna moves your bowels. Tests prove the power of Pepsin to dissolve those lumps of undigested protein food which may Unger in your stomach, to cause belching, gastric acidity and nausea. This is how pepsin- izing your stomach helps relieve it of such distress. At tbe same time this medicine wakes up lazy nerves and muscles in your bowels to relieve your constipation. So see how much better you feel by taking the laxative that also puts Pepsin to wont on that stomach discomfort, too. Even fin icky children love to taste this pleasant family laxative. Buy Dr. Caldwell's Lax ative—Senna wi ‘ druggist today! e. Buy Dr. Caldwi with Syrup Pepsin at Waking Dream You ask what hope is. He (Aris totle) says it is a waking dream.— Laertius. WNU—7 21—40 Pity Forgot In extreme danger, fear turns a deaf ear to every feeling of pity. —Caesar. 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