Golden Age, May 28, 1930
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The Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE
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in this issue
WORLD DISTRESS • CAUSE • REMEDY
Complete text of address by Judge
Rutherford broadcast April 27 over two extensive chains
WHEN THE WORLD
WENT MAD
THE AIR WE BREATHE
NATURE’S MEDICINES
RUSSIA AND THE VATICAN
JUDGE ACCEPTS CHALLENGE
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY
5c a copy - $1.00 a year - Canada & Foreign $ 1.50
Volume XI- No. 279
May 28, 193 0
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Women in Five and Ten Cent
Stores ...
Double Distress, Triple Unemployment
Children Employed; Adults Unemployed
Effect of Wages on Workers . 559
Columbus vs. Power Trust , . 550
Italy One Vast Prison . . . 558
Communism in New York . . 558
Sunday Canvassing ..... 573
SCIENCE AND INVENTION
The Air We Breathe
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
Germany’s Baby Airships . . 557
Switching On Lights in Australia p57
Glasgow’s Great Milk Test . . 559
When the World Went Mad . 551
Happenstances ......556
KWKH Fight Against Chain Stores ........556
Los Angeles’ Public Prosecutor 557
This Speaks for Itself . . . 561
HOME AND HEALTH '
The Merry Work op Poisoning . 560
Nature’s Medicines ..... 562
MANUFACTURING AND MINING
Waste Products of a Big Business .........557
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY
Changes in Japan and China . 557
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
Britain’s Small Merchants
Failing
Russia and the Vatican . . . 565
Judge Rutherford Challenged 556
Judge Rutherford Accepts the
Challenge ...... 567
World Distress . Cause . Remedy 568
The Power Trust in Minnesota 560
The Oakland Hook-up . . . 573
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Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & MARTIN
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The Golden Age
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Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, May 28, 1930 Number 279
The Air We Breathe
THE dictionary tells us that air is “the fluid which we breathe, and which surrounds the earth: the atmosphere. It is invisible, inodorous, insipid, transparent, compressible, elastic, and ponderable. By the ancient philosophers, air was regarded as an element; but modern science has shown that it is essentially a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, with a small amount of carbon dioxide, the average proportions being, by volume: oxygen, 20.96 percent; nitrogen, 79.00 percent; carbon dioxide, 0.04 percent. These proportions are subject to a very slight variability. Air also always contains some vapor of water”. In this article we hope to extend this definition somewhat. Incidentally, we remark at this point that the word “atmosphere” is a combination of two Greek words meaning vapor sphere, and in this article has the same meaning as air.
Oxygen means so much to us humans that if our supply is cut off for three minutes it is cut off for good, or at least until the resurrection. Certain bacteria thrive without oxygen; but not so man. He is particular about what he breathes, and wants the air about as he usually gets it, 21 percent oxygen. If it is above that, it burns him up too fast and would soon kill him. Going down the scale he can still get along fairly well on air that is 17 percent oxygen. A candle or oil flame goes out at 16y2 percent. The man’s power to work stops when the oxygen in his air gets down to 13 percent, and at that point the acetylene flame expires. Below this point men become dizzy, pant, have rapid heart beats and suffer headache, and at 8 percent become unconscious, with death near at hand.
An oxygen machine for safe deposit vaults has been invented which is valuable in cases where employees are locked in vaults by robbers, or are accidentally shut in. The machines produce enough oxygen to sustain life for two hundred hours.
Oxygen is recovered from the air for use in the steel industry, wherein it is used for welding and cutting, to the extent of about three billion cubic feet a year. All the^plants in the world work day and night to put back into the air the oxygen which is daily used to feed all the fires of the world and keep all the living creatures warm. Every home is more healthful with plants growing in it.
Nearly one-half of the weight of earth’s crust consists of oxygen. After everything that could be oxidized had been oxidized there is still enough left for all our needs, and the amount is practically always the same. This is true of the nitrogen also.
Nitrogen and Ozone
It is a good thing for us that about four-fifths of the air is composed of nitrogen and that it mixes with the oxygen instead of forming a chemical compound. It serves to dilute the oxygen which Ave breathe and prevent us from bursting into flame.
The leguminous plants all know how to take nitrogen out of the air and convert it into food for man. Man knows something about how to do it too, but the nitrates which he procures from the clouds are not considered as good for the land as those obtained by nature herself in her own laboratory.
The nitrogen which men obtain from the air is used principally for the production of synthetic ammonia, nitric acid, and cyanamide for packing food products, testing telephone cables, filling periscope tubes, and for other purposes for which an inert gas is required.
It is estimated that thunderstorms annually fix about one hundred million tons of nitrogen and this is deposited on the earth during showers in the form of nitric acid. The plants make good use of it. The lightning flash generates such intense heat that it causes some of the
nitrogen of the air to combine with the oxygen.
What was once supposed to be natural ozone is now believed to be nitrogen peroxide. It is more abundant in summer than in winter, and is most noticeable during thunderstorms and in heavy winds. None can be detected in city air, and air over marshes and in malarial regions contains very little of it. Ozone when made in the laboratory is produced by the action of electric discharges upon oxygen, and is probably produced in the air in the same way. Ozone is used in sterilizing water.
There is a variable amount of ammonia in the air, partly occurring as a nitrate and partly as a carbonate. The amount decreases during a heavy rain, but returns to the normal amount shortly afterwards.
The blue of the sky, the aurora borealis, and the zodiacal light are all attributable to a stream of frozen, crystalline nitrogen in extremely high altitudes. This nitrogen frost is believed to be in a dispersed state and to be electrically charged.
The Discovery of Helium
The discovery of helium in America was made at Dexter, Kansas, in a singular manner. A well was being drilled for natural gas. Finally the vein was struck, a holiday was declared, a great crowd collected, the well was opened, and a blazing torch was thrust into the gas which gushed forth. Instead of the expected fireworks the torch went out and the people went home disgusted. If the people had only known it, that pocket of helium gas was worth, at that time, about $2,000 a cubic foot. For years this gas, often met with in southern Kansas, was called 'wind gas’ and allowed to waste into the air. Helium was first discovered in the sun in 1868, and in the atmosphere in 1894.
Helium is a non-inflammable, non-explosive gas of great “lifting power”, ideal for use in dirigibles. At a plant at Amarillo, Texas, the government now manufactures it out of natural gas at a cost of 1.2 cents a cubic foot. The natural gas is reduced to a temperature of 317 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), at which point it becomes a liquid and the helium is drawn off.
The temperature of 317 degrees below zero represents such intense cold that if the human hand could be put into the mixture it would freeze solid in a fraction of a second and drop off. A fresh piece of beefsteak dropped into the mixture and afterward dropped on the floor breaks into a thousand pieces.
When shot through with an electric current helium gives a pinkish white light. The gas is tasteless, colorless, and odorless. When mixed with 21 percent of oxygen it can be breathed. It is used in rectifying alternating currents in radio battery eliminators. Liquid helium has been subjected to a temperature of 458 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) and even at that temperature showed no indications of solidifying. Helium comprises fifty-four one-hundred-thousandths of one percent of the earth’s atmosphere.
The Noble Gases
The noble gases, argon, neon, krypton and xenon, are all of recent discovery, though man has been breathing all of them ever since he has been upon the earth. Argon was discovered in 1894-5; neon, krypton, and xenon, in 1898. The gases are called “noble” because they are rare and because they do not combine with any other elements.
Argon constitutes ninety-three hundredths of one percent of the air, neon twelve ten-thousandths of one percent. Krypton and xenon are still more rare, comprising together only fifty-five millionths of one percent. Xenon sells in England for $13,650 a liter, or about the same as radium.
In their rarefied condition, when shot through with an electric current, argon glows with a blue color, neon 'with a fiery orange red, krypton with a pale violet, and xenon with sky blue and green. All these gases are now much used to create striking display advertising effects, the gases being enclosed in glass tubes, of any desired size or design. Inside the tubes are suitable electrodes between which a high tension current is passed.
The high visibility of the neon light, and its peculiar fog-penetrating quality, have given it an important place in aviation. The tallest buildings in New York have neon beacons on their roofs to guide airplanes. Helium, argon, and neon are all used in wireless photography and television. Neon is used in a type of lightning arrester. There are now fifteen thousand neon signs in the United States. Argon is used as a filler for incandescent lamp bulbs and is estimated to save the country three hundred million dollars a year in electric light bills.
The Ignoble Gases
Probably if it is right to refer to argon, neon, krypton and xenon as noble gases because they are rare and expensive and do not combine with other elements, it would be all right to refer to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide as ignoble ones, because they are plentiful in these days, all too plentiful, and hard to get rid of.
In considering the great number of automobiles and trucks constantly pouring carbon monoxide gas into the streets, the health commissioner of Chicago has estimated that more people are dying from contaminated air than from any other cause.
Carbon dioxide pours out of every public and private chimney and stack, mounted or stationary. This is food for the plants, which take it in through their leaves, separate the carbon from the oxygen, keep the carbon to build up their structure, and breathe out the pure oxygen so that it may be reused.
In the carboniferous era the atmosphere was heavily freighted with carbon dioxide. Great portions of it went into the massive plants and trees then flourishing in the earth, and much of it, no doubt, into deposits of limestone and other carbonated minerals and rocks.
Sand, Dust, Smoke, Soot
If we had no sand, dust, smoke or soot in the air, we should have no beautiful sunrises or sunsets, and, worst of all, no rain; yet it would not be hard to convince any housewife that there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing along this line.
Professor II. II. Sheldon, of the physics department of New York University, declares that the air above New York city always has twenty-one hundred tons of this material in suspension, while on windy days the amount is more.
From the summits of New York’s tallest skyscrapers it is often impossible to see the streets, because of these motes. They stand between humans and the sun, cutting off the ultra-violet rays, so necessary for bone development, and predisposing city children to rickets.
In the highest parts of the skies the little motes of dust wander hither and thither looking for passengers, here a little water-vapor and there a little more, until finally there is enough to form a drop and the journey back to mother earth may begin. Sometimes these dust particles are in the air for years before they settle. After every great volcanic eruption the atmosphere becomes heavily freighted with this “highest part of the dust of the world”.—Prov. 8:26.
The last few years have seen much scientific and unscientific counting of dust particles. It seems that St. Louis is our dustiest city, and Boston our cleanest one, that is, cleanest in its physical aspects, but most certainly not in the sense of justice.
New York city air during 1929 averaged to carry 38,508 dust particles for each cubic foot. The dustiest day was in March, and the least dusty one in August. The dustiest places are at the street level, and the least dusty places are on the top floors of the highest buildings.
Country atmospheric dust consists of finely powdered mineral matter blown up from the ground, a few crystals, mostly salt, and, in season, pollen from plants and spores from rusts or molds. Soot and ash compounds of sulphur and tar are added in the suburbs, and more soot and ash and dust from building operations in the city. Suburban dust particles are about twice the size of country dust particles, and city particles about three times their size.
Soot, unburned fuel, is deposited in the air chiefly by domestic fires. The larger furnace plants are more careful in their fuel consumption and discharge into the air little but fine mineral dust in the form of ashes and cinders. These two materials, soot and cinders, are easily distinguished under the microscope. The average to come from the combined chimneys and stacks is about four-fifths soot to one-fifth cinders. The smoke nuisance can not be stopped altogether without shutting down business completely. Even over the center of the greatest ocean there are as many as 750 dust particles in a thimbleful of air.
Air-Filter Engineering
Air-filter engineering is a new business, developed in the last few years. Such air filtering as was done formerly was with the aid of cheese cloth, now no longer employed for the purpose. Such screens used to choke and cut off the air supply, besides needing frequent cleaning. Air is now scrubbed by sprays which not only rid it of dust but fix its temperature and humidity.
Air filters are now commonly installed in all the new places of public assemblage, hotels, libraries, clubs, theaters, schools, museums. They are also installed in food factories, such as those engaged in the production of cheese, gelatin, oleomargarine, dried milk and ice cream. They are also widely used in factories to prevent the admission of injurious abrasive dusts to valuable machinery and perhaps to the lungs of “less valuable” men. Every home should be ventilated with filtered air, and will be, some happy day. Think of the countless hours that women spend and must spend simply in keeping down the dust which now finds its way into the home.
Experiments made by Prof. S. P. Langley on Mount Whitney, California, indicate that if there were no particles in suspension in the outer air the sun would appear distinctly bluish, instead of white or yellowish as it does under actual conditions. Salt can always be detected in air near the seashore.
Atmospheric Pressure
Atmospheric pressure varies somewhat from day to day and from hour to hour, but is about 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level. The higher one ascends, the less the pressure. The total weight of the entire atmosphere is about one-millionth of that of the earth. At great heights the atmosphere becomes more and more attenuated. Calculations made from meteors suggest a very thin atmosphere up to two hundred miles from the earth.
Occasionally the fumes from a great public utility plant will be borne down upon homes in the vicinity so heavily as to cause headaches and illnesses of other kinds. While high winds are usually beneficial, they are not always so. It depends upon where the air comes from and what it blows over.
Air liquefies at 220 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), at a pressure of thirty-nine atmospheres. When liquid air is exposed in a glass vessel it absorbs heat rapidly from surrounding objects, and boils actively until it is entirely evaporated.
Liquid air may be frozen to a clear, transparent solid by surrounding it with liquid oxygen and then forcing the evaporation by means of an air pump. Liquid air is used for blasting in tunnels' and mines where the presence of the irrespirable products of combustion is objectionable.
The temperature of the air depends upon the amount of sunshine it is getting, and also upon where it is coming from. Wind from the south on a cloudy day may be much warmer than wind from the north on a sunshiny one. When it is warm, humid air feels warmer than dry air at the same temperature.
Little is known about atmospheric electricity, but the subject is being intensively studied in observatories specially built and equipped for the purpose. One such has just been completed at Tucson, Arizona. There are others in Samoa, Peru, and West Australia. In calm wwather the atmosphere is always positively electrified with respect to the earth. The operation of a thunder shower is that of a great generator.
Some of the radio engineers profess to believe that in the air that envelops the earth all the words that human beings have ever spoken are still reverberating and that some time it may be possible to gather and select and reproduce them. This thing ’which the engineers foresee is impossible and will never come. In its place will be what we Christians designate as the resurrection. They think science will do some such great thing. We know that the Lord will do the much greater thing, and that it is nigh, even at the door.
Columbus Power Trwi
THE municipally owned lighting plant of Columbus, Ohio, lights its 400-candle-power street lamps at a cost of $4.94 each, per year. In the nearby cities of Toledo and Cincinnati, where it is necessary for the cities to buy from the Power Trust, the same lamps cost the taxpayers $55 and $60 each, per year. This is only eleven or twelve times as much; but when you consider the thousands of lamps that are burning in each city, and the thousands of cities, you will know why there are millions of dollars available to put in the newspaper offices and in the political offices only such persons as will not make it uncomfortable for the Power Trust. Harding's administration was well oiled; Hoover’s seems to be short-circuited. As the candidate of the Power Trust he is delivering the goods as ’well as could be expected.
When the World Went Mad '
A Thrilling Story of the Late War, Told in the Language of the Trenches
Copyright, 1930, by Daniel E. Morgan
WAR AT HOME
WAR, like the great black plague, reached America. Even while the voters of the nation were campaigning to reelect President Wilson because “he kept us out of war”, the commercial and financial giants of New York, through Myron T. Herrick, late ambassador to France, were negotiating with France; and Messrs. Bacon and Sharpe, speaking for the house of Morgan, had guaranteed France that if she would stay in the war they would put America into it on the side of the Allies.
How easily this was done has all been explained many times. All that was necessary was to get together a dozen men high up in the newspaper world. Working under the direction of the great banking houses that control all business, they selected the 125 newspapers that control public opinion on the Western continent and tell the people in advance what they may think on any question.
By a careful process of elimination the list of 125 papers was cut down to 25; and when these began to churn for war it was a foregone conclusion that the country would get behind the Morgan concern and make its promises good, and it did. It might be added that the editors of these twenty-five papers work for wages, and they get no wages unless they write as they are bid, and their employers, or their bankers, dictate how they shall write.
How very, very easy it is for men of great wealth, and with no god except the dollar, to deceive and lead astray a nation of a hundred million souls’ A few signatures to contracts, a few peremptory orders, and the presses begin to whir, and thereafter propaganda does its work; and the people (poor sheep!) will say anything or do anything their bosses wish them to do. The politicians and ecclesiastics are mere pawns in the game, and the Devil is the master of it all.
Training in Machine Gunnery
Shortly after the United States 'declared war the battleships were called in from the South, the marines were transferred to shore and at Quantico, Virginia, received intense training in machine gunnery. This training was so thorough that any of the men could take a machine gun apart and put it together again blindfolded, without the misplacement of a single screw. The major in charge was so confident of the competence of his men that he deliberately walked under a barrage of their machine gunfire.
While at Quantico I was granted a leave of absence, in which I visited my “girl in blue”. On this trip I was one of a considerable group that staged a party in the great Pennsylvania railroad station in New York city. We did not then know that this was to be our last meeting era we left for the front.
Within the next two years it was my painful duty to write to the wives and mothers of practically all the men in that group, to tell them when, where, and how those boys met their death. Out of some 250 men in my detachment who passed through all the battles that I passed through, I know of but one man besides myself who returned to America unscathed. .
Military officers and war correspondents refer light-heartedly to machine gunners as members of the “Suicide Squad’’. The name is well chosen, but a personal knowledge of the sufferings of these men, and of the sorrows which their deaths caused, to loved ones on this side of the sea, makes one hate the diabolical system that could force young men into the jaws of such a horrible trap.
Off for Europe
Early in December, 1917, we boarded the transport De Kalb, formerly the Prince Eitel Frederick, contact with shore was cut off, and we swung out for* our destination, St. Nazaire, France, at the mouth of the River Loire. It took fourteen days to negotiate the passage.
There was much excitement on the first day out at sea. Long into the end of the day the boys gathered for entertainment, singing the songs that were popular at that time. Most of the boys who sang the songs we then enjoyed were blown to pieces in France.
On the side of the ship where I was placed there was a canteen where one could buy crackers and candies, but there were so many men on
B51
taz GOLDEN AGE
552 board that it was 'difficult to get served. However, there were rnen lining up at the canteen and getting the tidbits, and reselling them to us at high prices. We were glad to get them, no matter what we had to pay.
At a given time the "pipe down” signal was given, which meant that every one must retire for the evening. When I came to retire I discovered that there w*as not a spare inch anywhere on the ship where I could rest my weary bones. I spent my first night sitting on a ladder, and was glad to get that space. Thereafter I teamed up with another lad, and when the time came for piping down he would contrive to fill up the space for the two of us until I could get to him. We slept on the hard deck, using as mattresses the life preservers which we were all obliged to wrear.
I remember one night as I made my rounds as a corporal of the guard, I found one of the boys in distress. I suggested a remedy. He said if his mother were there she could fix him up all right. All I could say to him was, “My boy, you are a soldier now: you are going off to the war; you can not depend on mother now."
The Cry of “Submarines!”
On Christmas Day, which we held on December 27, we "were all lined up wTith our mess gear, ready to enjoy the turkey dinner supplied on the ship, when all of a sudden, just about noon, the sirens began to sound, the five-inch guns began to shoot, and we heard the cry, “Submarines I”
For the time being we forgot all about our Christmas dinner. Mess gear, knives, forks, turkey, and all the other good things, vrere scattered everywhere and wre all ran for our life belts and life preservers. The gun crews fired on any and every object that seemed to them like a periscope.
While this was going on the destroyers that convoyed the fleet of transports ran across the path of the transports, back and forth, and behind the transports, back and forth, and parallel to them, back and forth, with almost unimaginable speed. The Devil has certainly built up his war machine to wonderful efficiency.
When the periscope of a submarine was sighted, a destroyer dashed directly at it. The submarine, trying to escape, passed very near the stern of our vessel, from which point it ’dropped out of .sight, followed by a depth bomb from one of the destroyers. We could not be
Brooklyn, N. Y.
sure that the submarine was destroyed, but the appearance of oil upon the surface of the water afterward was taken as evidence that such was the fact.
Toward sundown of that day we sighted Belle Isle, and terra firma never looked much better to us all than it did on that occasion. We arrived in St. Nazaire the next morning.
In La Belle France
It was a strange sight, the next morning, for us to see the little boys and girls of St. Nazaire running up and down on the piers, in their wooden shoes. It sounded like a group of carpenters putting up a wooden structure. These little folks had been taught to say, “Welcome, Americans.” Some sold chocolate, and went up and down the streets crying, “Chocolate; big one!” which was all the English they knew.
On New Year’s Eve we entrained for a little village near Chaumont, about 160 miles east by southeast from Paris. This meant a journey across France from the extreme west to nearly the extreme east. The trip was made by most of the boys in box cars such as are used for transporting horses, but there were a few third-class coaches in the train, and, by good fortune, I was assigned to one.
Our Pullman accommodations, on the way to Chaumont, were as follows: There were ten of us to the one compartment, the compartment consisting merely of twTo seeds facing each other, with room on each seat for five men. Matters went very well the first day, but after the first night the desperate need of sleep overtook us. We finally solved the problem by having two of the men lie down on the floor between the seats. Then we took our rifles and laid them across from one seat to the other and put our blankets on top of them, and on that rude bed slept the sleep of the just.
Getting Ready for the Trenches
When we arrived at our destination, a little village near Chaumont, called Germanvalliers, we stepped out into snow ankle-deep, and marched several miles to our billets. Some of these were in with the cows. I was again fortunate in being billeted in a house. The quarters assigned vrere what was at one .time a bridal chamber, with a bed fitting into the wall. With bags filled with straw obtained from the peasants it made a comfortable place in which to sleep.
Our training in France consisted of forced marches, being out in the cold hardening ourselves, and learning to operate machine guns under difficulty. For some reason, and to our dismay, our training at this place was not with the light-weight Lewis guns with which we had received our training at Quantico, but with an ancient model, a Hotchkiss machine gun, weighing perhaps three times as much.
It was with these latter clumsy guns that we finally went into battle, and it was this terrible mistake that surely led to the loss of many of our men through exhaustion. Perhaps to the officers this did not look like a mistake; but it looked like a mistake to us men, because the heavy guns were intended for transport by mules, and for defensive warfare, whereas our campaign was to become one of offensive warfare.
When we reached the lines, the mules were taken away, and we had to carry ammunition, guns, knapsacks, blankets, shoes, and canteens and march into the battle area. The weight of the tripod of the Hotchkiss gun was about forty-eight pounds, and of the gun itself about the same. These heavy guns we subsequently found a great burden at the front, and never knew why our efficient little Lewis guns had been taken from us.
Possibly this was brought about by some one of the jealous quarrels among generals, which are a common feature of military activities. It is well known that military men are as jealous of one another as artists, musicians, sculptors, or women are generally supposed to be.
Belated Gifts
It was some months after the holidays that the Christmas gifts started to arrive. After the day’s drill we gathered into groups, feasting on the good things sent to us from across the sea. The packages were many. In them, were fruit cakes, chewing gum, candy, cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and pipes. There were socks, wristlets, gloves, headgear, woolen helmets, and every other gift that would be useful to men about to enter a tragic war.
Among the gifts that I received was a carton of cigarettes. I did not like the brand. However, they were from my “girl in blue’', so I smoked them anyway. There are a good many cigarettes in a cartoon, and by the time I had finished the last one I came to like them very well. This brand and I became the best of friends; but we had to part, because nowhere in France, so far as I knew, could I obtain another package, and the United States of America was three thousand miles away.
A dear friend at Washington, D.C., presented me with a subscription for a Washington daily. Every mail that reached our outfit had in it some of these papers. It was really a feast, and enjoyed by many of the boys, in addition to myself.
. At evening time many of. us gathered at the village cafe, to wine and dine. We sang songs of love and of war. We were boys, full of hope and joy. Little did we suspect how filled with sorrow and tears were the days that were but just a little ahead of us.
I enjoyed the company of the village mayor, in whose barn I was billeted. He had a son Andreu and a daughter Suzanne. We sat behind the stove and talked and talked. I could not understand French, and they could not understand English. A strange conversation was ours. We spoke in the ancient language of signs.
At length we received orders to move. Our boyhood dreams had come true. We were now about to depart for the trenches. After being kissed by the mayor, his son and daughter bidding us adieu, with the tears streaming down their faces, we marched out of the village.
My First Night tn Ike Trenches
When we finally reached the trench section, only the officers knew that portion to which we were assigned. As a sergeant, I knew nothing about it. 'With a lieutenant in the lead I walked on the railroad track towards No Man’s Land. It was our first night out, and raining very hard.
We finally saw at a distance ahead of us the silhouettes of men walking toward us. Our procession halted. We discovered that we were lost. The lieutenant went back to the rear, perhaps for orders, and I stood there with a corporal. We crouched on our knees. The forms kept coming closer. It then dawned upon us that, not knowing our exact location, we had walked right out into No Man’s Land. I called out, “Halt! who is there?” Evidently the men were Germans, and did not understand what I said, because they paid no attention to it, but came sloAvIy on. -
I drew my automatic from my holster, and at the same time I heard the corporal’s automatic click. He asked me, “Sergeant, shall I shoot?” I did not answer, because I was not certain if it was the enemy. Having no previous instruction from the captain or higher officers I knew not what to do. The forms of the men came closer. I took aim and was about to fire, which would have meant the death of some human being.
I hesitated, looked behind me, and, seeing that everybody else was gone, I told the corporal that the best thing to do under, the conditions was to retreat, and that we did, double time. I did not wish to he captured, and I did not wish to kill somebody, when I did not know who it was. I now realize that these were German raiders, trying to capture us alive, to take us as prisoners of war, for the information they might gain.
I ran through the rain along the railroad tracks, and tumbled head over heels into a shell crater. I lay in the crater almost am hour: my breath seemed like a steam engine, it made so much noise. As I lay in the shell hole I imagined every minute that somebody was about to pounce on me with a bayonet.
At length, very cautiously, I crept out of the hole, and across other shell craters. At every crack of a gun or other sound I lay quiet for a time. I got into the barbed wire entanglements, and became so enmeshed in them that it took me the best part of an hour to disentangle myself.
Escaping from the barbed wire I found to my horror that I was in an abandoned cemetery, with the tombstones upside down and the contents of the graves strewn about. This was all in the one night, and all in a heavy downpour of rain. I did not know the whereabouts of the corporal.
Finally I came to a road. I discerned men coming up it, but, being bewildered, I did not know where the lines were or whether these were friends or foes. I crawled behind a wall and waited for them to come near enough so that I could tell who they were.
They were some of our own boys, and in a short time I was back where we had started. I found all of the boys, including the missing corporal, trying to get some shelter in what were once the beautiful homes of the French, but which were now nothing but piles of rocks.
Thus ended my first night in the trenches.
A Few Notes on Trench Life
Much has been written about trench life. One of the most famous books of recent years is merely the narrative of two trench raids. I do not wish to cover old ground, as I have something more important to tell. However, I make a few remarks concerning trench life.
At sundown each day, for our evening sport and for our own protection, we had a raid, but not on men this time: it was on rats. Almost every one knows that hordes of rats invade the trenches, and there seems to be no effective way of keeping them out.
We stretched a wire from one of the pillars of the old railway station in which we lived, and covered the top with old grass, making it look like the side of a hill. Under this camouflage we proved our art of shooting rats. Many of the boys could get two out of three, and some of the best shooters could get three out of three; I could usually get three out of three.
After they were shot they lay there and rotted, and oh, how they did smell! Down in the dugout, where we slept, it was partly filled with water, so we built our bunk up on the w’all, and many a night I sat there by the candle, shooting rats and watching them fall down into the water.
In the course of several weeks of trench warfare our clothing began to wear out. I wore out the only pair of shoes that I had, and for the best part of two vreeks I waded the trenches in the mud with pieces of burlap as foot coverings. I found a piece of sheepskin, which I sewed to a part of an old bag.
At two o’clock in the morning of each day it was my duty to wade about a mile through the trenches, to send a report to headquarters. A friend in need is a friend indeed; so, being a sergeant, I commandeered the shoes of a friend, to make the long trip to headquarters.
All along the line the sentries challenged, and sometimes the boys, half sleepy, and dreaming about attacks of the enemy, came upon one suddenly, and almost stuck a bayonet into one, not knowing where they were. So I often had to tell the boys that if they did not keep awake it would not be a case of their killing me, but of my killing them. War is war.
One morning, on my trip to headquarters, I was caught in a gas raid. I knew that the gas goes downward and spreads over the trenches. It is almost a shame for a soldier to say it, but
this time I had gone without my gas mask, and we carried two of them, an English mask, and a French bulldog mask. .
In trying to protect myself I crawled up a tree. Of course I knew that the gas would not come up there, so I waited until some one else came by, and called to him. He climbed up the tree, and, soldier-like, gave me one of his masks, and that v/as the way out of that.
Once a night one of the boys was sent to headquarters to bring- the food for the next day. Of course the food came to the men in the trenches stone-cold, so we took turns going for hire food, so that we could get something hot. We thought this was the real war, but discovered later that trench warfare is a picnic compared to open warfare—real war.
THE BATTLE OF CHATEAU-THIESRY
J N THE latter part of May, 1918, the German J- army was in the midst of its great drive on Paris. Airplanes dropped notes, setting the day when they would be in Paris. Shells from long range guns were actually falling in the streets. One of them blew up a church, killing eighty-five persons.
At this point of time the Second Division, in which I was included, was selected to go to the relief of the French army, retreating before the German drive. We were crowded upon trucks, and, without any possibility of rest, traveled for thirty hours, seventy-two miles, to the scone of battle.
Stiff and sore, we reached our destination on the morning of June first, and, without delay, in mid-afternoon, were moved at once into line. This was a great mistake. That very afternoon the Germans renewed their thrust, pushing the French before them.
As we neared the battle area we witnessed the most horrible sights that up to that time had ever greeted our eyes. We saw hundreds of old men, old women and little children carrying in their hands loaves of bread, chickens, rabbits and pieces of bed clothing, or pushing barrows with all of their life’s possessions in them. Some were leading cows; others were pushing baby carriages full of their earthly goods. With tears in their eyes they cried out to us as we passed, “Long live the Americans !”
On and on toward the front we went. The villages were now vacated, with all their possessions, exactly as one would leave home1 on Saturday afternoon, to go shopping. The chickens -were in the yard, the cattle in the field, the horses in the barn, and everything else that goes to make up life in a country village was in its usual place.
Tired and weary, we disembarked at Meaux, midway between Paris and Chateau-Thierry. As we disembarked from the trucks we began to kill chickens and prepare food in the houses of the people that were journeying back to safety in the rear. Excitement was high. We had killed a few chickens and prepared to roast them when the order came, “Into the lines !”
Not many days later I walked over to the basket where we left the chickens, and not having any food, took a bite out of a chicken’s leg, uncooked: indeed, we all had to eat the chickens without cooking them or else starve.
As we got nearer to the front, the French wounded appeared on the scene. The poor Frenchmen, streaming through our lines, cried to us to go back, that we could not possibly stop the oncoming Germans.
We took up our position along the Paris and Metz road, running out to Triangle Farm. There we set up our machine guns, and took our ranges. The enemy could be plainly seen with their machine guns, taking up their positions.
The record shows that the French officers held a council, with the request that the Americans should drop back, but that the Marine general made the famous response, “Retreat? Hell! We just got here.” I do not like to alter the phraseology of a general, but what he should have said is, “Retreat? Hell! They just got here.” The general was always back in a bombproof dugout, while the Suicide Squad was out on the firing line.
What the History Says
Even after twelve years, I do not like to live over again what happened in the next twentyseven days, and I do it only because intimate friends have been at me for two years to get me to put the story in black and white. No person who was ever out there with the guns likes to think or talk or write about it.
Perhaps the best thing I can do is to let the encyclopedia tell the general outline of what happened, and so I give a brief synopsis of the account in the Americana at this point, merely adding that I was in the very heart of the battle, from its beginning to its end.
‘The alert marines, as expert rifle men, calmly set their sights, and aimed with the same precision that they had shown upon the rifle ranges at Paris Island, Mare Island and Quantico. The machine guns also went into action. The accuracy of the rifle fire took heavy toll of the German ranks. The Germans ran to cover, raked by the American fire. The German drive for Paris was stayed by this day’s resistance.’
‘Then followed attacks and short advances, and continued fierce counter-attacks and heavy bombardments that thinned the marine ranks sadly, and forbade either rest or the renewing the stock of rations. Cold rations and sleepless nights, shortage of food and absence of water often, for the terrific barrage killed most of the runners.’
‘Between the thirtieth of May and the eighteenth of June hardly a man renewed his clothes or shoes. In less than a week the German 197th, 237th and 10th divisions were so exhausted that the crack 5th guard division had to be called in, then the 28th had to be called in. Thus one American division, the Second, wore out five German divisions.’
In Belleau Woods
The survivors of the fight in Belleau Woods never refer to it by any other name than Hell Wood. Even the French government, in recognition of what happened there, changed the name of the woods to Bois-de-la-Brigade Marine.
When we entered it the Germans were just bringing up their machine guns and artillery, sending over occasional shots as range finders, preparatory to blowing the woods to pieces. The pieces of shrapnel began to fly and had me frightened somewhat, so I sought some protection.
Finding that the shrapnel went right through the ammunition boxes, and part way through the machine guns themselves, when they hit them, we began in alarm to dig grave-like holes in the earth, so that we could let the shrapnel fly over our heads.
(To be continued)
Happenstances
Russian Cottons in Lancashire
IT IS claimed by a Mossley (England) cotton spinner that in the last year seventy million yards of Russian cotton goods were sold in Lancashire, and that Belgian yarns were being offered in Manchester at prices below the home market prices. In the town of Mossley only two out of 28 mills are working.
Barbers Should Avoid Mako
THE farmers of Mako, Hungary, six thousand of them, have no market for their onions and blame the government for their predicament. They have served notice on the government that they will not shave again until the government gives them lower taxes and better railroad rates.
Prisoners Must Stay Put
AS A result of the invention called the "electric eye” it looks as if prisoners hereafter would have to stay put. The effort to climb a prison wall brings the prisoner in range of the "electric eye”, when a gun is fired and the prison gongs clang furiously. The whole thing is automatic.
Women in Five and Ten Cent Stores
TWELVE dollars a week was the average wage of six thousand girls employed in five and ten cent stores in the year 1928. Only seven percent of the number earned as much as eighteen dollars a week, while twenty-five percent of them earned less than ten dollars a week.
Chain Store Financiers
REFERRING to the methods of chain store financiers the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin recently said: "Financial power in the hands of men living in distant cities knows no charity. It hears no cry of distress. It has no pity. It responds to no touch of community betterment.” This is all true.
KWKH Fight Against Chain Stores
FOR months radio station KWKH has been putting up a fight against chain stores, with the result that the station is receiving fifteen hundred to two thousand letters a day. This station, located at Shreveport, Louisiana, has stirred the Southwest mightily with its anti-chain-store campaign.
Germany's Baby Airships
GERMAN air engineer has devised a baby airship, capable of carrying four persons and cruising at the rate of fifty miles an hour for ten hours. At the present time these ships are being used largely for advertising purposes. The ship is 131 feet long, with a diameter of 32 feet.
Waste Products of a Big Business
HE by-products of the Ford Motor Company sold for cash last year amounted to more than nineteen million dollars, a very large business of itself. These sales included scrap, coal, coke, ammonium sulphate, motor benzol, charcoal, rubber goods, formaldehyde, artificial leather, lacquers, cement, plate glass, gas, and ballast.
Three Hundred Million Beaders
F THE total population of the earth, only one in six can read; so the reading population of the earth numbers three hundred millions. Divided into families of five, that would make about sixty million reading families. Up to date some seventy million copies of Judge Rutherford’s books have been placed. This is rather better than one of his books to every reading family in the world.
Double Distress, Triple Unemployment
HE Family Welfare Association, a federation of 234 charity and welfare associations, in sixty cities, reports that their expenditures for relief in January, 1930, were double those of the year previous, and that the number of families in distress because of unemployment was treble that of January, 1929. This one statement discounts all the glowing reports of national prosperity issued from Washington.
Children Employed; Adults Unemployed
IT IS estimated that there are two million child laborers in the United States, with perhaps several times that many adults who are unemployed. The way Owen R. Lovejoy, secretary of the Children’s Aid Society, puts the matter: “Two million men and women are standing along the highways of our industrial procession to watch two million child laborers give a new significance to the fact of unemployment.”
Switching on Lights in Australia
IDING at anchor in his little yacht in the Mediterranean, Senator Marconi, on March 26, switched on three thousand electric lamps at Sydney, Australia. This followed a lengthy wireless conversation in which every word was heard distinctly. The signals went via Dorchester, Grimsby and Victoria.
Changes in Japan and China
OHIO is said to have entirely recovered from the earthquake of 1923. The city has been remapped, broad thoroughfares have been laid out, and more than two hundred thousand homes have been moved to the new highways. China also is tearing down ancient walls and widening streets, and is excusing her errors of conduct by pointing to the American record of 11,000 murders a year.
The Yugoslavian Dictatorship
FpiTE Yugoslavian dictatorship has included in its list of books that may not be read by the general public Edward Bellamy’s hopeful vision of the future called Looking Backward. Apparently these dictatorships have now gotten to the point where they wish the people to be absolutely without hope, inasmuch as Bellamy’s book is purely fiction, and of the cleanest sort.
Britain’s Small Merchants Failing
BITAIN is witnessing the passing of the small merchant, the same as in the United
States. Ten thousand of them, located mostly in the villages and small towns, have failed in the last year. The principal reason assigned is the rapid increase in transportation facilities. Buses now run everywhere and for a few cents the shopper can go to the city, to shop, and 'does so.
Los Angeles’ Public Prosecutor
OR twenty-five years the public prosecutor of Los Angeles has been noted for his ferocity, having sent over’ four thousand persons to San Quentin prison. It now transpires that this man was himself a felon on a huge scale, and he has also been sent to San Quentin for a term of years. The warden is wondering how he can save the new prisoner from the wrath of the older ones.
Italy One Vast Prison
T N AN address in Great Britain, Professor A C. Rosselli declared that Italy is one vast prison, where torture is now practiced and murder and arson are committed with impunity. Persons suspected of disapproving the Mussolini regime are confined, without pretense of trial. The prisons are overcrowded, with three or four persons in cells designed for one. Even school children are solemnly shadowed by the government.
Human Sacrifices in Africa
r. Leo Frobenius, German archeologist, recently back from a trip to Rhodesia and
India, has taken scores of photographs showing that the ruins at Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, were originally built by the same builders as erected similar structures in India. Dr. Frobenius claims that human sacrifices still prevail in dark corners of Africa and that he hopes soon to discover the secrets of the sacrificial ceremony. When he gets to the bottom of it he will find the Devil.
Saved Her Thirty Dollars
Czechoslovak woman in Ellbogen, near Carlsbad, entered into a bargain with a
gent claiming to be the Devil, who called at her clooi' and offered to grant repose to the soul of her deceased husband if she would only give him $30. She promised to give it to him the next night. She told her banker, he told the police, and it then turned out that the thief who wanted her $30 for the repose of her husband’s soul was one of her neighbors who had figured out that this would be an easy way to make some ready money.
Balsa Wood Lightest Known
ALSA wood, the lightest and one of the strongest woods known, weighs but seven pounds per cubic foot. This is less than half the weight of cork. This wood, grown in Ecuador, is much used in the making of airplanes, surf boards, and toys, and for other purposes ■where lightness and strength are desired. The wood has excellent insulating qualities and is used for lining ice boxes.
In an. Arkansas Prison
HE Harvard Law Review points out that in a certain Arkansas penitentiary a certain prisoner, not yet convicted, was sent there for safe-keeping. Just to help out the cause of justice, or at least to help out something instead of justice, the warden of the penitentiary unmercifully flogged him over a period of six or eight days, until ho confessed. Well, almost anybody would confess to anything, whether guilty or not, if flogged for six or eight days. In view of the illegality of the whole proceeding one wonders at it all.
Communism in New York
ROB ABLY there are communists in New
York, but not as many as some thought, because it now turns out that several of the noisiest demonstrators in the so-called ‘communist uprising’ in Union Square were city employees, policemen at that, who were disguised as communists and even carried banners demanding the overthrow of the government, and that they were assigned to the job. It seems too bad that the level of the police administration of the great city of New York should have fallen so low as to resort to methods like these.
The Oakland Hook-up (Concluded from page 575)
Evansville, Ind.; Cleveland, Ohio; Harrisburg, Pa.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Darby, Pa.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Youngstown, Ohio; Petersburg, Va.; Boston, Mass.; Greenwood, Mass.; Attleboro, Mass.; Washington, D. C.; New York, N. Y.; Jersey City, N. J.; Paterson, N. J.; Norfolk, Va.; Denver, Colo.; Hattiesburg, Miss.; West Jackson, Miss.; Sulphur, Okla.; Walters, Okla.; Denison, Tex.; Fort Worth, Tex.; St. Paul, Minn.; Princeton, Minn.; Balsam Lake, Wis.; Duluth, Minn.; Jump River, Wis.; Detroit, Mich.; Dearborn, Mich.; Schenectady, N. Y.; Albany, N. Y.; Scotia, N. Y.; Troy, N. Y.; Miami, Fla.; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Okeechobee, Fla.; West Balm Beach, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; Victoria, B. C.; Portland, Oreg.; Spokane, Wash.; La Grande, Oreg.; Ashland, Oreg.; Fresno, Calif.; Monrovia, Calif.; Santa Paula, Calif.; Reno, Nev.; Bellingham, 'Wash.; Jacksonville, HL; Virginia, Minn.; Mt. Vernon, Ill.; Concordia, Kans.; Joaquin, Tex.; Simms, Tex.; Beede, Ark.; Monroe, La.; Belvidere, Ill.; Tupper Lake, N. Y., and other points too numerous to mention.
Strange Kind of a Show
HE Houston Chronicle promises that at the engineering show at Rice Institute a dog’s head would be cut off and his veins sewed up, and for the two days of the show, April 18 and 19, the heart would be kept beating. How anybody could be a party to such a heartless and entirely useless performance is hard to understand. Next thing you know, some of these scientists will be trying some of these fool experiments with human beings as the subjects.
Dominie Shot Them Up
N M. E. dominie of Mendota, Illinois, married, wrote a love letter to an attractive widow of the congregation. She took it to a reputable man and wife for safe-keeping. Dominie heard of it, went and deinandedAetter, was refused, and shot them both. He is alleged to be puzzled as to why he should now be in jail, for he says he had to shoot them or they might have injured his reputation. Wonder what kind of a reputation he has given God on the hell question.
Effect of Wages on Workers
rpIIE effect of wages on 'workers is almost instantaneous. A' concern with factories in Denmark and Belgium noticed that in Denmark, where wages were high, the same kinds of work were done in less time than in Belgium, where the wages were low. As an experiment, the wages in Belgium were raised, and at once the length of time required to do the work decreased markedly. In fact, it was found that it actually paid the company, in dollars and cents, to raise the wages in Belgium, because the workers accomplished so much more.
Bishop Barnes of Birmingham
isHOP Barnes, of Birmingham, recently distinguished himself by a so-called “sermon” in which he held out the thought that there would be in heaven some half-formed souls of ape-men. The bishop, having entirely discarded the Bible, does not know that a soul and a being are one and the same thing. An ape is now, and always has been, one kind of soul, one kind of being. No ape soul will ever be in heaven. Bishop Barnes will not be there either; so why should he worry about something he knows nothing about?
Glasgow’s Great Milk Test
HPHE city of Glasgow, Scotland, is undertaking a great milk test. Twenty thousand school children have been selected, weighed, and measured scientifically. Five thousand of these will be fed raw milk, five thousand pasteurized milk, and the remainder will not be fed any milk but will also be measured and weighed at the end of the tests. This ought to give some valuable light on the much-discussed question of the value of pasteurization of milk,
Too Many Tonsillectomies
William M. Brady, M.D., in an article entitled “The Scandal of Tonsillectomy”, mentions a typical mid-Western city in which, in a given month, about a thousand tonsils were removed. A pathologist took the trouble to examine one thousand tonsils, removed in a dispensary, and found that 710 of them had never been seriously affected and 430 did not reveal any evidence whatever of the need of an operation.
Rails Heavier and Heavier
HE first locomotives ran on wooden rails which had strap iron nailed on the top of them. The nails pulled out, the strap iron curled up, and wrecks were as common as flies in August. Gradually steel rails came into existence. A generation ago a great advance was made and rails were made and laid which weighed 100 pounds to the yard. Now we note that the Pennsylvania Railroad has just finished relaying its main line with rails which weigh 130 pounds to the yard, a weight unheard of and unthought of a generation ago.
Tuberculosis Posters
HE other day, near a railroad station, wa saw a poster of some lovely children beneath the heading “Protect Them from Tuberculosis”. The train had stopped for a moment and we read the wording beneath. In substance it said: “Keep them away from sick people. Insist on plenty of rest. Train them in health habits. Consult the doctor regularly. This campaign made possible by the sale of -Christmas seals.” We have to say frankly that we are disappointed. Something in this poster may be of-benefit to the children of the artist who drew it, the lithographer’s children, or the children of the billposter or the doctor, but what possible benefit from such a poster could accrue to the children of the unemployed, the undernourished, the ones in danger of tuberculosis, is hard to imagine, and we are sorry to see the funds intended for their benefit so sadly mishandled.
whelming public obligations the Federal Power Commission turned and rendered a decision that leaves the people at the mercy of trust extortion, trust tyranny and trust corruption. This is just another proof that our government is controlled by the trusts and is being used traitorously, treacherously and crookedly against the people, against the public and against democracy.
"Forward America”
The Merry Work of Poisoning
The Power Trust in Minnesota
HOW the Power Trust works in Minnesota is powerfully told by the magazine TNT. Briefly, the people of the community wanted the power from a government dam, but the PowTer Trust, by methods which have made it famous, or infamous, won over manufacturers, city council, newspapers, and finally the Federal Power Commission at Washington, and the people lost out. TNT says forcefully:
The fact that the daily papers and manufacturers and a majority of the city council at Red Wing finally turned against the proposition furnishes a poor alibi for the action of the Federal Commission in rejecting the application. The people, and especially the farmers, still demanded it. Public welfare clearly demanded it. The Water Power act demanded it. Simple democracy demanded it. Against all these over-
THE merry work of poisoning goes on unin--k terruptedly; and as nobody in America that is interested in the manufacture of aluminum utensils has any interest whatever in humanity, and the government, the press, the doctors and the boards of health are all afraid of incurring the wrath of the powerful aluminum interests, it looks as if it would have to continue indefinitely.
One of the recent cities to boast of a firstclass example of aluminum poisoning on a large scale is San Francisco. The following is a report of an investigation made for Doctor Betts. It will be observed that, as usual, the board of health was entirely innocent and entirely ignorant on the aluminum question, though what happened is perfect- "Busin
ly clear to every reader of this journal.
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