Patriots on Tour

As the Hamburg-American's Reliance last week churned across the Celebes and Sulu Seas, a tiny, moving island of German territory on a world cruise, a bitter little passenger's war raged inside. A U. S. citizen of substance had given an interview at Singapore on Germany's violations of the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno: "I don't see how anybody can make any agreements of any kind with Germany, because she regards agreements as scraps of paper."

What he had forgotten was that citizens of all nations are transfigured with patriotism when they are abroad. His German fellow-passengers promptly declared war. German curses followed him down gangways; Germans bumped him, stepped on his toes, buttonholed him to shout red-faced abuse. German women, he later claimed, even spat on his wife. For five days the U. S. couple sat in their cabin, eating canned food. But the boorish German tourists, who might have ruined a lesser character with such treatment, had had the misfortune to catch a tartar.

The man was Alvan Tracy Simonds, a topnotch U. S. capitalist with a brain. A member of the Simonds Saws family, he is president of prosperous Simonds Saw & Steel Co. of Fitchburg, Mass. Six years ago he and his two brothers decided to put their century-old business into an astonishing new factory: one five-acre room without windows. Executives and machines were to work side by side, their noises deadened by sound-absorbing ceilings; machines were to be bright orange against black floors to prevent accidents by making everything conspicuous; walls and ceilings, part blue to reflect ultraviolet rays, part green to energize workmen, part white for light and cleanliness. Two hours before closing time, flagging workmen were to be daily revived by a burst of stirring music. But the five-acre room, finished in 1932, still stands empty and idle.

On his own hook Alvan Simonds publishes his own business forecast, Looking Ahead, has looked ahead to predict the Depression, the crash of Florida real estate, the U. S. abandonment of the gold standard. He personally considers his fellow-capitalists "a very stupid lot." When the U. S. entered the War, he was 40. He offered himself to the Government as purchasing agent for steel helmets and body armor, became a Captain of the Army's Ordnance Department.

Last week U. S. Citizen Simonds radioed ahead to Manila for an armed guard to meet him and his wife at the pier. When the Reliance docked, he went ashore behind four policemen to protest to U. S. High Commissioner Frank Murphy, took rooms at a Manila hotel. To newshawks he said: "One of my German friends who openly sympathized with me was attacked and beaten. I feared they would attack us. ... The officers and members of the ship's crew, however, treated us fine."

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