Shadows

War shadows spread across the Atlantic last week faster than the Clipper plane that brought home Cinemastars Tyrone Power and his wife,Annabella. At Binghamton, N. Y., Dr. Ernst Schwarz, German-born president of Agfa Ansco Corp. (cameras, film), got his U. S. citizenship papers and quickly told the newspapers about it.

On the Virginia hill that slopes into the Potomac, twice as many Americans as usual walked, hushed and hatless, to stand in sombre silence by the white marble Unknown Soldier's Tomb. In Sudbury, Mass., leathery old Henry Ford, who once called history "bunk" and with his "peace ship"* tried to stop World War I before Christmas 1915, told reporters: "They don't dare have a war and they know it. It's all a big bluff." About Hitler: "I don't know Hitler personally, but at least Germany keeps its people at work."

In Saratoga Springs, N. Y., a farmer of German descent, Charles Bollmeyer, argued hotly over the crisis with his wife (of Polish descent), finally shot her in the hips, chest, stomach with a shotgun. Throughout the U. S. men & women streamed to the Polish, German, British, French and Italian consulates, offering to enlist as reserves, volunteers, nurses. U. S. Poles quickly collected $1,000,000 for Warsaw. Everywhere consulates kept open doors all day except the British, which closed each afternoon at 3:30 p. m. for 4 o'clock tea. Thousands of aliens rushed to naturalization offices, seeking U. S. citizenship in a hurry.

A shortage of pinheads, colored for use by living-room tacticians in deploying armies over maps, was reported by Rand McNally & Co., who also were sold out of all large-scale European maps.

A Standard Oil subsidiary at Bayonne, N. J. replaced all German-born hands on its tankers with U. S. seamen. Lieut,. Commander Allan Wurtele, U. S. N., retired, announced on his New Roads. La., sugar plantation that he was ready to contribute $5,000 to a fund to buy Danzig, the Polish Corridor, and give them to Adolf Hitler. "This offer may sound screwball," said Commander Wurtele.

By unanimous resolution the Loyal Order of Moose struck the 52-year-old title of "dictator" from its rituals, substituted the word "Governor," at a cost of $50,000 for new stationery, symbols, etc.

California aircraft companies readied 70 bombing planes for England and France. Telephone service to Europe was temporarily cut off; only calls to the Bank of England went over the cable to London, only official and banking calls to Paris.*

Pairings for the U. S. Singles tennis championships in Philadelphia were drawn in gloomy belief that Jacques Brugnon and Bernard Destremau of France, Charles Hare of England, Ferenc Puncec, Frank Kukuljevic and Demeter Mitic of Yugoslavia will be summoned home for war duty before the tournament ends next week.

Meat dealers noted with satisfaction that only the meat and oil industries (as in 1914) are in a position to handle increased production immediately without sweeping rearrangement of facilities. In Chicago, sardonic Earl Browder, No. 1 U. S. Communist, told a rally of 12,000 sympathizers that Poland could yet win Soviet aid if Polish workers would oust their present leaders. With Germany's war machine in motion, Communist Earl Browder changed his rationalization of the Nazi-Soviet pact from "a wonderful contribution to peace" to "the only possibility of a decisive blow for peace."

Across the street from the White House in the green peace of Lafayette Square, U. S. Government workers continued to eat luncheon quietly amid the strutting pigeons at the foot of the baroque bronze statue of General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish patriot who was George Washington's adjutant in the Revolution and who fought most of his life for the independence and territorial integrity of Poland.

In the U. S.'s great metropolis, New York City, the war cast even longer shadows:

The dread of war jabbed deep into U. S. citizens when New York City's Transportation Board observed that rock-cut subways would make perfect bombproof shelters, when policemen were assigned to power stations, docks and vital factories to guard against sabotage.

The shadow touched old John Traczyka in his tiny Brooklyn luncheonette. Brooding, he turned his life savings of $1,000 over to the Polish war chest, jumped from his second-story window to death on the sidewalk.

Fritz Kuhn, No. 1 U. S. Nazi, walked into his Manhattan office at 9 a.m. the morning German troops walked into Poland, immediately changed his map of Europe to make all western Poland the map color of Germany. Said Kuhn: "It will be all over in a few days."

The Soviets jerked the anti-Nazi motion picture Professor Mamlock from daily showings at the Russian World's Fair Pavilion, substituted Lenin in 1917, blandly explained that this was a routine change of program. At Coney Island, Park Policeman Thomas O'Connor saw Mrs. Ray Brodsky sitting on a piece of paper. When he warned her this counted as littering the beach, she called him a "Hitler." Brooklyn Magistrate D. Joseph de Andrea dismissed the charge but warned Mrs. Brodsky against calling anyone "Hitler." Prison wardens in New York, who feed inmates 51 ounces of meat a week, observed that German citizens, rationed 25 ounces weekly, are worse off.

At the World's Fair in New York, 34 staff members of the Rumanian Restaurant left for their country's colors, and without Neagu, Rumania's most famous chef (now to be an Army cook), the restaurant closed.

A 1 1/2-lb. muntjak (deer), born in The Bronx Zoo, was named "Crisis."

Germans in New York City's Yorkville drank Muenchner stolidly, foresaw a quick Nazi victory, worried only over the homeward trip of the Bremen.

More than 100 G-Men of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 850 agents were concentrated in the New York City area to watch shipping, amateur radio stations, airplane factories, railroad stations, bridges and tunnels.

>To its first line of defense, the Panama Canal Zone, the Army dispatched 30 officers, 859 antiaircraft artillerymen, five bombers (to patrol vital areas), 31 pursuit planes. In the Canal's Gatun Lake a Navy gunboat took up a symbolic if otherwise ineffective vigil. In Washington Army-Navy procurers stepped up rearmament spending, made the U. S. hum with Preparedness.

Most effective critic of the peace ship's travels was a young Philadelphia Public Ledger reporter on board who brilliantly lampooned the pacifists' daily quarreling. He was William Christian Bullitt, now U. S. Ambassador to France.

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