Exuberance

AERONAUTICS

Flight

The Atlantic in its immense indifference was not aware that man-made cables on its slimy bottom contained news, that the silent heavens above pulsed with news--news that would set thousands of printing presses in motion, news that would make sirens scream in every U.S. city, news that would cause housewives to run out into backyards and shout to their children: "Lindbergh is in Paris!"

The Start. Late one evening last week Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh studied weather reports and decided that the elements were propitious for a flight from New York to Paris. He took a two-hour sleep, then busied himself with final preparations at Roosevelt Field, L.I. Four sandwiches, two canteens of water and emergency army rations, along with 451 gallons of gasoline were put into his monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. "When I enter the cockpit," said he, "it's like going into the death chamber. When I step out at Paris, it will be like getting a pardon from the governor."

He entered the cockpit. At 7:52 a.m. he was roaring down the runway, his plane lurching on the soft spots of the wet ground. Out of the safety zone, he hit a bump, bounced into the air, quickly returned to earth. Disaster seemed imminent; a tractor and a gully were ahead. Then his plane took the air, cleared the tractor, the gully; cleared some telephone wires. Five hundred onlookers believed they had witnessed a miracle. It was a miracle of skill.

The Journey. Capt. Lindbergh took the shortest route to Paris--the great circle--cutting across Long Island Sound, Cape Cod, Nova Scotia, skirting the coast of Newfoundland. He later told some of his sky adventures to the aeronautically alert New York Times for syndication: "Shortly after leaving Newfoundland, I began to see icebergs. Within an hour it became dark. Then I struck clouds and decided to try to get over them. For a while I succeeded at a height of 10,000 feet. I flew at this height until early morning. The engine was working beautifully and I was not sleepy at all. I felt just as if I was driving a motor car over a smooth road, only it was easier. Then it began to get light and the clouds got higher. Sleet began to cling to the plane. That worried me a great deal and I debated whether I should keep on or go back. I decided I must not think any more about going back.

"Fairly early in the afternoon I saw a fleet of fishing boats. On one of them I saw some men and flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They just stared. Maybe they didn't hear me. Maybe I didn't hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool.

"An hour later I saw land. I flew quite low enough over Ireland to be seen, but apparently no great attention was paid to me. "

Capt. Lindbergh then told how he crossed southwestern England and the Channel, followed the Seine to Paris, where he circled the city before recognizing the flying field at Le Bourget. Said he: "I appreciated the reception which had been prepared for me and had intended taxiing up to the front of the hangars, but no sooner had my plane touched the ground than a human sea swept toward it. I saw there was danger of killing people with my propeller, and I quickly came to a stop."

He had completed his 3,600-mile conquest of the Atlantic in 33 hours, 29 minutes.

May 30, 1927

FOREIGN NEWS

Germany "Beer Hall Revolt"

Under cover of darkness General Erich von Ludendorff, flagitious, inscrutable, unrelenting, sallied forth into the streets of Munich, capital of Bavaria, accompanied by his faithful Austrian, Herr Adolf Hitler, to make a coup for the Hohenzollerns by way of celebrating Nov. 9, the fifth anniversary of the abdication of the then Kaiser of Doorn.

With unerring instinct they led their men to a beer-house, called the Bugerbrau Keller, famed Bavarian cellar. Within was Bavarian Dictator von Kahr and some others. Dr. von Kahr was in the middle of outlining his state policy in which he denounced Marxism, when the door opened and in walked Herr Hitler and General von Ludendorff with some of their followers, who fired a few shots into the ceiling by way of effect.

Herr Hitler declared the Bavarian Government had been superseded and elected himself not only head of Bavaria but Chancellor of all Germany. General Ludendorff was given command of the army, which he accepted, and said: "We have reached the turning point in the history of Germany and the world. God bless our work!"

After this distribution of gifts by fairy godfather Hitler, there was wild talk of a march on Berlin, the destruction of the Treaty of Versailles, the deposition of President Ebert and the Berlin Government.

Everything seemed to be "going" well enough. The people cheered Ludendorff when he swaggered in or out of anywhere. The Hitler storm troops were in possession of the city and the sun was shining brightly on the following day. "Chancellor" Hitler and "Commander-in-Chief" von Ludendorff were within the War Office when the loyal Bavarian Reichswehr stormed the building, and after a short battle the "beer hall revolt" was crushed.

Nov. 19, 1923

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Bankers v. Panic

In Grand Central, Manhattan, Sydney Zollicoffer Mitchell dismounted from the Twentieth Century with a bad cold, went quickly to his office in the 2 Rector St. building. He telephoned a large Stock Exchange house, said he thought there would be trouble but "just call on me for anything you want." A few hours later, stock of his gigantic Electric Bond & Share, which had recently reached a high of 189, sold for 91. A few days later, it sold at 50.

Promptly at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24, sounded the gong of the New York Stock Exchange and 6,000 shares of Montgomery Ward changed hands at 83--its 1929 high having been 156.

For so many months so many people had saved money and borrowed money and borrowed on their borrowings to possess themselves of the little pieces of paper by virtue of which they became partners in U.S. Industry. Now they were trying to get rid of them even more frantically than they had tried to get them. Stocks bought without reference to their earnings were being sold without reference to their dividends. At around noon there came the no-bid menace. Even in a panic-market, someone must buy the "dumped" shares, but stocks were dropping from 2 to 10 points between sales--losing from 2 to 10 points before a buyer could be found for them. Sound stocks at shrunk prices--and nobody to buy them. It looked as if U.S. Industries' little partners were in a fair way to bankrupt the firm.

Nov. 4, 1929

Nuptials

The banns have been published of John Daniel II and Jenny Lind, spinster. The marriage is to take place in London, where Miss Lind was taken by her guardian, Professor T. Alexander Barnes, as soon as Mr. Daniel, who is now on the high seas, returns from his visit to the U.S. with his chaperon, Miss Alice Cunningham.

It is said that Miss Lind is the first female gorilla ever captured alive and brought back to civilization. Mr. Daniel is the only human-reared gorilla now living, John Daniel I having died some time ago from homesickness while absent from Miss Cunningham. Scientific society is looking forward with interest to its first opportunity to attend a gorilla wedding.

Nov. 24, 1924

CINEMA

The Thief of Bagdad. Going through miles and miles of glowing pictures in an art museum gets to be rather wearisome, unless someone is thrown out of the galleries. So boredom sets in eventually as Douglas Fairbanks takes one on a personally conducted tour of ancient Bagdad, without any really stirring grand larceny, although he plays a thief. It is like reading the Arabian Nights at one sitting, with only six minutes allowed to stretch the limbs and get the contrast of a workaday world.

The picture has the sheen of the romantic Orient all through it, and its sets of towering walls, labyrinthine streets and castles in the clouds are stupendously beautiful, expressive of dollars laid out in splendid designs. There are some stirring sights of the Mongols capturing the city like a swarm of beetles, and of Douglas raising an avenging horde from the earth with a magic powder more potent than aspirin. It is all a studied beauty, like a florid poster in action.

March 31, 1924

THE THEATRE

Funny Face. Three noble contributors to musical comedy have collaborated for the third time, and for the third time with thorough excellence. George Gershwin writes music; Fred and Adele Astaire dance it. They began together with For Goodness Sake, repeated with Lady, Be Good! and in Funny Face furnish the smartest and best of the new musical comedies.

If the matter ended there, most spectators would be content. But far from ending there, the spectacle is favored far above the average with jests judiciously delivered by Victor Moore and William Kent; more than usually intricate dances; good taste in dress; an immense male & female chorus; a plot about stolen jewels, no worse than its kind; and a beautiful chorus girl who is almost certainly Oriental.

Spectators laugh inordinately when Mr. Kent is asked where is his chivalry, and he replies that he traded it in for a Cadillac. Requested to define symptoms, he explains: "Symptoms I'm happy; symptoms I'm blue."

Dec. 5, 1927

BOOKS

Writer

IN OUR TIME--Ernest Hemingway--Boni & Liveright ($2). Here is a writer, a young new U.S. writer, who instinctively differentiates between the hawk of living and the handsaw of existing. He appears to have lived considerably himself, in unusual ways and places. He knows how trout-fishing in Michigan feels; how Yankee jockeys, straight and crooked, ride on European tracks; how half-breed squaws bear their children back of the logging camps; how bulls and toreros slaughter one another in Spain. How he knows things you cannot say; he writes so directly, without fuss and feathers, with so little explanation of himself. He is that rare bird, an intelligent young man who is not introspective on paper. His stories are often incomplete; just facets of life, color and touch, like Katherine Mansfield's "stories," only more masculine, and (sometimes) brutally natural. Make no mistake, Ernest Hemingway is somebody; a new, honest, un-"literary" transcriber of life--a Writer.

Jan. 18, 1926

Recently a doctor grafted a portion of a pig's eye on the eyeball of a blind boy, Alfred Lemonowicz of Paterson, N.J. According to reports the operation was partly successful--the young boy is able to see slightly. At any rate, the attendant publicity has secured the young man a contract to appear in vaudeville with the pig.

March 3, 1923