| Adventurers “7’oo Much Courage” Bv FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter. OOME7IMES it’s a fine thing, boys and girls, to have one ot O those cast-iron, copper-plated nervous systems that don’t get all in a jitter the minute something happens. Steeplejacks have them—and so have structural ironwork ers who spend most of their working day twenty stories above the street, balanced on a ten-inch iron beam, playing baseball with red hot rivets. I’v always sort of envied birds like that for their courage. And again, at times, I’ve been glad I don’t have nerves like theirs. After all, our nerves are about the best warn ing signals we have—and you know what usually happens to the guy who doesn’t pay any attention to the signs. Take the case of Bill Woods, for instance—William H. Woods of Brooklyn, N. Y. Bill isn't an ironworker, but he’s got an ironwork er’s nerve. Put him in a burning building, and my guess is that he wouldn’t begin to get excited about it until the fire actually be gan creeping up his coat-tails. I’m judging him now from the way he acted in that restaurant in Brooklyn on April 30, 1934. This Adventure Starts With a Cup of Coffee. It’s quite a story, boys and girls—a story that starts out with a walking tour through the streets of Brooklyn. Bill and his friend, Charley Young, had been taking an evening stroll, and eleven o’clock found them at Boro Hall park. Charley suggested that they drop into a cafeteria for a cup of coffee before they hit the hay. Bill agreed, and they crossed the street. They went into the cafeteria, took their checks from the machine at the door and went over to the long counter. They ordered coffee, and the counterman turned to get it. But no sooner had he turned than he swung back toward the door and said: “What’s the matter over there?” That’s the first intimation Bill and Charley had that anything was wrong. They looked in the direction in which the counterman was staring. Several men were scuffling over near the door. Then, suddenly from the center of that milling group came the sound of a shot! Bedlam Breaks Loose in Cafeteria Following Shots. “In the moment that immediately followed,” says Bill, “no one stirred. Everyone in the place had stopped eating and all eyes were turned toward the door. That moment of indecision didn’t The Man Fell Over Backwards and Was Still. last long, however, for suddenly another shot rang out, loud and deafening in that enclosed space. No one knew what had happened, but you couldn’t mistake that sound.” At that second shot, bedlam broke loose in the cafe teria. Women screamed. Men jumped up from their seats. Tables were overturned. Everyone thought of just one thing, and that was getting under cover. Everyone was running about in frantic haste to get a door between them and that revolver—everyone, that is, but Rill Woods. In all the hulla baloo he alone kept his head. And it nearly cost him his life. Bill looked around for Charley. He was gone—evidently into a milling crowd of people who had run toward the back of the cafe teria and were trying to crowd into the washrooms. Those who weren’t there were crawling on their hands and knees, trying to get under a table. Bill noticed that and decided to get under cover himself. There was a radiator with a screened grill in front of him and he dropped down behind that. There followed a brief silence punctuated only by the sounds of struggling men, then another shot reverberated through the room. That was when Bill’s curiosity and his nerve got the better of his common sense. He stood up to take a look. Bill Made a Fine Target for the Man With the Gun. Over by the door, a man, gun in hand, was standing, back up against the cashier’s counter, while half a dozen younger men tried to wrestle the gun away from him. “One of the younger men,” says Bill, “picked up a heavy sugar container and hit the older man over the head. I saw the glass break and the sugar scatter over the floor, but the man with the gun seemed invincible. They couldn’t beat him down. They were too many for him in the end, though, and finally he fell behind the cashier's desk. And then, thinking all danger was past, I walked over to the counter.” Bill walked over until he was within ten feet of the fallen man when, to his amazement, the man started to sit up. The gun, still in his hand, rose until it pointed straight at Bill’s midriff. Too late, Bill began to wish he'd been one of those nervous individuals who had taken refuge in the washroom. He stood petrified—afraid to move. He drew in a deep breath and waited to feel the bullet bite into his flesh. At that distance, the man on the floor couldn’t miss. Timely Arrival of Copper Saves Bill’s Life. Then, the only thing that could save Bill's life happened. Through the restaurant door came a police sergeant with a drawn pistol. He got the situation at a glance, took deliberate aim at the man with the gun, and shot him through the stomach. That was the end. The man fell over backwards and was still. A red circle of blood slowly widened beneath him. More policemen came. They began asking questions. The cashier of the restaurant had been creased over one ear by a bullet, and one young man, shot through the shoulder, was leaning against the counter, trying to staunch the flow of blood. They told the story. The man with the gun, they said, had been drunk. He had walked over to a table and accused another man of laughing at him. An argument started and the drunk drew a gun. That was when Old Lady Adventure stepped in and started shaking up thrill cocktails—one for everybody in the house, and a deadly one for the man with the gun. ©—WNU Service. Cause of Civil War The issue of slavery was the direct cause of the Civil war. The question of states’ rights or the right of a state to secede from the federation was the fundamen tal cause. This had l>een a vexed question from the beginnings of the government, until it was brought to a head by the slavery issue. The Spitz Dog The Spitz dog, named for the Arc tic islands of Spitzbergen, is a de scendant of the part-wolf ancestors of chows and samoyeds. Like them it pulled sleds in the frozen north. The breed later became popular in Europe. Various shepherd breeds, and the schipperke and the pomer anian, were developed from it {BRISBANE THIS WEEK Paris: Many Newspapers Surprise for Karl Marx Mr. Eden Was Tired Out A Big Somersault This world is really no bigger, now. than the palm of your hand; wherever you Arthur llrlNlmnr are, news comes [pouring i n—a I Pullman car on i the Mohave des ert has the “Ex jaminer”; flying i across, the Le ' vand brothers hurry to the air field at Wichita with the latest I “Beacon”; and on the ocean, a newspaper ap pears every day; the radio feeds it; in Paris, ten times as many newspapers as are published in New York tell you anything you choose to believe, from editorials written by men who do not know that the royal and im perial French families died and were buried after the war of 1870 to fiery-eyed moderns who think they can graft Karl Marx and Len in on Jacques Bonhomme, the French peasant, and produce a French Utopia, with a Russian ac cent and a pair of high boots. They do not know Jacques Bon homme, who bought his land in the revolution at bargain prices with inflated assignats, and means to keep it, nor do they know the small sized French bourgeois, who thinks more of one four-cent franc than some of our governing geniuses think of a billion 59-cent dollars. The Marx-Stalin-Lenin brother hood in America, by the way, does not understand the inside feelings of the U. S. A. citizen, with his bungalow, automobile, radio set, washing machine and furniture, all “nearly paid for.” Send HIM, instead of a bill for his last installment, the statement, “No more private property," and see what he says and does. You take your choice of dozens of Paris daily newspapers; the wild kind, that say anything and lose money; the tame kind, that say nothing and make money, but very little of it; the mummified kind, that still take “Madame La Mar quise” seriously, and think them selves back in the days of old Madame De Deiland and Lord Bol j ingbroke. You have, also, newspapers from all the Lilliput countries nearby— English, Italian, German—and the news is in them, only you must know how to extract it. They are queer little newspapers, and if that be provincialism, make the most of it. In London, for instance, Lord Rothermere’s newspaper tells you that Mr. Eden, British foreign sec retary, has gone to “a secret des tination" in the country for a week's rest. English statesmen always go to “a secret destination,” for reasons unknown to Mr. James Farley, who relaxes at the ringside, or Presi dent Roosevelt, wrho rests fishing, on a battleship, with fifty report ers on another ship, nearby. You wonder that a man as young as Eden should need a rest. Glad stone, at nearly twice his age, was talking in the Commons at four in the morning—but Gladstones are few, Tim Healys also. Rothermere's writer thinks Eden is all tired out after his Geneva speech, telling just why England lifted the Italian sanctions. It was he who made a speech recently, just as earnest and much louder, telling why those sanctions must NEVER be lifted. That was turning a big somersault. The English know how to do that, and you are sup posed to laugh. Eden told Baldwin what the doc tor said, and Baldwin said, "By all means, my boy, hurry off to a se cret destination," and Eden hur ried. In America, the business man would say, "Doctor, there are a few things that I must settle ! first," meaning, perhaps, his in I come tax. He would hang on and ( on, and finally go to a really secret i destination, in the graveyard. Driving through Normandy, from j Havre, where the ships land, would interest American farmers, espe cially any whose lands are "worn out" after comparatively few years of cultivation. On lands in this part of the world, wheat has been | grown for three hundred years, and today yields better, bigger crops than ever. In Rome, as in other places on the earth's surface, one city is piled upon another. Dig down through one and the other appears. Inva sions, plagues, famines and the grinding ice have wiped them out. Those that read this today are the descendants of men such as the inhabitants of the Stone age village. And still we are worried, looking down at the enemy, pover ty, that may climb up and attack us in old age. €) King Features Syndicate, 1u Wonderful, how this mildly medicated nieucc Soap cleanses and soothes—how the Ointment RA5Hfc- relieves and helps heal 1 Wonderful, you’ll agree, as even the first application aids and comforts. Sold everywhere. Ointment 26c. Soap 26c. Write for FB1.S sample to “Coticura," Dept, 11, Malden. Maaa, p jiLjPfljii p a y ji jpirn J m tf,ll t ’ % lifTj