Wooden Ships That Pack a Punch
IT hen steel became scarce, New England builders of fishing
trawlers went bach to wood. They convinced the navy they coidd
build stcijt, useful auxiliary ships of wood. And now Uncle Sam's
one-ton featherweight mosquito fleet—unarmored and made of ply
wood—have sunk transjmrls and warships. It was a mosquito boat
that got General Mac Arthur out of Bataan.
J
Above is a typical logging
scone in Washington. A coast
guard cutter is shou n in the
circle. Left: Working on a
wooden minesweeper at
Rockland, Me.
r\
| Torpedo boot or
*mosquito' boat.
Picture at top shows a coastal minesweeper. Below: coast guard
cabin picket boat, 38 feet in length.
Stretch of virgin timber in Washington on which logging opera
tions are just starting. Mt. Rainier is shown in background.
A V. S. navy sub•
chaser is on her ivay.
Dreams Come
True
By
R. II. WILKINSON
Associated Newspapers.
WNU Features.
IMAGINATION can be a pleasant
thing, but sometimes when one
has allowed himself to dream
dreams, the return to a prosaic
everyday life can be shockingly bit
ter.
Osborne Lihcoln experienced these
sensations rather regularly and for
tunately he had a true and under
standing wife who also was given
to dreams and fond hopes and long
ings. In fact, their dreams were
mostly about the same sort of thing
—mainly of living the life of west
erners.
To cope with this longing they saw
; all the western movies they could.
It was after seeing an especially
good picture of this type that Os
borne took the bull by the horns
so to speak
“Listen, honey," he said to Sally.
"Let's do it. Let’s chuck things
here and go out west. I've always
wanted to, always wanted to realize
at least one of my dreams, and now
that I know you like the West—”
He waited for her reply, Dream
less, fearful. But Sally dispelled his
every doubt at once. "Darling, I’d
love to! Honest! We’re still young,
and if we don’t make a go at it, we
can always start over."
And so they did. They bought
a ranch, stocked and furnished,
sight unseen, from a real estate
agent In Salt Lake City. It took
most of their savings, but they
were doing what both wanted to
do, and neither had a moment’s
regret. Even sight or the
"ranch" didn’t cool their ardor.
"What if It is only a shack!" Sally
exclaimed. "We can fix it up. I’U
plant a garden out front and you
Sally looked at him forlornly. "It’s
usually like that," she said. "About
trying to realize your dreams, I
mean."
can paint the place and—and we’ll
make a home of it!"
Identifying an establishment as a
home depends upon its occupants.
To the Lincolns the shack on the
flat, desolate plain was a home.
They were delighted with it, and if
they weren't they never admitted it
to each other. They called it the
X Bar L ranch, which sounded real
westerny, Osborne went to town
and had a branding iron made and
proceeded to rebrand his stock
(thirty steers all told) with the X
Bar L imprint, and felt pretty proud
when he'd finished. Then he did the
paint job Sally had spoken about,
and Sally planted her flowers. By
and large they were kept busy for
a month or so.
But when these things were done,
both began to wonder what to do
next. The thirty steers didn't re
quire much attention. Osborne
wished his herd numbered into the
1 thousands. Then he could employ
{ cowboys, and maybe someone would
rustle a few head and a posse would
have to be formed to track down
' the "varmints." But it would be a
long, long time before the X Bar L
herd would number even into the
hundreds, and this fact was faintly
disturbing
Despite their best efforts, life on
the "Ranch" began to pall a little.
The scenery wasn't anything to gasp
over and their nearest neighbors
: lived ten miles away. Once a week
they drove to town for the mail and
provisions, and this was the only
day they saw anyone besides them
selves. Osborne continued to hope
! that something would happen:
shooting, rustling, even a storm.
Anything to break the monotony.
He wished he owned a horse, even
a plug, let alone a spirited black
charger. He wished, also, that he
knew how to ride.
Three months passed and then
one day Sally came back from
town in a state of high excite
ment. “Osborne, I’ve just found
the darlingest Uttle place for
sale, right on the edge of town!
I—I think we ought to buy It.’’
"Buy it? Why? What's wrong
with the X Bar L?”
“Nothing, really. Only this place
is more like what we had in mind.
It's prettier and we could have a
milk cow and some chickens and
a vegetable garden, and we could
get along very nicely Besides, it’s
nearer town where things are go
i ing on.’’
Osborne laughed. “Going on?
I Holy smoke, does anything ever go
on anrund here? Why, I haven't
seen a person who even remotely
resembles a cowboy. I've hardly
seen a man on horseback. No ope
carries six-shooters and there aren’t
any desperadoes or anything at all
that I expected to find. Honestly,
I’m getting kind of fed up."
Sally looked at him forlornly.
“It’s usually like that," she said.
“About trying to realize your
dreams, I mean. The realization
seldom comes up to what we ex
pect" She hesitated ’Osborne,
don’t you like it out here f”
"Like it? Oh, I suppose I do.
The country’s about what I expect
ed. It’s a good, clean, wholesome
life, and I guess that after awhile
we could make a fair living. Only
well, there’s someth.ng lacking."
Sally smiled and squeezed his
arm. "That’s the way I feel, too.
If it weren’t for the gap, we’d both
be happy. Well, I think I know
how we can fill in the gap. But first
we’ve got to buy that little place
near town.”
Osborne couldn’t see the point of
it, but the next day he rode into
town with Sally In their second-hand
car, and looked at the cottage. It
was really quite attractive, with
trees around and a flower garden
already started, a large barn and
about fifty acres of land. "The real
estate agent said he'd take the X
Bar L as the first payment," Sally
said. “He can always sell it to other
suckers like us." She grinned and
Osborne grinned back at her—and
agreed that they ought to own the
cottage.
And so the Osborne Lincolns
moved into the cottage near
town which they named the X
Bar L after the old ranch, and
were mnch happier. Within a
month they were well estab
lished, and then Sally told him
they'd better begin tilling in the
gap, before life on the new X
Bar L began to pall.
Osborne was still puzzled, but he
dressed up as directed that evening
and they drove to town. The first
thing that greeted Osborne's eyes
was a string of new bright lights.
"What in heck is going on?” he
asked, remembering that the last
time he’d been in town was the day
they had visited the real estate
agent’s office, and that that was his
only visit in two months.
"Tonight,” said Sally, with a little
laugh, "they’re christening the new
movie theater. It’s the first they’ve
ever had, and they’re going to hold
shows four nights a week More
over," she added, “they’re planning
to specialize in westerns, because
the people out here like westerns—
to fill in the gap.
Osborne looked astonished, but
suddenly he grinned because he
knew what she meant. A good rip
snorting western was all they need
ed once a week or so to be com
pletely happy.
Old Tavern Keeper Wat
Thought to Be a Killer
Tales of gold, murder and mys
terious disappearances still haunt
Lake Juson, Miss. The ghoulish
reputation attached to this acre
large lake both attracts and repels
residents of the section.
The lake itself holds fascination,
for its fresh water apparently comes
from nowhere, nor does it seem to
have an outlet through which to flow
—yet it remains constantly cold.
Recorded in history for more than
a century, it received its name from
Juson, a Frenchman whose first
name long has been lost. Near the
water which bears his name he built
his trading post in the 1830s, stra
tegically located on the original
Jackson Military highway.
Down this road came caravans
from north Mississippi, carrying
crops of the pioneer planters to Mo
bile. Juson’s trading post served a
few of them as a hotel. Legend says
that he had only an Indian compan
ion, and as darkness descended
many of the travelers fell into a
sleep into which they never awoke.
Gold which these wayfarers bore,
tradition says, was hidden in Ju
son’s tavern. Bodies of the travel
ers went into the lake
Over a long period Juson is said
to have become fabulously rich, but
old age apparently brought peni
tence. according to legend, and one
night he and his companion threw
two sacks of gold into the water
When the Indian turned to follow
back to the trading post Juson is
supposed to have thrust a long knife
into his servant’s heart and to have
thrown the body into the lake.
Value Medical Facilities
The potential value of a local
medical center in communities not
having access to city hospitals, can
not be overestimated. Wounds,
bruises, dislocations*, fractures, infec
tions, and shock can be treated im
mediately in such a center; X-rays
can be taken, indicating wheth
er or not a given Individual should
incur the expense of going some
distance to a large hospital; and
farm and small-town mothers, who
would otherwise lack suitable care
can here receive essential maternity
and pre-maternity attention.
Community Autumn Festivals
As a project designed to foster
neighborliness and the best tradi
tions of the American way of life,
few possible activities are superior
to the autumn festival. There is a
spirit in a typical autumn or harvest
home festival—in the annual cele
bration of garnered crops and fuU
granaries—that appeals to some
thing racial and primitive in all
men; and a spirit too. which is
conducive to co-operation and char
ity and true gratitude for the bounty
of Nature.
WHO’S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTQN
Consolidated Features—WNU Features.
MEW YORK —Anton Adrian Mus
sert is the little man who gets
the poison ivy garland as the Neth
erlands Quisling. There has been
Dutch *Quisling’
Is a Pint Flask
Of Pure Poison
keen compe
tition be
tween Mus
sert, Himm
ler’s man.
ana noss von lonmngen, a protege
of Goering, for the above supreme
dishonor. Late dispatches indicate
that Mussert has definitely won.
Clinical historians will, as they
examine Mussert’s career, find a
classical pattern of the origins and
inducements of Quislingism. The
scrubby little boy of the lovely vil
lage of Werkendan in south Holland
was a short-ender in everything he
tried, and in addition to that had a
gift for getting himself disliked by
his schoolmates. Furthermore, he
suffered from a delusion that he was
a reincarnation if his great-grand
father Reus Mussert. Reus was a
giant who smacked everybody down
for miles around and became a sort
of Paul Bunyan in the Low Coun
tries. Little Anton made many mis
calculations in trying to be like
Reus. He became like Horace’s
‘‘even-tempered man”—always mad.
His aunt paid for his education
in civil engineering at the Univer
sity of Delft. His wife wanted to be
a grand lady, perhaps co-ruler with
him of a subjugated Holland, and
she and the aunt were always fan
ning up his frustrated power mania.
He did well enough in the univer
sity but when he finished they filed
him away in a grubby little civil
service job.
A little dash of printer’s ink
lanced the boil of his suppressed
hatreds, and headed him toward
his great betrayal. In 1929, there
was a row on between Holland
and Belgium over a joint canal
project, and, tearing loose with
some wild invective, he hit the
headlines. He formed a new
political party, patterned on
Mussolini and Fascism, and be
gan recruiting the less literate
section of the country in public
yelling matches against “deca
dent pariiamentarianism’’ and
“capitalistic plutocracy.” Hitler
sent him an “atta boy!” mes
sage and there was the begin
ning of a beautiful friendship.
His domineering aunt made him
divorce his wife and marry her.
Then she caught him philandering
with his pretty stenographer and
jerked him out of the management
of the new party. Holland was vast
ly amused by the tough-talking little
dictator being owned and operated
by his wife, but underestimated his
gifts as a germ-carrier—until he
helped let the Nazis in.
JOHN MASEFIELD’S cargoes of
** "pigiron and old tin trays” are
apt to take wings before this war
is over. A friend of this writer, a
When We Reap,
We Find Another
Has Done Sowing
designer of
aircraft, just
told us about
great air
freight er s
coming through soon, built quickly
and stoutly of plywood, capable of
long flights with a heavy load, and
with production costs so low in man
power and materials that quantity
production will be swift and easy.
It wouldn’t take many of them to do
the work of a fair-sized ship, said
my friend, taking into account their
greater speed. He is lit up with
the idea that here is the answer to
the submarine problem, and he says
it is, right now, a lot more than a
blueprint.
Back in March, 1932, Walter
H. Beech resigned as vice presi
dent of the Curtiss-Wright cor
poration, to design and build
commercial planes. He has had
some tough going, but his dec
ade of chance-taking in the
commercial free - for - all, has
blossomed into a whale of a
plant at Wichita, Kan., making
wooden planes, trainer planes to
be sure, but right in line with
coming air argosies of plywood
and pre - fabricated mahogany.
The side of a plane is slammed
together and attached to the
fuselage in only a few minutes.
The plant business, in dollar ac
counting, has risen 4,000 per
cent in the last 18 months. All
fears of a financial forced land
ing are past.
Mr. Beech has never hesitated to
take a sharp turn off the main road.
He resigned from the army air
corps, in 1921, eager to try out some
new ideas, and organized the Swal
low Aeroplane company. Then came
his Travel Air Manufacturing com
pany, building the famous “Mystery
S“ in which Capt. Frank Hawks
outilew the crack army ships. His
Beech Aircraft corporation turned
out the plane which won the Mac
fadden Trophy race from St. Louis
to Miami last January. He is al
ways experimenting, with the sky as
his laboratory.
I
: -
NATIONAL
AFFAIRS
Reviewed by
CARTER FIELD
Nazi W ar Losses in
Russia Not Surprising
To U. S. . . . Churchill
Expects Germany’s Col
lapse by Christmas . . .
Bell Syndicate—WNU Features.
WASHINGTON.—Official Britain
has been greatly surprised by what
it regards as the lack of interest in
the United States in that part of
Winston Churchill’s recent broad
cast, which related to German casu
alties in the Russian campaign.
The men around Mr. Churchill, ac
cording to reports just received
here, had expected to see headlines
six inches high on the front page
of every American newspaper on
this feature. When the first U. S.
papers telling of the broadcast ar
rived in London you could have
knocked them over with the pro
verbial feather. They even cabled
their embassy in Washington to find
out what had happened. Had the
all - important paragraphs been
smothered by static or what?
The item in question here is
Churchill’s statement that Nazi
losses on the Russian front already
had passed the total German losses
in World War No. 1. He did not
mention the number. A few Ameri
can writers and commentators dug
up the fact that German killed,
alone, in World War No. 1, num
bered more than 1,700,000. So that
if more than 1,700,000 German sol
diers have been killed in Russia
since June last it is tremendously
important.
Officials Disappointed
Now let’s look at the background
to the tremendous disappointment in
British officialdom that the United
States newspapers did not run to
big front-page display on this. Ac
tually the British officials knew that
Mr. Churchill was exploding a
bombshell. Yet so far as America
was concerned it was a dud.
They probably thought that by
this time their own painstaking habit
of checking and rechecking before
making any claim, and the obvious
understatement which this process
produces, would have been properly
appraised in America. It has been
reported here by virtually every re
turned correspondent. But it hasn’t
been fully appreciated.
So here’s a tip to Mr. Churchill
for any future statement he may
make which he expects to electrify
America. This is the way he should
have expressed that point which the
U. S. papers played down:
"You have not known what to be
lieve about what was happening in
Russia. You have been highly skep
tical about both Nazi and Soviet
claims. But the British government,
which never claims a Nazi plane
has been shot down unless somebody
BESIDES the flier who did the shoot
ing SAW and REPORTED it, has
checked the figures. The British
government, through its own sources
exclusively, and with triple check
ing to see that no dead Nazi sol
dier was counted twice, can inform
you that more than 1,700,000 Nazi
troops have been killed, and propor
tionate numbers captured and
wounded, in Russia since the Nazi
invasion of that country began last
June."
That statement would have gotten
headlines. Although Mr. Churchill
would express it much better, it is
an accurate statement of the facts
before him at the time.
Which, considering how skeptical
some of us have been about the
Soviet claims, is the best news yet.
• • •
Can Germany Face Another
Winter of Fighting?
Putting together two of Winston
Churchill's statements in recent
speeches, it is a rather simple de
duction, that he really hopes for the
w'ar to end by Christmas, so far as
Hitler is concerned, THIS Christ
mas. Not the end of the war by that
time—Japan will remain to be dealt
with—but the collapse of Hitler.
The first of these two statements
was in his broadcast, when he said
that Nazi losses in Russia alone so
far had exceeded total German
losses of World War No. 1. He men
tioned no figures, but more than
1,700,000 Germans were killed, not
counting wounded and captured, in
World War No. 1.
The second was that while we had
not yet reached the crest, we were
in sight of it.
The "crest” is when Germany
faces another winter of fighting in
Russia! That will smash morale be
hind the German lines, Mr. Church
ill believes, when the cold of next
November turns into the bitter
frigidity of December along that
Russian battle line. Mr. Churchill
is assuming, in this premise, that we
will reach the "crest” now in sight.
That means he does not believe
there will be such a Nazi victory in
the warm weather of this summer
as to prevent the collapse of Ger
man morale when cold weather sets
in. In short, he does not believe
the Germans will win through to the
oil fields of the Caucasus this sum
mer.
Otherwise, we wo<*ld be driven
back out of sight of the "crest” in
the next few months.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA
W«k Stark.
FRIDAY
JUNE 12
on fho
STAGE
J. Fuller Pep
_ By JERRY LINK
Talkin' to a fellow the other day, I
couldn't help thinkln' that lots of
folks claim they have an open
mind when the fact o’ the matter
is It's only vacant.
Which reminds me that If you
really think straight about vita
mins, you'll see why I keep tellln’
folks about KELLpGQ’S PEP. An*
that's because this swell cereal Is
extra-rich In the two vitamins
most often short in ordinary meals
—B, and D. And believe me, PEP
Is a mighty sllck-tastlng cereal.
Why don't you try It tomorrow?
A delicious cereal that supplies per serving
(1 or.): the full minimum daily need of
vitamin D; 114 the daily need of vitamin Bu
If You Bake at Home . . .
We have prepared, and will send
absolutely free to you a yeast
recipe book full of such grand
recipes as Oven Scones, Cheese
Puffs, Honey Pecan Buns, Coffee
Cakes and Rolls. Just drop a card
with your name and address to
Standard Brands Inc., 691 Wash
ington St., New York City.—Adv.
GAS ON STOMACH
What many Doctors do for D
When excess stomacn add causes gas. sour stomaA
or heartburn, doctors prescribe the fastoat-actm*
medicines known for symtomatic relief—med id nee
tike thoee In Bell-ans Tablets. No laxative. If your
very first trial doesn't prove Bell-ans better, rswjps
botue to os and get double your money back, aa
Work in Sight
Banish the future; live only for
the hour and its allotted work . . .
For surely our plain duty is "not
to see what lies dimly at a dis
tance, but to do what lies clearly
at hand.”—Osier.
CORKS GO FAST
Pain goes quick, corns
speedily removed when
you use thin, soothing,
cushioning Dr. Scholl's
Zino-pads. Try them!
Destination Known
The world turns aside to let any
man pass who knows where he is
going. But take time to get there.
Patient years must be spent in
preparation. Take time enough.—
David Starr Jordan. • '
✓-To Relieve MONTHLY—N
FEMALE FAIN
If you suffer monthly cramps, back
ache, nervousness, distress of
"Irregularities”—due to functional
monthly disturbances—try Lydia E.
Plnkham’s Vegetable Compound at
once! Pink ham's Compound Is one
medicine you can buy today made
especially lor women. i
Taken regularly thruout the
month — Plnkham’s Compound
helps build up resistance against
sucffi symptoms. Follow label direc
tions. Worth trying!
LVDIfl t. PIHKHAM’S ggS^
ffmHu5 23-42
May Warn of Disordered
Kidney Action
Modern life with Its hurry and worry.
Irregular habits, improper eating ana
drinking—its risk of exposure and infec
tion—throws heavy strain on the work
of the kidneys. They are apt to become
over-taxed and fail to filter excess, acid
and other impurities from the life-giving
Mood.
You may suffer nagging backache,
headache, dixainess. getting up nights,
leg pains, swelling—(eel constantly
tired, nervous, all worn out. Other signs
of kidney or bladder disorder are some
times burning, scanty or too frequent
urination.
Try Doan’t Pill*. Doan* help tbs
kidneys to pass off harmful excess body
waste. They have had more than half a
century of public approval. Are recom
mended by grateful users everywhere.
Atk your neighbor!