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THE YANCEY RECORD, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1937
Adventurers*
Club
“ Murder on Soochow Creek
By FLOYD GIBBONS
Famous Headline Hunter
H ERE’S a tale from China, where life is cheap. They’ll
kill you for your shoes in that desperate, over-crowded,
half-starved country. Or they’ll kill you for nothing at all.
I’ve seen Chinese killed by the dozen over there for no rea
son, as far as I could see, but just for the sake of killing. In
no country in the world, except possibly revolutionary
Spain, is death spread with such a careless hand.
Yes, life is cheap over there in China. Many a man has been killed
for something that wasn’t worth a Chinese dollar. But our Distinguished
Adventurer of the day—Milton Weaver of New York City—saw the time
once when his life wasn't worth two cents.
That was in February, 1932. Milt Weaver was iu the United
States Marine corps then, and the Marines were stationed in Shang
hai protecting our nationals and the International Settlement dur
ing the lighting that went on between the Chinese and the Jajp*
anese.
Along the Shores of Soochow Creek.
Says Milt; “You probably remember the little dug-out we Marines
built and all the warlike atmosphere that surrounded us along Soochow
creek?” And Milt is right about that. I sure do. I spent a lot of time
down there when the fighting was going on over in the Native City, and if
I saw Milt I’d probably remember him, too, for I talked with a lot of those
boys who garrisoned that dug-out and stood guard along the creek. Milt’s
adventure, though, is one thing I missed, and I’m glad Milt has given me
a second chance at it—a second chance to pul in on the wire and tell it to
the world.
It was a cold morning—that one in February—and Milt was patrolling
his post along Soochow creek. Outside the walls of the International Set
tlement a furious battle was going on between Japanese troops and Chi
nese soldiers. Refugees were seeking safety in the Settlement by the
thousand, but they weren’t allowed to enter at night. The patrols along
the boundaries had strict orders not to let anyone enter before six a. m.,
but all night long terror-stricken Chinese refugees—many of whom
couldn’t pass the inspection at the bridges—kept trying to force their
way through the patrols and get in behind Settlement walls.
At the Mercy of the Chinese.
It was about five in the morning when Milt saw a sampan,
loaded with Chinese, making its way across the creek. Imme
diately Milt shouted to them to go back, but on they came until
the nose of the boat touched the shore. Then Milt saw he was in
for an argument—maybe even a little trouble. But if he’d known
how much trouble it was going to be, he’d have sounded the alarm
and called out the guard before he tried to do anything else about
it.
As the boat touched shore Milt stepped aboard and began telling the
eooUe who ran it to turn around and go back. “I had to do this in sign lan
guage,” Milt says, “because the coolie, apparently, didn’t understand
English. The coolie appeared to be doing what I told him. He was try
ing +o swing the boat around when a small tugboat came along and
fato his sampan. At the same tim^it^£ushedthe^^gpan ou:
^iiddle dC ihe stream, maxuig it 7mpossiBI^?^^i^??o^ump
ashore again.”
And then, all of a sudden, the demeanor of the Chinese in the boat
changed. A few seconds before Milt had represented authority, with a
guard of soldiers at his call. Now, out there in the middle of the stream
he was alone—helpless—and darned well Jhose Chinese knew it. They
began swarming toward him, babbling, gesticulating, threatening.
Milt saw what was coming—saw that he had one chance to
get away, and that was to jump aboard the tugboat. He turned
toward it, and then a thing happened that put him completely at
the mercy of the occupants of the sampan.
As he turned toward the tug, a puff of smoke, full of fine bits of coal
flew straight in his eyes. He was blinded!
It was only for a few moments, but during those few moments of
blindness Milt experienced the worst fear of his whole life. The natives,
seeing him helpless, rushed him—and a man that gets mobbed by a crowd
of Chinese, natives has darned little chance of getting out alive.
Desperate Fight on the Sampan.
“They came at me with bamboo sticks,” says Milt, “trying
to push me overboard into the filthy waters of the creek. I
knew 1 was doomed if I let them get me into the water, for once
I was in it they would push me under and hold me there until
1 drowned. I blew my whistle for help, I had a pistol in a holster
at my hip, but 1 couldn’t see to shoot it. But I also carried a baton
—-like a policeman’s nightstick—and 1 began swinging it around
my head as best I could.”
Milt says he doesn’t know how he managed to stay on his feet all
through the hullabaloo. He could feel bamboo poles poking at him.
and he could feel that his own stick was doing some damage, too, for
every once in a while it came in contact with something that felt like a
coolie's head. But little by little he was being forced back toward the
edge of the sampan.
Milt was getting desperate. Another step or two and he’d be over
board. He was thinking of drawing his pistol and firing blindly into the
mob, when suddenly he heard English voices on the bank, mixed in
with the native shouting and cursing.
That stopped the coolies. A minute before. Milt had been a lone,
hated foreign devlL Now he was backed by authority again. They put
the boat back to shore, and Milt was helped ashore by English police
men and a few of his own pals, the American Marines. They gave Milt
first aid treatment for his eyes, and for the cuts and bruises he had re
ceived, and Milt says he was mighty doggone glad to get his feet back
on the ground of the International Settlement where good old American,
British and French law and order were in force and life was worth more
than a couple of plugged Chinese pennies.
©—WNU Service,
Old English Cathedrals
Magnificent Structures
The medieval cathedrals of Eng
land are among the most magnifi
cent in Europe, and among the
best preserved and most important
architecturally. Many of them, says
a writer in the New York Herald
Tribune, while adhering to general
Gothic principles, are distinctive in
style and preserve some of the best
examples of early English architec
ture.
One need not be a student of
architecture or a devout churchman
to appreciate the beauty of these
ancient monuments to man’s faith
and art and skill. In their majesty
they dominate many of the cities
of England.
One of the cathedrals is Canter
bury, the Metropolitan Church of
England. Canterbury itself is an in
teresting old city in the County of
Kent.
The cathedral is on the site of the
church built there by St. Augustine
in 603. The present building was in
process of construction from the
Eleventh to the Fifteenth century.
Th* northwest transept was the
scene of the murder of Thomas a
Becket in 1170.
Second only to Canterbury in ec
clesiastical importance is York
Minster in the City of York, in
northern England, the see of the
Archbishop of York. The great
York Minster is the largest medieval
cathedral in England and one of
the oldest. The imposing edifice was
built in the Twelfth, Thirteenth and
Fourteenth centuries.
Durham Cathedral is one of the
most ancient and most important
in the country, and also one of the
most perfectly situated, on an emi
nence above the old city Winchester
cathedral, in the south of England,
also is one of the earliest. It is
the longest Gothic church in Europe.
Many authorities consider Salis
bury Cathedral the most perfect of
the great English churches. It is an
example of pure early English
architecture, and is remarkable for
its uniformity and harmony of de
sign and its perfect proportions.
It has the loftiest spire in England.
It is unusual among medieval cathe
drals in that it was completed with
in forty years, from 1220 to 1260.
King George VI Reviews His Guard of Honor
'' :
King George VI is shown inspecting the troops forming his guard of honor during ceremonies at the Royal
Military college at Sandhurst, England, when the memorial chapel was dedicated recently. Queen Elizabeth
accompanied the king on his visit to Sandhurst.
Plan 18,000-Mile Yacht Voyage
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
Capt. Bailey Sawyer and Mrs. Sawyer shown fitting out their 89-foot
two-masted schooner, Henrietta, for an 18,000-mile voyage to Melbourne,
Australia. Mrs. Sawyer, who learned navigation on a previous trip, will
serve as navigation officer.
John D. Rockefeller, who died at
winter home at Ormond Beach,
., at the age of ninety-seven, af-
making more than a billion dol-
: and giving away three-fourths
uf it for phi^gftropic, educational
and medical research activi!f?s. The
patriarch was buried at Cleveland,
Ohio, where 80 years ago he began
work as a penniless youth. M;:.
Rockefeller, whose ambition was to
live to one hundred, left 38 descend
ants. Had he lived another month
he would have been ninety-eight.
YOUNG COLLEGE HEAD
r?
Dr. Paul Swain Havens, Prince
ton graduate, Rhodes scholar, pro
fessor and author who was inaugu
rated as president of Wilson college
at Chambersburg, Pa., recently. He
Is only thirty-three.
Golf Champions of the Big Ten
Here are Northwestern university’s champion golfers, who won the
Big Ten conference title played at the Kildeer course near Chicago. Left
to right: James Marek, Bill Kostelecky, Coach Ted Payseur, Sid Richard
son, individual champ, and Frank Perpich.
Gigantic Aqueduct Approaches Completion
The 392-mile aqueduct wh'ch will bring water to Los Angeles and surrounding communities from Parker
dam on the Colorado river was recently reported 62 per cent complete. This view shows a construction scene
on one of the concrete covered tunnels. These sections are built in deep trenches carved out of the mountain
sides or desert floor they traverse.
AAA4A
WHO’S NEWS
THIS WEEK...
By Lemuel F. Parfon
WwyWfwrffwffffffwfWfff
Prophet Who Predicted U. S.
Trailer Craze.
N ew YORK.—The report
ers gave due attention
to Aldous Huxley when he
came in from England re
cently, but they overlooked
his interesting companion,
Gerald Heard, British au
thor, critic and broadcaster.
Mr. Heard is a prophet and phil
osopher, which isn’t hot news per
haps, but the ship news men prob
ably would have run him down had
they recalled that, in 1923, he quite
definitely predicted the trailer
craze.
He has an uncanny way of putting,
two and two together—not necessar
ily a house and an automobile—
which has made him a star of both
the British broadcasting and fore
casting companies, so to speak. Hia
fortnightly radio program, “This
Surprising World,” has long been
an important feature.
The Huxley-Heard team, in step
here on an important enterprise, is
not impelled by the European prop
aganda surge. They expect to go
about quietly, and the fact is it would
take a man like the late Wiliam
James to report their mission prop
erly. After a trip west, they will
check at Duke university on those
startling experiments and findings
in telepathy which have been the
sensation of the year among psy
chologists.
This writer has read the Duke
data and conclusions. They cinch
up the fact of telepathy to a degree
which makes a correspondent hope
he will soon be able just to think
his stuff, with nobody paying wire
tolls, and no wear and tear on the
typewriter.
Mr. Heard is not identified with
fuzzy pseudo-science, and it is as
an intellectual and not as a mystic
that he does his prophesying. He
is rated in England as one of the
most important liaisons between
science and psychology, and it is
with the reserve of the scientist that
he has examined psychic phenom
ena.
In his numerous books, he has
traced a continuing pattern of psy
chological, not physiological, evolu
tion. There was the pre-individual,
the individual, intellectually effec
tive but “morally monstrous,” and
now there is emerging a super-con
sciousness, within some life-or
dained rubric of growth, which
gives hope for the attainment of a
real civilization. That seems to be
Mr. Heard’s main idea, advanced
through his “Narcissus,” “The As
cent of Humanity,” "The Social
Substance of Religion,” “Science in
the Making” and other books.
He is forty-eight years old, Cam
bridge bred, a small, alert man
with eager bine eyes and blonde
hair. At the risk of being too flip
pant, it may be observed that be
is one of the main inteUectual
spark plugs of England today. He
and Mr. Huxley were the guests of
Mrs. Leonard Eimhirst, 1172 Park
avenue. They will start collabora
tion on a book on their western
trip.
Scientific War Curve.’
B ut, when it comes to prophesy
ing, here’s Professor Pitirim A.
Sorokin of Harvard, also in the
news, who has maintained that
neither a man nor a nation can lift
the veil beyond today or tomorrow.
As the head of the Harvard de
partment of sociology, he says a
great deal of sociology is hokum or
just a “clerical exercise.”
Currently, he catches national at
tention with his report on wars. The
first quarter of this century, he
finds, was the “bloodiest period in
all history.” Supplementing re
searches which he conducted in 1933
with General N. N. Golovin, he of
fers the first scientific war curve,
covering 902 wars from the year
500 B. C. The World war was eight
times bigger than all the rest rolled
into one.
Professor Sorokin is no merely
bookish student of wars. In the
kick-back of war, he was jailed,
sentenced, and awaiting the firing
squad. That was in Russia, where
he had opposed the Bolsheviks,
Previously he had been arrested
once for being too conservative and
once for being too radical. Lenin
saved bis life on condition that he
leave the country. He came here iu
1923, joined the Harvard faculty,
and in 1930 became an American
citizen.
Looking over the Martian box
score, he says to believe in peace
is to believe in miracles. While he
is much gloomier about the future
than Mr. Heard, he has written one
sentence which seems to put them,
for the moment at least, on com
mon ground. He demands, “a lib
eration of imagination, intuition and
speculation from the prison chains
of the fact finders.”
Ninety-Nine Steps Club
The Ninety-nine Steps club is
club affiliated with the Union Meth
odist church, New York City, which
is exactly 99 steps from Broadway.
;This church it known as the Actors’
Miurch.
Frocks Made Gay
With Stitch Flowers
Fashion decrees that flowers
bloom on our dresses in embroid-
■ery this Spring and Summer.
I Give this smart touch to that new
frock—surprise yourself and all
your friends too by what it will
do to renew that plain dress from
last year. So easily done-in single
and running stitch, you’!! find it
fun to embroider these large and’
small nosegays. Choose ^ the,
gay colors you wish, in wool, silk
floss or chenille and know you’re,
in style. In pattern 5801 you willi
find a transfer pattern of one and,
one reverse motif 7% by 8^'
inches; one and one reverse motif
by 6 inches and six motifs S’A'
by inches; color suggestions;!
illustrations of all stitches used. !
To obtain this pattern send 15
cents in stamps or coins (coins
preferred) to The Sewing Circle
Household Arts Dept., 259 W.
Fourteenth Street, New York,
N. Y.
Write pattern number, your
name and address plainly.
"Quotations"
The supreme fall of all falls is
this: the first doubt of one’s self.—
Countess de Gasparin.
Only by sacrifices can man ad
vance—sacrifice of leisure, of health,
of life itself, to attain nature’s ever-
receding ideal.—Sir Arthur Keith.
There is no such thing as a great
man or a great woman. People be
lieve in them as they used to believe
in dragons and unicorns.—George
Bernard Shaiv,
The worst of it is, disarmament
has been left to the pacifists and
peace has been left to the militarists.
—David Lloyd George.
The ultimate value of our scien
tific achievements rests upon our
ability to use them to broaden and
■' Sarnoff.
to enrich our lives.—David Sarnoff.
KILLS INSECTS
ON FLOWERS • FRUITS
VEGETABLES & SHRUBS
Demand original sealed
bottles, from your dealer
Imitation
Do not do what
done.—Terence.
GOOD RELIEF
of constipation by a
GOOD LAXATIVE
Many folks get such refreshing
relief by taking Black-Draught for
constipation that they prefer It to
other laxatives and urge theirfriehds
to try It. Black-Draught is made of
the leaves and roots of plants. It
does not disturb digestion but stimu
lates the lower bowel so that con
stipation is relieved.
BLACK-DRAUGHT
purely vegetable laxative
NA recognized Remedy (or Riieum«tlc*\|
end Ncurltit lulleren. A perfect Bleed
Purilier. Milcei thin Blood Rich end
Healthy. Buildi Strength and Vigor.
Alw.ys EKectIve . . . Why wKer?
CLASSIFIED
DEPARTMENT
SOUVENIRS
Own Valuable Beautiful pocket piece
President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
patriotic victory souvenir copper coin.
Each 50c delivered. I..arge silver dollar.
Berkowits Properties - - Charleston,. HL'
CIGARS
Miss Florida Tampa'Cigars, box of on*’
hundred postpaid three dollars, satlsfac-j
tion guaranteed or 'money refunded.^
..A ..
Dillon, 110 S. Sallna St., Sjrraouss, N. T.i
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