OCR Text |
Show 1 . - This Week by ARTHUR BRISBANE Pacific Coast Sunset. 10,000 Planes for England. Eng-land. Bootleg Crime, Much Alive. Some things you cannot describe though you see them clearly. Nobody has really described Niagara, Ni-agara, the Pacific Ocean, a volcano in eruption, or the wonderful look that a new child brings into thi3 world from the eternity that lies behind us. It is not possible to describe the sunset seen from this coast looking across the Pacific to the northwest. But for the benefit of those that haven't seen it, you can attempt to describe it, as prairie dogs chatter chat-ter about an express that has gone by. The sun has been down for some time, blue black darkness spreads over from the East. There is an evening star hanging high up, in the sky, of such extreme metallic, silver brightness, that it seems to stare at and reproach you. Your impulse is to say, "I haven't done anything, don't look so hard." There is intensity in the low-red-long line that spreads low across the horizon that you never saw elsewhere. Nothing was ever like that savage dark red, fighting against approaching blackness. The smooth Pacific ocean spreads out, a dark, oily purple. Soon the sun will be rising on its other shore, seven thousand miles away. The sky, without a cloud, shows every shade of blue, the long mountain moun-tain range to the east changing from gray and green to black. A small lighthouse at the foot of this hill has begun its-night's work, sweeping a moving beam across the water. There is not a sound, as the earth turns on its axis, 1,000 miles an hour, and flies through space around the sun, and with the sun, at fantastic speed, c A wonderful machine is this universe, uni-verse, and an interesting corner of It is this Pacific Coast of California. Come out and see it. i , England, at last, is fully awake to the importance of air fighting. When will this country wake up? After our first major bombardment, perhaps? The British warn Germany against repeating the mistake made when Germany started building surface ships in competition with England. The Kaiser and his great admiral decided to upset that "Britannia "Bri-tannia Rules the Waves" song. And soon there was no Kaiser, and the German "grand fleet" was lying on the bottom at Scapa Flow. Now England warns Germany, "Don't try to do in the air, against us, what you tried to do on the water." And England means it, and acts as the thorough British do, when they mean anything. France has an air fleet of more than 4,000 ships. England demands a fighting air fleet of ten thousand planes of all classes, from the swiftest pursuit pur-suit planes, to the heaviest bombing planes, and air transport ships, to carry soldiers. And furthermore, the British government gov-ernment suggests, urgently, that important British cities supply their own air defense, the swift combat flyers to drive off any invasion. Prohibition, mother of bootlegging, bootleg-ging, and the world's highest crime wave, is officially dead. Bootlegging and crime, unfortunately, unfor-tunately, are not dead, and there is no certainty that crime's annual cost to this country of thirteen thousand million dollars will not go on. All depends on good judgment in liquor taxation, and on police, judicial judi-cial and general official integrity and energy. If liquors are taxed too highly, Europe and Canada sending in whisky, free of home taxation, will offer to crime all the bootleg profit it needs. And if distribution is hampered, in the prohibition spirit, speakeasies speak-easies will continue to flourish. It has been wisely said that if you hamper decent drinking in decent places, there wll be indecent drinking, drink-ing, in indecent places. It is not yet realized that flying Is inexpensive. While saving precious pre-cious time, it costs no more for gas or oil than automobiling. Ben Smith of Xew York, after having made a few more millions In Wall Street, wisely selects gold mine3 for his business. He selects the right kind of gold mine, not the kind offered you by mail as "the opportunity of your life." Mr. Smith, stopping here, on the Hearst ranch landing field on his way via San Francisco and Seattle to British Columbia, where ie has a nice mine, urged : : "Come on, you will be up there in nine hours, and I will show you, j on the Fraser River, absolutely the most beautiful country in the world." Mr. Smith declares that flying costs him less than travel by auto mobile, which costs loss than travel j by rail. (.1933, by King Feature) Syndicate, Inc.) |