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Show ll'j WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON XI EW YORK. An ecstatic young i newspaper woman, reporting on Dr. Herbert Feis of the state department, de-partment, averred that his dream-lit dream-lit e y e s "re-His "re-His Eyes Reflect fleeted tlie soul Poetry; Mind on of a young .i jt- Shelley." He Rubber and 1m may ,ook that way, but the chances are tliat he is thinking of rubber and tin. John Masefield had some such thoughts in mind when he wrote "Cargoes." This poet, however, scans only trade balances, and his dreams are precise and statistical. Dr. Feis is economic adviser to the state department, and it was he who schemed the barter deal by which we would acquire needed rubber and tin and get rid of the necklace of millstones hung around Uncle Sam's neck in the form of that government-owned surplus of 11,-j 11,-j 000,000 bales of cotton. The news from London is that the barter deal is under way, Prime Minister Chamberlain having informed parliament that negotiations have been opened. Wheat also will be included in-cluded in the bargaining, as England needs both wheat and cotton as much as we need rubber rub-ber and tin. Here may be a working commodity axis, which Machiavelli so vehemently declared de-clared was always more important impor-tant in the long run than any political axis. And, incidentally, Dr. Feis has read Machiavelli. He is a hold-over from the Hoover regime, appointed to his present post by Secretary Stimson, who was impressed with the insight and information in-formation in Dr. Feis' book, "Europe "Eu-rope the World's Banker." He has been used by the department in clarifying confusion and in boiling down vague policies to definite procedure. pro-cedure. Dr. Feis is a New Yorker with a Harvard Ph. D. He was professor pro-fessor of economics at the University Uni-versity of Kansas and the University Uni-versity of Cincinnati and director direc-tor of research for the council of foreign relations. Like many men given to meditation, he smokes a pipe, blows rings and comes out of the haze with an . idea or hunch as sharply defined as if it had been cut by a lapidary. PHILOSOPHERS getting on in life are apt to think in T-time, as contrasted with our workaday Tau time, both of which are currently . . explained by Hopes to Bring E. Milne HumanVariables the distin- Into Uniformity Sashed British Brit-ish mathematician. mathema-tician. T-time, like tea-time, is stretchable, unlike the swingtime or springtime of youth all of which was expounded in different terms by the aging Montaigne and in this time zone there may be written off, or at least discounted, much imminent im-minent disaster; and somehow in this temporal king's-x irresistible bodies may meet immovable masses without any bystanders getting hurt. I have known wise old gentlemen who carried their T-time in one pocket and their Tau-time in the other. Such is the 80-year-old (in Tau time) Lucius N. Littauer, whose $3,000,000 Littauer center is dedicated dedicat-ed at Harvard. His foundation was established to "bring about a better understanding among mankind." It was Mr. Littauer who, as a congressman from New York, sponsored and established the United States bureau of standards. stand-ards. It worked out nicely. Uniformity in machine appliances appli-ances and spare parts was easily eas-ily attained. Moving from machines ma-chines into social adaptations and adjustments, Mr. Littauer found human variables could not as yet be calculated like metal variables. Hence his new bureau of human standards at Harvard. Like the late Chauncey M. Depew, he has been honored by a statue iii his own town, during his lifetime. The town is Gloversville, N. Y where, after his graduation from Harvard, he picked up his father's glove manufacturing business. His later years have been absorbed in his manifold philanthropies, to which he has given many millions of dollars. Thinking in lvtr it;i long stretch of time, he is calmly assured that, in due time, all will be well with the world, but that "we must oppose absolutism in any guise, from any source." His father, a native of Brcs-lau, Brcs-lau, Germany, passed on to him a heritage of Carl Schurz liberalism liber-alism which perhaps could be fittingly measured against Fritz Kuhn's importation. Just in Passing, he played on Harvard's first football team and rowed on ts first crew-back in his Tau-time Tau-time days. (Consolidated Features-WNU Service. I |