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Show - Disturbed About World? Suz y Sun Spots May Hold Clue yeai t By BAUKHAGE thi News Analyst and Commentator. hef WASHINGTON. If you were disturbed over the mayhem . pei and misunderstandings rampant in the month of July, relax, i thi there may be a scientific explanation. Sun spots. ' hl1 . For the first time in 11 years, there is a maximum number of ultra violet rays about, released by eruptions on the surface Us j of the sun-rays which may cause tempers to flare, emotions to get off balance, glands to be affected so that abnormal behaviour results. This imec jsn't fantasy. Medical science has revealed the effects of over exposure t0WI to the ultra-violet ray. 'its. j Sun spots may have been respon- sible for the disturbances you and I read about on just KUf ; i . H ; one single day last July on that day in Haiti a publisher was assassinated by an otherwise gentle young poet because the bard had lost some kind of a scholarship; a 33-year-old painter who lived near the otherwise pleasant and peaceful New England home of TJT . Cnnnlrar' .TflO i, . is something in it for virtually every farmer and, if there were enough books to go around, could be utilized by everybody who raises a lawn, not to mention people who run airports air-ports or playgrounds, or any other enclosure of greensward. There is a growing interest in this subject. One member of the department de-partment of agriculture called it "a big swing to grass" on the part of farmers over most of the country. Not just as feed but for many purposes pur-poses and functions. One farmer near here, for instance, said to a friend of mine recently that he had quit growing corn for silage. He uses grass entirely. In case you have forgotten, you have a chance to get a Department De-partment of Agriculture Year Book because of a law passed in Abraham Lincoln's time. Congress every year appropriates appropri-ates a sum of money; the department de-partment prepares the book, (under the incumbent editorship of Alfred Stefferud) the government govern-ment printing office prints, binds and delivers 241,000 copies to members of congress. They pass them around as far as they go. That's the law. This volume is probably one of the few "free" books which is not wasted for it goes almost exclusively ex-clusively to people who want it and use it in this order (1) farmers, (2) state agricultural colleges, (3) other colleges for G.I. courses, (4) some high schools. Later on I shall give you an idea of the, contents of the current volume which deals comprehensively with the subject of grass (including legumes and associated plants) beginning be-ginning with the history from colonial days, the place of grass in building soil and feeding livestock, specific information applying to 10 sections of the United States and pictures and descriptions of a 100 different grasses and legumes. Guard Your Liberty Know Dates at Least It's almost impossible to believe that any American would not know the meaning of the approaching V-J day. But will Americans, 172 years from now, remember that September 1 marked the official end of the bloodiest war in history! Perhaps this sounds absurd to you. It wouldn't if you had read the results of one of a series of polls taken by the Washington Post. Just before July 4, the Post Interviewers asked a number of individuals: "Fourth of July is almost here. Can you tell me why we celebrate it?" Eighty-five per cent of all persons asked had the right answer. Twelve per cent had no idea why the Fourth is a holiday, and 3 per cent thought it was the anniversary of Armistice day, the end of the Civil war, emancipation of the Negroes or some other event. One of those who had no idea at all on the subject was credited with a college col-lege education. Asked what the day meant to them, 39 per cent said, in various ways, that it meant national freedom; free-dom; to 18 per cent it spelled personal per-sonal freedom and liberty in general; gen-eral; 11 per cent said it didn't mean nothin' nohow but a holiday. How many of us who admit that liberty freedom is our inherent right, know what freedom is? Few, unless they have lived in a country where one practices that quick, apprehensive ap-prehensive look to right and left, before he dares comment. It's a depression de-pression gesture. I've seen it and shuddered. I have quoted W. E. Woodward before. In his "New American History," he says: "Liberty implies responsibility and the vast majority of mankind man-kind has always hated responsibility responsi-bility worse than death. So in all ages, men have run around, holding it out before them as one holds a golden vessel, offering offer-ing it to anyone who possesses enough vulgar enterprise to take it away from them." This "vulgar enterprise" is afoot today, snatching liberty,' right and left and tossing it into a totalitarian limbo of the things mankind really loves loves but does not always cherish except in memory. One might paraphrase an ancient proverb: "A fool and his liberty are soon parted." Folly is not incurable. in-curable. It can be exchanged for wisdom. Perhaps some of the "realists" who scorn such abstract subjects as political science and history would do well to encourage study of our liberty, how we came by it and why it is worth keeping. I . . Martin at Attleboro, Baukhage ... , Mass., did a dance when he heard his wife was dead it seems he had shot her in the head; here in Washington, a 22- . year-old husband knocked his wife' down, tried to stab her with a butcher knife, attacked an innocent passerby and started a fist fight i .with a policeman; a vitamin plant I blew up, a prisoner became ill of j benzedrine poisoning, a tanker in j Chicago caught fire, Jimmy Roose- I velt feuded with the other members of the California delegation and the 1 Russians kicked up the usual fuss. i ; You and I probably had our i own troubles all perhaps due to nothing but the rash on Old nf Sol's physiognomy. Scientists will tell you that sun W spots were known by the Chinese j before the telescope made them a rif comparatively familiar subject of "if1 astronomical concern. They are not P uniform in size or shape and some- fLJ times appear singly, sometimes in groups. A single spot may be large ! enough to take in our whole planet jg with room to spare. Groups extend ;8j over areas that may include mil- lions of square miles. Sun spots do not appear to have tol a definite duration. As a rule, they last but a short time, sometimes j not more than a day. But one is ! recorded (in 1940-41) as having con- '.i ' tinued for 18 months. The number jr of sun spots varies greatly in a periodicity that is not strictly regular but that reaches an average aver-age of slightly over 11 years. And last month Dr. Roy Marshall, Mar-shall, director of Fels planetarium planetari-um in Philadelphia, echoed an earlier suggestion made here In Washington. He said that sun spots could have a definite effect v on the behaviour of people. And L j he reminded us that sun spots ""j reached their last maximum , j frequency (before July, 1948) In 1937 when Hitler started his ; blitz. ! It was several years ago that no less an institution than the conservative con-servative and careful Smithsonian, the capital's great scientific organ-ization, organ-ization, speculated on the possibility r that there might be a relationship I i between sun spots and wars, as well U J as sun spots and weather. Weather I affects crops, crops affect economic j conditions. Sun spots which release ultra violet rays which affect emo- j tions might, an official report to congTess suggested, disturb negotiations nego-tiations between individual leaders which might involve nations in war that's the reasoning, anyhow. I Some may think it far-fetched. ' Shakespeare did when he said: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Poets are frequently right but not, perhaps, immune to the violence oi the violet ray. (Witness the Haitian poet who shot the publisher.) At any rate, the Smithsonian listed considerable technical data showing that sun spot activity frequently had preceded wars. Some scientists say sun spots may have good effects, too resulting in heavier foliage, better crops, more rains as well as their evil tendencies tenden-cies to disturb interpersonal rela-i rela-i tions, not to mention radio com munications. j However, there is little we can do about It, for as far as we know the sun is like a leopard it can't (or won't) change its spots. One 'Free' Book Is Not Wasted If you are one of the lucky farmers farm-ers who wrote your congressman promptly, asking for a copy of the Department of Agriculture 1948 Year Book, you have a treat in store for you. The first copies already al-ready have come from the government govern-ment printer but it will be some time before the bulk of the printing is ready for delivery. This year's topic is a live one: GRASS. It deals with the general subject of grassland agriculture and there |