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Show GREAT LAKES THINGS APART Writtr Complains, With Reason, That Wonderful Bodies' of Water Are Not Appreciated. Statistics can never make people understand the Great Lakes. That it is 300 miles down Lake Michigan from Chicago to Manistlque means little; that 000 feet of water Is not an unusual un-usual depth; that the tonnage which goes through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie makes the annual tonnage of the Suer. canal' seem Insignificant iiie4t things mean little in themselves. them-selves. Try another: No equal area of water that rolls floats as much shipping ship-ping In a year as does the Detroit river. That falls flat, too. The beauty of the Great Lakes cannot be compared to that of any other water In the world and carry meaning. liar eld Titus writes In Everybody's. They are things apart, an Influence, a buck-ground buck-ground for Important cultural factors that are beyond statistics. There Is no locality more American In America Amer-ica than the Great Lakes. The romance ro-mance of exploration Is largely forgotten for-gotten by America as a whole; the Island communities, once so picturesque, pictur-esque, are thinning out, railroads have driven the trading hooker off this fresh water; fishing, for the most part, s today as efficient and commonplace as most forms of business; the great fleets of freighters go up and down, up and down, hardly noticed, rarely thought of, except by those directly Interested In shipping. And yet the Great Lakes have their place In our civilization, and In time that place will be recognised and tnlked about and respected and the lakes themselves them-selves will be studied and appreciated and understood. |