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Show This Week by Arthur Brisbanb Three To Be Off. With Keats as a Text. Japan Looks Ahead. Another High Trip. Little English boys, preparing for a dive, screwing up courage, say, "One to be ready, two to be steady, three to be off," then they dive. That is how we dive into the new year, January first to be ready, January second to be steady, January Jan-uary third to be off. January third is gone, the year has begun, and we are off. The President has told Congress and the Nation just exactly what he has been doing since the Fourth of March, and even Republicans will admit that he had something to tell. Time does not wait, but that need not worry those that do their best. If you do your best, and have merit, the world will acknowledge your work. The "Autobiography of John Keats," compiled by E. V. Welier, from Keats' letters and essays, published by Stanford University Press, offers comfort to the discouraged, dis-couraged, hope to the ambitious. He was poor, his life a brief unhappy un-happy struggle, anu he died only 25 years old, but his work will live as long as the English language of today is spoken. Mrs. Charles Dilke, writing to her husband in 1818, said "John Keats arrived here last night, as brown- and shabby as you can imagine; im-agine; scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn at the back, a fur cap, a great plaid, and his knapsack. knap-sack. Cannot tell what he looked like." Not a promising description of one of the world's true geniuses. But Keats, In spite of vicious at tacks by ignorant critics, was not discouraged. At that very time, re--ferring to attacks upon him in the "Quarterly," Keats write: "This is a mere matter of the moment. I think I shall be among the English poets after my death." He lies beside his friend Severn, In the graveyard in Rome, on his tombstone these words that he chose: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." And that name, all over the English-speaking world, is actually written in letters of gold. Let that encourage real workers that begin the New Year discouraged. dis-couraged. And let young people, that want to write well, remember that Keats' . genius developed "as he steeped himself more and more in the works of Milton and Shakespeare." Young Henry Pu-YI, once heir to the imperial throne of China, descendant de-scendant of the Manchus that came down from Manchuria and made themselves rulers of China long ago, is now slated to be Emperor of the old Manchurian homeland, rechristened Manchukuo. The Chinese Republic took away the youthful Pu-Yi's imperial prospects pros-pects in China, but treated him . kindly, supplying plenty of money for his elaborate household. Japan, seizing Manchuria, and wishing to do it tactfully, made the young prince, whose ancestors once were rulers of Manchuria, the nominal head of the new Japanese possession. posses-sion. The ambitions of Japan are not small, and perhaps selecting Pu-Yi, as Emperor in Manchuria, is part of a far-seeing plan. By it Pu-Yi would be restored to the throne of his ancestors in Manchuria. Man-churia. Later it might be desirable to restore him, as dummy of Japan, to the other throne of his later an cestors, as ruler of all China. A bag containing 600,000 cubic feet of gas carried Major Fordney of the Marine Corps and Lieutenant Settle of the Navy more than 61,000 feet into the air. They plan another flight into the stratosphere, with a balloon of 1,500,000 cubic feet and hope to go up 15 miles, or more, possibly penetrating pene-trating the "ozono layer" which encloses the earth about 15 miles up. That exploration may lead to plans for bringing down supplies of that, which is the life-giving quality of the atmosphere, for distribution as needed. Real exploration of the air ocean above us will begin when men go up between foui and five hundred miles and look out from our attenuated at-tenuated atmosphere into the "absolute "ab-solute zero" of the ether, or whatever what-ever the substance is that fills all space between this group of solar systems and the nebluae. Governor Talmadge of Georgia insists that in his State owners shall not pay more than three dollars dol-lars each for licensing cars and trucks. California wisely, long ago, adopted the same rule. The theory is to avoid discouraging the automobile auto-mobile industry or automobile owners own-ers by excessive license fees. Cars big and little pay only $3. The more of them the better, since the State derives income, for road building, from gasoline consumed. The bigger cars, using more, pay more. (,1933, by King Feature, Syndicate, lac.) |