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Show J aVnut: Kidnaping Laws. BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. Do you remember the feverish, fever-ish, the almost hysterical eagerness eag-erness to make kidnaping a capital offense which swept legislature on legislature Missouri Mis-souri and California and other states besides after the Lindbergh baby was stolen? You must remember; remem-ber; it wasn't long ago. And now will some bright little boy or girl tell the rest of the class iust how many kid- napers, who were tried, convicted and condemned under these laws, have been legally put to death since then? And does anyone seriously believe that anywhere In the Union, Eruno Hauptmann would today stand apnre- 5 ! I 5 i i ciably closer to the rvjn s. Cobb electric chair, had not child-murder been added to the other hideous crime of child-stealing? We're a great people for laws not for enforcing laws; dearie mo, no, we're much too tender-hearted for that rough stuff but just for having nice ornamental law;s on the statute books. Let's see how many more we enact en-act before the spring thaw comes. Old "Uncle Wilbur" SO THE ex-kaiser is getting on toward eighty. It seems only yesterday when I was one of three American correspondents with the invading German forces In 191-1. Among ourselves we wanted to be able to refer freely to our imperial host without giving offense to anybody any-body in his army. So we twisted Emperor Wilhelm Hohenzollern into in-to "Uncle Wilbur Hennebury of Chambersburg, Fa.," and went about speaking of him as one to whom we were indebted for diverse favors but whose policies and methods frequently fre-quently were open to criticism. To the world today he's the wood-chopper wood-chopper of Doom; to the suppressed sup-pressed royalists of the Vaterland he's still, I suppose, the all-highest. But so long as I can remember those mad days in Belgium and France, he'll be "Uncle Wilbur," a good fellow while he had it. Maybe if he hadn't figured his divine di-vine right ws better than the devastating de-vastating left hook of world opinion opin-ion he might still be the all-ages heavyweight champion of European Europe-an royalty. And there might he more European royalty than there is. Reviving the Old I WALKED into a beer parlor today to-day but, if that was the parlor, I'd hate to visit the pantry and there in front of the mirror was an old friend a friend I hadn't seen for full thirty years. It was a framed sign reading as follows: "Don't ask us to charge. The Light Brigade charged and look at what happened to them." Wrestling As an Art EVERY time I go to a so-called wrestling contest, I say to myself my-self that, if only we revived the ancient an-cient Roman sport of matching gladiators to murder one another publicly, no building anywhere could hold the multitudes that would flock to the blood-lettings. It can't be the posing, posturing, cheap acting, deliberate fouling, obvious ob-vious hippodroming, the fixed victories vic-tories and the faked defeats that bring the crowds swarming about the mastodonic masters of the manly man-ly art of self-pretense, these blubber-laden practitioners of the pleasant pleas-ant science of mayhem. All the cruel agony can't be make-believe, make-believe, all the seeming suffering isn't rehearsed beforehand. That's what makes the business pay. Tim creak of the dislocated ankle and the brisk snap of the splintering knee-joint, the scream as a brutal thumb gouges at a tortured eyeball It's so much music to the popular popu-lar ear. Stifling the Urgo IT'S almost time for the master tailors to announce that this year men will wear bright colors. They do that regularly and nothing ever comes of It except vain longings for us, poor cowardly worms that we are. I'.oing a race of 'fraid-cats, we'll go right on encasing ourselves in garments suitable for pallbearers pallbear-ers at a Dunkard funeral. I'm typical of the whole thwarted male species. My impulse Is to go pick out something suitable for a fancy vest and then have a whole suit made of It. P.Ight now I've got my eye on a nobby checked pattern in black and white squares that would make me look a good deal like a marble-tiled entry hall. P.ut i will I Indulge my stifled natural ! cravings? Don't make me laugh! I It's not one another's scorn wo , fear. It's our womenfolk. Well, If you were a hen and the poor foolish fool-ish rooster had surrendered to you all his gay feathers, along with most of his other perquisites, would you give 'em back to him? IRVIN S. COBB. Copyright. WNU Service. |