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Show This Week by Arthur Bri bane One Thing Important Paid for Not Doing $40 a Month What Do We Want of Japan? O.e piece of news in the world is imp'i-tant to the- United Stat"-". If Wa hingt'n do sn't know it, the governments of Eurcpe nni Asia dc know it. That news :'s Am l a Earhart's flight nensiop in eiht'en hours, acros; 2,400 miles of tho Pacifu ocean, from Hawaii t ' the Unifd States. All America; l citizens, espe-fially espe-fially thtv.-s en th Pacific coat and elderly, out-cf-da.te gentlemen who are supposed to provide fcr the da- I if N . : , ARTHUR BRISBANE t-3L.- "-333 , fern rf this caurt y should a'fc themselves : If a yeung woman, entir-ly alone, without sleep, no assistant to help with navagator. can fly, unseen, across the Pac:fic ocean aRd land in California to receive a bunch of roses, eighteen hcurq from Hawaii, what do you think five or ten thousand thou-sand pew'erful bombing and swift pursuit planes could1 do, corning from As'a cr from Eurcpe? Pennsylvania is an important tobacco state. The government is paying farmers not to grow t'bacco. just as it pays th"m elsewhere not to grow cotton or wheat and not to raise pigs. ' After you have spent your whole life driven by necessity's lah to produce the utmost possible, this brings sweet peacs to have the government pay ycu for not d'ing it, even if you can't quite understand under-stand it. Nobody has yet arranged to pay newspaper publishers for not writing writ-ing editorials, but that may ccme, in the glorious new era, and, here and there, it might be a great blessing. bless-ing. Washington reports that . President Presi-dent Roosevelt's message to congress con-gress about pensiens for th old will suggest "only" $40 a month. The Washington correspondent who says "only" does not know what $40 a month would mean to millions cf old people whose lives are made bitter not by deprivation, not by poverty, hunger or cold, but by the fact that they depend upon the cold charity of others, particularly par-ticularly on the charity cf relatives. Give $40 a month to the eld that are dependent and you will bring happiness into the last yeari of millions mil-lions of lives, and that would be worthy of a great nation. Tha honorable Japanese cheif of information in the foreign office says the United States is planning an attack on Japan. Any Japanese who believes it lacks the usual intelligence for which you give all Japanese credit. Nations start wars because they want something. What does the United States want from Japan? Uncle Sam, in a m'ld fit of idiocy, is now giving away the Philippines, Asiatic Hands richer in resource, than the Japanes; fslarjdfe. We got those islands fr:m th Spanish war. Should we start another an-other war, spend billions, kill man cf our JapantvB friends and .burr up their country by fire bombard merit from airplane-; m'rcly ti fS mere As atic islands, to Le given away later? Th thirst of the p-ople mearr pr fit to the government. Uncl( 3s m during 1934 collected an aver rc of more than $1,000,030 a. da; :n liquor taxes. Beer a!orr yi:lcle" 8200,000,000; spirits dist'U'd in America, $121,000,000; imported iirit $15,000,000; imported winr S6.000.000. Mon will pay for what they want end endure taxatiec. cheerfully. It is easy to understand why tens rf millions follow the trial of Brim'1 Hauptmann for the kidnaping amO killing cf the LindbTg baby wt'1 si eh intense interest. The trial is a mystery in itself. Gradually un-wn'nd un-wn'nd in court lik? the- chapters in a drtect've story, it holds public tt-nti-n. th1? lvrvible nature; C the cr'me increasing th? init'rcsfc tenfold. Eighty-Kin Ruxian fishermen, l'virg on the edg? of the Caspian -pa cuht to be grat"ful to th? American Wright brother.? that in -ver-teri the airplaen. With then-beats then-beats they had drifted ten days ( n ar1 ic fl e and w re starving. Along came a big Russian plane, flying low. to dr p tiny parachutos that brought feod, tobacco and alcohol. al-cohol. Then tha fisherman, hopa-le hopa-le sly lo t, cut of right of land, goi in th ir boats and the airplan" nHM thm to the shorte-1 route; to shore. j This rp rter sat nxt to Am0l." Earhart at a dinner recently, d'd ".t re"Ognize her, thought she Icckid, a- the French say, "lik 'omebedy," asked, "Do y"u write, fly or what do you do?" She said "i fly a little, and I write a little." She win have a great deal to write now. |