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Show about: The Plight of Spain. pEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. -L In the bloody task of utterly destroying herself Spain cannot complain that she lacked for hearty co-operation on the part of some of her sister countries. Openly or secretly, half of the great European powers are contributing contrib-uting to the bloody ruination, so that, when the finish Ff.'""' comes, they'll have I 4' " spoils or dubious f J prestige or both and j that ill-fated land 1 will be a burying si ' 1 ground and a deso- S " lation. smf A fellow gets to -w wondering why this ' s or that government j ''"jtl.. J chooses for an emblem em-blem some noble Irvin S. Cobb creature when the turljy buzzard or the grave-robbing hyena would be so appropriate. appropri-ate. Fierce winters and devastating floods may be curing us here on this side of the water, but at least we have been spared the affliction of having for our next-door neighbors neigh-bors certain nations. Kidnapers' Ransoms. IT'S all well enough to pass an act making payment of ransom to a kidnaper a criminal offense as though heartbroken parents would hesitate to pay ransoms to get their babies back, no matter what the penalty for so doing might be! And can you see any American jury convicting those parents? The author au-thor of the law is no doubt well-intentioned but there is another law, called the law of human nature, which most surely would defeat his purposes. By the way, a person who should know what he's talking about, tells me that three out of every four known kidnapers during recent years have been ex-convicts with records as repeated offenders. So, instead of trying to penalize agonized parents for obeying a natural na-tural instinct, how about a snappy little law to curb certain parole boards which seem to delight in turning 'em out as fast as the courts can clap 'em in? Optimism De Lnxe. T LIKE the spirit of a gentleman in New York who started dredging dredg-ing operations in East river. He set out to dig a minimum of $4,-800,000 $4,-800,000 in gold and silver from the ooze, and to date has salvaged 96 cents, two rusty frying pans and a penknife and is still probing. For gorgeous optimism I can think of but one case to match this. I was on the French Riviera one summer. They'd been shifting the railroad tracks along the Grand Corniche. This left a disused tunnel. tun-nel. So, week after week, a bearded beard-ed gentleman sat at one mouth of the empty bore with a sign over his head reading: "This property for sale." When I left he was still there, wailing for somebody who was in the market for a secondhand second-hand tunnel. South American Explorers. OF RECENT years, those hardy adventurers who set forth to invade the last great unexplored 'area, interior South America, seem to follow a regular routine, to wit, as follows: First They start off. Second They get lost Third They are rescued. But wouldn't it save wear and tear and nervous strain if the rescue expedition went on ahead so it could get settled down in camp all nice and comfortable and be waiting for the explorers when they staggered in, exhausted from totmg all those tons of material for future lecture lec-ture tours? The modern discoverer discov-erer is gallant, but apparently has no more sense of direction than an egg-beater and seemingly could get lost on top of a marble-top table. Or possibly the tropic sun has an addling effect on the human brain. Anyhow, since nearly always he is in an intact state when rescued, res-cued, this would seem to indicate t'.iat the head-hunters of the Amazonian Ama-zonian jungles are now getting fussy about the types of heads they collect. The Charms of Music. ACCORDING to a medical professor pro-fessor in Pennsylvania, samples sam-ples of whisky, when subjected to a musical sound treatment for seven sev-en hours, produce a liquor which equals one that has been aged in wood for at least four years. But why get excited about this? I've known certain brands of classical music which, in one evening, have aged a grown man to a point where he figures the present Christian era must be about over. Only a few weeks ago, being softened soft-ened by the spirit of the approaching approach-ing holidays, I suffered myself to be lured to a Chopin recital and got jammed in and couldn't escape and finally staggered forth into the night feeling that Methuselah had little if anything on me. IRVIN S. COBB. C WNU Scrvict. |