OCR Text |
Show I I ' ur WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. When we went infco the World war, Sen. Smith W. Brookhart of Iowa said our crack riflemen would win for us ii he were allowed to re-Rifle re-Rifle Virtuoso eruitandtratn Made Gun Our them. Amerl-a Amerl-a h a cans, he said, Army Mainstay were born marksmen, and the rifle would be suited to our native genius. He was soundly patriotic and moving, as he worked in Daniel Boone and individual individ-ual initiative, but his plea went unheeded un-heeded in fact, the senator's suggestion sug-gestion seemed amusing to most commentators. Bat, at that time, there was a l young fellow popping ofT the conveyor con-veyor belt ducks at Coney island is-land with snch accuracy that he became a virtuoso of rifle fire, and, in between war years, made the rifle the mainstay of our army firing power, just as Senator Brookhart said it ought to be. The Garand self-loading, semi-antomatic rifle, tested by National Guardsmen at Camp Smith, Peekskill, has for several years been put down by military mili-tary men as the world's most sensational achievement in right arms. The army took it over in 1937. It is the creation of John C. Garand, the yonng toolmaker whose earlier laboratory was a Coney island shooting gaHery. It weighs only nine pounds, and fires 60 shots to the minute one shot with one trigger-pull. Young Garand made several models, mod-els, embodying his basic idea, and sent one to the navy department at Washington. They planted him with the bureau of standards to continue his experiments. Later, they sent him to the United States armory at Springfield, Spring-field, where in 1923 he brought through the deadliest small weapon ever made. It has been steadily Improved since then, and, according to the most authoritative au-thoritative military judgment, has more than trebled our army's firing power. Automatic in all but the trigger-pull, muzzle muz-zle gas is used to power it. John C. Garand was born in a French-Canadian village, 20 miles from Montreal, and was brought to Putnam, Conn., by his father, when he was seven, after the death of his mother. He was the seventh of 14 children. He was a textile mill machinist ma-chinist at 18. In 1930, he married a Canadian girl. They have a boy and a girl. He is 52 years old, still a gunsmith at the Springfield armory. ar-mory. '"pHERE was once a hillbilly girl -- who went to a neighbor's cabin to borrow a hammer. She said, "Pappy's flxin' to build a house next fall." Over in Europe Borrows Europe, they Our 'World of are "flxin"' Tomorrow' Idea 1 bf? a federated Europe, Eu-rope, forehanded about it, as above, with the building apparently dependent depend-ent on a preliminary wrecking job. Within the last few days, plans for the grand remodeling have gone forward, with two sets of blueprints on each side of the west wall. Franz von Papen thinks the new commonwealth of Europe will be devised by Germany, Ger-many, while Paul Eeynaud, French minister of finance, and his confreres In London, are making other arrangements. The wide range of planners swings from intellectuals, snch as Julian Huxley, the British scientist, to the man of action, General Wladislas Sikorski, premier pre-mier of the Polish government which is just now camping out In France. General Sikorski, the latest matriculate ma-triculate In the peace seminar, visions vi-sions a "consolidated Europe," but one in which a reconstituted Poland will somehow be happily encysted. He Is a soldier who became a writing, as well as a fighting man, also, with his gift of ready speech, an orator and politician. He was an effective leader of the war of 1920, when the French general, Maxime Weygand, helped the Poles stop the Bolsheviks, Bol-sheviks, and he became premier In 1922 when he was replaced by Marshal Pilsudski as chlef-of-staff. He was forced out In 1923, and in 1924 became minister of war. One of his first official acts was to forbid women workers In the department to wear silk stockings. He decreed dark, high-collared dresses, high shoes and cotton stockings. He is a strict disciplinarian. A handsome and romantic figure of the old feudal Polish aristocracy, he took full account of modern conditions con-ditions as he tried desperately to tool his country into modern statehood. state-hood. Nw, it appears, he would just skip it and take a chance on the world of tomorrow. (Consolidated Features WNU Service.) |