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Show This Week by Arthur Brisbane We Talk Fast, Go Slowly When Best Minds Change The Maggot and the Lion Gas Pistols and Guns Al Williams, cne of our finest young American flyers, recently of the American Navy, said recently rec-ently "The United States talks fast and flies slowly. England flies fast and talks slowly." Britain holds all the speed records rec-ords that have any real meaning, the airplane record, 357 miles per hour: the automobile record, 24t miles; the motor record of over 100 miles, and motor cycle recora of over 150 miles. And they havo achieved these records in "hard times." The British manage to do what they have to do. Incidentally the Britsh are fai ahead of us in the construction of airplane and other engines. They have developed horsepower in their engines by methods concerning which we know nothing. For instance, in-stance, they took an 850 horse power engine weighing 1,540 pounas and got out of it 1,900 horsepower, the engine weighing less than one pound per horsepower. Perhaps our big oil companies could tell us what the British put in their engines to get such horsepower horse-power and make them go so fast The composition of their fuel is a mystery to American engine builders. This year the Italians, British and French will compete in the Schneider Cup race for the world's speed records. Uncle Sam, who invented the airplane, will be absent. ab-sent. What's the matter with us? Are we getting too old, fat and rich? If you ask a prosperous "best mind" to give impartial consideration considera-tion to Government ownership of natural monopolies, he will start at you haughtily. But when a natural monopoly suddenly ceases to pay any profits to private owners, own-ers, that "best mind" will admit that, "under certain circumstances, it might be well for the Government to take charge." Your name was "Lenin-Marx-Bolshevik" if you suggested Government Govern-ment ownership of railroads two years ago. Now many of them are losing money and even a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission says the best thing might be to t have the government take all the j railroads and run them "as a unit." You may even hear Government ownership in power companies themselves, when Diesel engines give power companies such compe-' compe-' tition as motor trucks and buses have given to the railroads. That may come. General Mitchell says the new German "pocket" cruiser has Diesel engines that weigh seventeen pounds per horsepower. It carries guns of seventeen mile range, could destroy all cruisers quite easily, eas-ily, and our cruisers with short range guns have engines that weigh more than 100 pounds per horsepower. horse-power. Strange, but we still have something to learn, apparently. Sir James Jeans, whose works works you should read, doesn't think anybody is living on the planets that accompany us through space, with the sun. He thinks life is scarce anywhere in the universe. uni-verse. It is some comfort to know that there can't be any depression, on Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Sa-turn, Neptune or Little Eros, since it takes foolish human beings to make a slump. But science, in the near future, should be able to prove that there is consciousness, life, thought, pinx pose, in millions of other planets, perhaps on the sun itself. We can't imagine life at a temperature cf 50,000,000 degrees centigrade, which is the temperature of thj sun's insides. On the other hand, a cold white magct could not imagine life in the highly heated body of a .bounding .bound-ing lion. It would say: 'Wait till that thing dies, grows cold, and we inhabit it. Then it will have life." New York will provide "gas pistols" pis-tols" for its police force, small enough for the pocket, firing gas cartridges that incapacitate the person at whom they are fired. Police also will have gas guns to shoot gas through windows and subdue criminals inside. Weapons of the same kind probably prob-ably will be acquired by criminals, which will help to make the lives of ordinary citizens more exciting. La Guardia, New York Congressman, Congress-man, sometimes Repubican, sometimes some-times Socialist, and always energetic, ener-getic, wants a law that would nationalize na-tionalize everybody and everything "from Tex Guinan to J. P. Morgan" in case of another war. It is an amusing suggestion, but wouldn't work. The next war, like preceding preced-ing wars, will be run bearing In mind the Bible text, "As His part is that goeth down into the battle, so shall His part be that tarrieth by the stuff." And the tarriers "by the stuff" will as usual get the bigger part. The King of Siam does not agree with the rotund Mr. Chesterton, ot Great Britain, concerning New York City. Mr. Chesterton, his architectural views perhaps influenced influ-enced by his own architectural out line, not unlike that of a tub of butter, thinks New York shocks good taste. The intelligent Siamese Kings says that if a stranger came from the planet of Mars "as a member of the human race, I would show him New York, and tell him that this is what the human race has ' f been able to do." 1 f |