mBmmw __\ OL m J.. tytlnufsie TitTEHNATIOIMAL Official circles in London tonight are not gnashing their teetn or rolling their eyes. Nothing melodramatic - that’s not the oritish way. In faet,xx cheery smiles are to be seen. Yet there’s plenty of under-cover activity, .searching quizzing, sleuthing. The London Government is confronted with something that sends a shiver down any governmental spine - a leak, and a big one. A highly confidential document of international importance, a regular state secret - and somehow the full revelation slipped out. A carefully guarded report concerning British policy in the Ethiopian tangle - <SS^ there was a leak! &ffl#\$ho got the information? Why, A-- X the document is now printed in full by one of Mussolini’s pet newspapers. It sounds like espionage, secret agent stuff of the most Imposing sort# ^he under—cover filching of hidden diplomatic Information. So yoU can imagine ± m the British government s j— o J__f and you can see story-book visions of Scotland Yard on the job, working on a great international case. All melodrama aside, it will be interesting to teats* how Mussolini got hold of A, A that secret British report on Italian claims in Ethiopia. One central figure in the affair is a man well worth IftTKKKAT ZONAL - 2 loclring at, Sir John Maftey, head of the London Colonial Office, I knew him in India some years back when he was High Commissioner of tne Northwest frontier. Later he was High Commissioner in the Sudan, Those official posts mark him as one of those stalwart British pro-consuls whose vigorous hands have made the British empire, - stalwart? Six feet seven. I've never seen anyone who knew the ways of native peoples better than Sir John Maffey; his ingenuity and under­ standing of the workings of the barbaric mentality. And that is illustrated by a frontier thriller which agitated northwestern India when I was there. Sir John had charge of the case of Molly Ellis. She was a beautiful English girl of eighteen, captured by Afridi outlaws. The Afridis are one of the ±hm most ferocious of the mountain tribes tnat raid across the border, plundering and killing. They murdered Molly Ellis' father and mother right in the British military cantonment at Kohot and carried the girl away. How to get her back - that was the problem which Sir John Maffey had to solve, he knew quite well that if he sent a INTEEK AT ICfri AL - 3 punitive expedition into the hills, the wild Afridia would surely kill her. So to get one woman back from the Afridis, the High Commissioner sent another woman among them. This was a Mrs. Starr, a medical missionary. She went alone, unarmed, into the Afridi country, looking for Molly Ellis, inquiring among the outlaw tribesmen of the hills. What happened to her? Well, Sir John had figured correctly. The Afridis, with the good as well as the evil of a warlike people, admired the missionary woman's courage sp much that they turned Molly Ellis over to her. And Mrs. Starr brought the girl back. That gives the insight of Sir John Maffey -- the man who last June headed a commission which studied the Ethiopian problem, and turned in that secret report to the London govern­ ment. What's in the report? The Italians have printed that. Several of the most important points are these:- The document considers the possibility that Ethiopia would disappear as an independant nation. It tacitly recognizes that Italy had paramount claim over the land of the King of Kings. It declares that an Italian conquest of Ethiopia would not be detrimental INTERNA? ICUAL - 4 •to -Ee EritisE in'terests* It would even be belpful in some ways, by bringing: order and civilization into tiie country* But Sir John Maffey found that England must have the Lake Tsana region, the sources of the Nile*. That's what the Italians have just printed. Have the British been denying it today? Not at all. They're looking for the leak through which the document got out. And they're smiling about it. They say that the Italian publication doesn't hurt Britain's cause, but helps it. When the Maftey document says that Italy in Ethiopia wouldn't hurt Britain — well, that just goes to show that British support of the League of Nations has been’unselfish and idealistic. The Italians had been saying that it's thoroughly selfish. The British add that the report is not a statement of policy but a mere survey. Rome points to the way the document admits Italian claims in Ethiopia. The Italians say that this proves that as late as last June London did not declare any loud opposition, to Mussolini's pl^uis. So viiy the sudden British flare up this winter, Rome asks. international - 5 The whole thing makes quite a spectacular affair of international controversy, spiced and gingered hy the hint of secret agents, confidential information of state leaking out, Scotland Yard on the joh, and any other garnishment of diplomatic intrigue that you would like to imagine. munitions long* serial which A displayed such features as the banking angle of the World War, J.P.Morgan telling how his firm financed thd Allies, President Wilson and the secret treaties of Great Britain and France-. It made quite a performance and ended with a revelation that was up to the standard of the whole show. Uhe A witness that provided the curtain surprise was no international money master or mighty man of government. He was a junk dealer. His name ^ Jacob Paley. The moral of the story he told is - that one half of the government doesn’t know what the other half is doing. fighting to keep machine guns from getting into the hands of gangsters. The G-men were waging a campaign to stop the sale of those murderous weapons to machine-gunning racketeers. Such The Munitions Investigation closed its hearings today In Nineteen Thirty-Three, the Department of Justice was At that very same time another branch of the Government was doing just the opposite sort of thing. The Army was selling MUNITIONS - 2 machine guns by the thousands, selling them into private trade. The junk dealer told the Munitions Committee that he himself had bought almost four thousand of them, and added m thousand* more were being sold every week at army depots throughout the nation. He qualified by saying that the machine guns were not of the best. They wrere damaged, banged up, not at all up to army standards. That*s why they were s being sold. But they were, up to crime standards* They could be easily repaired, put into shape for gangsters to use. To the Chairman, Senator Nye, the junk man propounded one bit of reasonable philosophy, "The army", said he, "should not sell machine guns like that if the Government wants to keep them out of circulation. " TOWNSEND It seems to be unanimous. What is? Well, the general agreement concerns the Townsend Plan. That seems hard to believe. The Doctor*s scheme for old-age pensions is not one of those things that evokes a happy harmony, everybody smiling with a joyful okay. Instead, tempers grovr short and words get hot in the legislative halls, whenever the subject is brought up. Nevertheless, the news today brings us a striking unanimity. Yesterday, the Townsend enemies in Congress whooped it up for an investigation. Today, the Townsend friends are whooping with applause. Their leaders speak up and say,"fine, splendid!" Congressional debate was blistering when the investigation was ordered. The Doctor was denounced as a charlatan and a quack, — not in a medical but in a sociological sense. Another sprightly congressional phrase characterized him as either a fool or a knave. The Townsend adversaries, in voting the probe, mustered a majority of two hundred and forty to four. That's rather unanimous, right there. Today Robert E. Clements, the big time Townsend chieftain, made reply in these classic terms: "The monkeys have played right TOWNSEND - £ into our hands. They are giving us the biggest piece of publicity we ever could have hoped to get.1* So, everybody is happy. It reminds one of a couple of opposing generals, each of whom is a hundred per cent sure he is going to win. So each yells, ,,hurrah!n because they1 re going to have a battle. The Townsend leaders issued a general defense and denial today - loudly repudiating the accusations that are being investigated. They say: wnonsense” to the fcharge that a million, two hundred thousand dollars were collected and only six hundred thousand were accounted for. Another charge was made that Dr. Townsend himself admitted this. The Townsendites claim that they had taken in just about six hundred thousand. And they add that the Doctor had been misquoted in what he was supposed to have said, that the organization was gathering a hundred thousand dollars a month right now. Another financial shaft leveled at the scheme is that the Doctor and cp-organlzer Clements are drawing each two thousand dollars a week. The contradictory phenomenon of cheers from both sides tqv . msend - s resolves itself to this - that the congressional enemies of the 1 ;!- To^Tisend Bill hope to make their charges stick and thus discredit the movement. While - the leaders of' the k scheme claim they'll be vindicated, and that this vindication will force the lawmakers to % take up the Townsend Plan in a serious way and put it to a vote i H i in the House and Senate. Another financial angle is oontributed by Dean Carothers, of the Lehigh University School of Business. But he doesn't tackle the subject of how much money the Townsend organization^ may or may not have been collecting. He issues a blast against the old-age pension scheme by saying that there are about t&b million people in the /s, country^ of sixty or over, and if each, got £he Townsend two hundred dollars a month, it would cost the Government twenty billion,aux five hundred million dollars a year. To raise that prodigious amount, says the economist, the workers of the country would have to contribute half of their wages. They wouldn't do it. So Dean Carothers, writing In the COUNTRX HOME MAGAZINE, predicts the plan would lead to business paralysis and civil war. And that's a powerful prophecy. TOWNSEKD - 4 Th.e Townsend ructions have put old-age very much in the news. Old-age was honored at Seneca Falls, Hew York, where they staged a birthday party for the town's most distinguished patriot. Twenty-one bombs were exploded, one for each year. Yes, that Methuselah is twenty-one years old, but still able to chase a mouse. And his birthday presents consisted mostly of catnip. The mayor, and the high dignitaries of the town, turned out for the celebration, and messages were received from half a dozen states - in honor of Tommy, the aged catl FRAKK GANNETT If you have been in Bew York lately, and if you have been anywhere in the vicinity of Park Avenue, you may have droves of men whose heads tower above the crowd_ husky, broad~shouldered gentlemen. They are representatives of the paper and pulp industry of America, here from all parts of the country — several thousands of them holding a big international 1 convention at the Waldorf. Today they were addressed by the distinguished publisher, frank Gannett, head of the Gannett string of newspapers. Sannett’s topic was ^Tomorrow*s Money.” He pointed out that great progress toward recovery had been made in the British Empire. En his opinion this was partly due to the management of British currency, the pound sterling. And, he pointed outa further Interesting fact, that two—thirds of all international trade is low conducted on the basis of that managed British pound the gold content of the pound changed every day by the British Governmental | In order to keep commodity prices stabilized. Mr. Gannett believes lat our only way to TBTrwggfc protect ourselves against inflation will be to reform our monetary system. SHOT-PUTTER 'ihey say the wild man has gained control. Well, he certainly needed it because a wild shot-putter is something tierce, ^an you imagine an intercollegiate giant whirling and heaving the sixteen pound shot, and never knowing where it's going to land --- maybe in the crowd. Like cannonballs flitting around in gay abandon. Maybe the wild man was wild because he^ a Russian -- the Cossack influence, Dmitri Zaitz was born in the land of Muscovy, but now is a Bostonian, Boston College is his Alma Mater, And he hopes to pick off a world's championship at the American Athletic Union Meet in Hew York on Saturday, He has hopes because he's grown tame. He is sure nothing wild will happen, nothing to resemble that untamed incident of last year. And right now he's outhurling the world's champ - Babe Torrence who weighs 314 pounds. It was at the Indoor Intercollegiate Events at Madison Square Garden, It was one of those three—ring circus affaij-g with different events going on at the same time -— shot­ putting, jumping, pole-vaulting, Dmitri was hurling the ponderous SHOT - PUTTER - 2 iron ft all * Everybody knew iie was wild, ftut noftody dreamed tfcat he would let that caiinoh^all 'Cly over in the direction of the broad-jump. But he did. And it was almost murder. Bill Fackert of Princeton £ad justfnade a tremendous leap in the broad-jump, when Dmitri let fly. The shot-put went speeding at a crazy tangent, straight at Bill, as he hit the dirt. He might have been killed if the yell of the crowd hadn't warned him. That cannonball missed him by inches. He ducked just in time. And 1*11 duck just in time, and — SOLONG UNTIL TOMORROW