, - 5UKC"C, KGirD^Y, APRIL 1, aoor r/E.. i :; g sveryboidy : I trust none of you fell for the oi<3- gag today - the ■'.at on the parerrent, inviting a Icicle but concealing a large and nefty crick -- or * id that pass n-ith horses and buggies a-.d 1 ad ies’ du 1 es? rerfcaps the se of you who live near railroad tracks -'a. ray have thought that the extra lour ant extra long tooting of whistles today was part of All Fool *8 Day celebration* It did in fact have a definite connection with the date - the date of Apr i 1 First* For nine hun dred t ho a sand r a i 1 r o ad m en in the united States, April first, Nineteen thirty-five was the day when they got a five per cent fattening of the .good old pay envelope. 3o if you were traveling on trains as I was and noticed that even that astute monarch, the conductor, loosened up on his dignity sufficiently to have a smile on his face, you now hnow why. you may remember something of the several long and hard fights *he railroad workers have had in the last few years. In Nineteen *hir"y-tw0, all the rail roar men had to take a ten LEAP - 2 per cent cut* ^'he railroad a were losing money with no hope in sight. Later in the year, when the banner of the Blue Eagle first fluttered over the land, the railroaders took the opportunity of clamoring for their money back. There were the makings of a real scrap there, and President Roosevelt himself had to step in and keep the peace. There was something to be said for both sides. The compromise reached through the intervention of the President, provided that July first last year, the companies would restore two and a half per cent of that ten per cent cut, with a similar two and a half per cent to be added six months later, the first of this year. And on top of that comes the five per cent raise today, the whole business now restored. This latest raise means that the companies will spend: eighty million dollars a year more in wages. And the restoration bids fair to be permanent. The Interstate Commerce Commission has allowed the xx± roads to jump their Jbcigiijt freight rates on certain commodities sufficiently to bring from eighty to eighty-five million dollars a year additional revenue into the companies’ treasuries. That should make things LEAD - 3 satisfactory for Doth the moguls and the men. Of course, all the rest of us will have to pay the bill because rising freight rates will mean a corresponding rise in the price of the things we buy, and that will come out of our pockets. SUPREME OQ'URT The Supreme Court of the United ..-S%m16a ir*a spoken Jl sensational wo rd in the SGoffsbo.ro case, For the second tim@ that august tribunal has saved Clarence Morris and Haywood / Patterson from a death sentence and ordered a new trial. i The decision of ^heir Honors means more than this, for by it colored people all over the country and particularly in the South gain a legal point of the highest importance. Chief Justice Hughes who delivered the opinion, and his eight associates, did not rule upon the facts. What they did say was, in effect, that "it was not a fair trial because those two negroes were deprived of their rights — no members of their race had been allowed to sit on the jury je ± which tried them," Of course as we all ought to "know our Constitution provides that no one shall be curtailed of his rights because of race, color or religion. So once again the state of Alabama has this problem on its hands. The case that lias aroused more discussion, more squabbling, more ill-feeling than any other in years. People have been referring to those two negroes all this while as boys. By now they are grown men and if there are many more appeals they SUPREME COURT - 2 they will be middle-aged before the case is finally disposed of. But that is not the only case affecting colored people which the Supreme Court decided today. And the other one will not be received with so much joy among negroes. The case originated in Texas. A negro brought suit aaainst the Democratic Party in that state because he had not been allowed to vo^e at the primaries. He claimed that this had deprived him of his elementary rights as a citizen. The Supreme Court has ruled against him saying that the Democratic Party, as a party, has a perfect right to restrict its membership as it pleases. Therefore, in future, as before, no colored person will be allowed to vote at the Texas primaries. Of course the joker in the affair is this;- If you can't vote in the primaries in Texas you might just as well have no vote at all. The same thing applies to most of the other southern states. Whoever wins in the Democratic primaries is practically elected cUPhj^,iL CJuKT 5 Vo ooitsido^ed -by ^ * * # # # One other Interesting' thing happened in the Supreme Court # today. Their Honors permitted the government attorneys to withdraw from, appeal £* an M ,R,A, case, 'i'his was the famous Belcher Lumber Case which originated, in Birmingham, Alabama, There the judge of the Federal district court has ruled the B.R.A. lumber code unconstitutional. Uncle Samis lawyers first took an appeal .and then, decided that it wasn't such a good idea and the Supreme Court Justices let them iwe their way. So the real test of the H.R.A, won't be made until the autumn. o'lOiviiio This weather of ours just rushes and roars from one extreme to another. Last week we faod frat hear^about the huge sections rrf—t-H w ~g BPgF devastated by dust storms,- N c w tarn, storms mem of a different kind. March showed its contempt for proverbs and went out ax like a lion in Mississippi and Texas. Tornados swept up the Texas coast wrecking parts of Houston, Richmond, Sugarland and other small towns. Niagaras of rain fell from the sky all the way from Corpus Christi eastward. The freakish tornados started in eastern Mississippi and romped up along the Texas coastline. And Uncle Sam’s weather sharks tell us-that April is going to live up to her name for showers for quite a while yet EUROPE Tremendous and dramatic things have happened since Rudyard Kipling urged his country—men to TI Be ward of Adam-Zad, the bear who walks like a man", meaning Russia, Not only much water butAblood has flvo^ed under bridges since the publication of that well phrased but highly jingoistic verse. I wonder what the poet laureate of "Tommy Atkins" thinks of the news that in the heart of Soviet Russia, a Bolshevik Commissar rose to his feet at a public banquet with words that Shrely sounded strange coming from IloiPfe'ljW'UItr A The words were: "Gentlemen, I give you His Majesty, King George!" Many things happen in the official circles of the Stalinised Soviet today. It has been freely remarked that the most sumptuous adt~ ambassadorial establishments in America are those of the A ^ Vu ^ii IT envoy'' s . But this latest episode seems to our ears the most A curious of all. Of course it happened at the banquet given in Moscow to Captain Anthony Eden, His Majestyfs Lord Privy Sealy prseswuTte John Bullr s v/andering diplomatii. It wfas Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, who offered the toast. However, the importance of this toast, so dramatically given. KURCPE - 2 is not the way it strikes us, but what effect it has had in Berlin. So nobody will be surprised to learn that it has sent uncomfortable shiv era down Kazi spines, Russia ■and England getting together present a formid­ able picture. If the coming talk-fest at Stresa results in Italy and France joining up, then indeed Germany will have reason to feel that she .has been encircled. Captain Anthony Eden left Moscow for Warsaw, And that will give the Wilhelmstrasse something else to think about. So uncomfortable is the tension in Berlin that people are even saying that Hitler was trying to bluff the world when he denounced the V ersai11es T reaty, It now becomes apparent that John Bull's Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, called the Reichsfuehrer>s bluff when he sent Captain Eden to Russia rise and showed the Nazis that if Germany did not want to play cricket John Bull could find a more amiable playmate at the Kremlin, And now before many hours have passed, the newspapers will indicate the repercussions from Captain Eden's mission to Poland FRANCK FQLLiOV. EUROPE There * s one crowd of men who have reason to look upon Hitler fcas Santa Claus and, curious to say, they are Frenchmen. Myriads of ttev jobless have been put to work again in LaBelle France, mostly in factories manufactaring munitions of war. In faefe"gin.ee Der Fuehrer threw down the gauntlet to Eurooe, unemployment has decreased spectacularly throughout the'^llic dominions. More men are in uniform drilling and training than at any time since the War. The government announced that^in March alone^ten thousand unemployed were back at work in chemical, automobile, munition and gun factories. In twelve days the stock of Schneider-Cresot, who are as big in France as Krupp in Germany, jumped twenty points a share. The stocks §fj§ ' - . ' ' t of chemical companies have risen thirteen points. Whnith I MTi^TgT. Bu% her©*s another side to the plotur© of Hitler versus Europel—’ Three of the powers ganged up together to protect^Na^is in Lithuania. This took the shape of diplomatic notes from Great Britain, France and Italy, which conveyed a strong warning to the Government at Kovno. not to abuse her e rights in Memel and was ffiade known to the world at large in a statement mhde W Foreign Secretary, Sir Jofcn Simon In the House of Commons today. Sir John told the M. P.’s that the three powers had informed the Lithuanian Government that the present » situation in Memel is all wrong, that it 4.s:« ’’Incompatible with the principle of autonomy,^ Furthermore, John Bull, France and Italy considered it the duty of Lithuania to correct this condition without delay. In other words, "Lay off trtiniiia persecution® of the Nazis." Lithuania’s position in Memel is curious* The Treat2r of Versailles pieced it under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, In 1925 Lithuania walked in and grabbed the town and the surrounding territory under a diplomatic pretext. MEMEL -2 Last year the League of Nations officially sanctioned this behavior, confirm*® Lithuania in the custody of Memel but -A added th.^ proviso that the right of minorities must be protected. injurious feature of this latest episode is that the warning sent to the Lithuanian Government comes not from the League of Nations but from three of its member countries*— POPE FOLLOW MKMEL And a significant contributicn to this world dra«ia comes today from Vatican City, the papal state. Aroused by the alarms, intrigues and threats that are menacing the world. Pope Pius, the Eleventh, solemnly and formally uttered a sharp rebuke to those who are responsible for the war menace. The occasion was the first secret consistory that has been held in eighteen months. To the twenty cardinals assembled, Kis Holiness declared: w war would be so enormous a crime, so foolish a manifestation of fury, we believe it absolutely impossible. We cannot in fact persuade ourselves that those who should have at heart the prosperity and well-being of peoples should be willing to push to suicide, to ruin and to extermination not only their own nation but a great part of humanity. w today. But" aST picturesque contribution was made at this consistory when all twenty cardinals present raised their scarlet hats to approve the canonization of two famous characters. One, Sir Thomas More, who wrote "Utopia" and also Chancellor of Such was the Vatican’s contribution to the history of England’s Bluff King Hal, Henry the Eighth, the man of many wives POPE FOLLOW MEMEL- 2 Sir Thomas was one of the few statesmen around Henry the Eighth whooppose^ his divorce from Q,ueen Katherine and his marriage to the Anne Boleyn* For that he went to the Tower and eventually lost his head. And now, he*s a saint* The other celebrity canonized by the cardinals today was Bishop John Fisher, who was Sir Thomas More's companion in the Tower and also went to the scaffold, DIAMOND Something we would all like to know is: What mysterious American, is willing to pay half a million dollars for one diamond? The d iamond in question is one of the world's most famous stones. It is called the Jonkers diamond, not after Yonkers, New York, the town so many jokes are made about, but after Mynheer Jakobus Yak©bus Jonkers, He spells it Jonkers and pronounces it Yonkers, just to make things difficult for news commentators. And thereby hangs an appealing tale. Mynheer Jonkers lived for eighteen years in the greatest poverty in the Transvaal. He owned a little farm, a plot of ground from which he eked out a meager living. He put in most of his time digging not potatoes, but diamonds, in the hope of finding the gera which would make him rich. Moralists will probably say Mynheer Jonkers would have been better off frying to grow the carrot that you spell c-a-r-r-o-t rather than the carats that you spell c-a-r-a-t. Indeed, after eighteen years* digging. Mynheer Yonkers had just about made up his mind to do just that. At the end of the eighteenth year he said to his wife, “Wilhelmina, it's no use". And, (so goes the legend) his wife replied; "Jakobus, try one day more." And so Jacobus did, and next day, sure enouah, his oick struck a hard object DIAMOND - £ which, vhen the dirt was cleaned off.turned out to be a diamond the size of a hen’s egg, a stone without a flaw, the largest in the world. After it had been polished, it still m weighed seven hundred and twenty-five carats. Another legend connected with this stone is that when it was shipped to England, a formidable armed escort was sent along to guard it. But it was not the real diamond that the armed guards were protecting. The actual gem was dispatched by ordinary first class mail. Today Mynheer J aka bus Jonkers is a well-to-do man. He still continues to live on the farm where he found his fortune, but he has bx spent ’thurnua.building up the place. A A However, he lives simply. He spends most of his money on his family and buying small farms for poor white people in Africa, farms to enable them to support themselves while engaged on their perpetual diamond hunt. CAT The best animal story of the week comes from a garage in Brooklyn. A gentleman had driven all the way from Miami to the City of Churches in two days and took his car in to be overhauled. As the mechanic raised the hood, out jumped a yowling, spitting, furried bundle of "the harmless, necessary cat." But that_ garage mechanic thought this one was neither harmless nor necessary. It developed that the animal was- the mascot of a garage in Miami. No job was considered complete until Sloosh, as pussy was called, had okayed it. Sloosh went to sleep one night, resting comfortably alongside the spark plugs. Somebody, not seeing him, slammed down the hood. So Sloosh made that trip all the way from Miami to Brooklyn under the hood of that car, and the heat must have been terrific because the journey was made in two days. When Sloosh came out, his .whiskers were-<lingied, his eyes immt red and he was covered from,head to tail with oil. It must <9 a _ la ) have been mercury-made - because I understand that Sloosh sprouted a new set of whiskers. That makes^isaas^ a lucxy cat, and indignation. It was a specimen of what A ft Shakespeare called. SO LONG UNTIL TOMORROW.