Lov/ell -Thomas Broadcast for Biterary Digest
Monday, October 27, 1950.
Navy Day
v. her ever there is an American warship
today — whether she be riding at anchor or
riding the seas — the officers and gobs are
celebrating. This is navy day, and by the way,
navy day means Theodore hooseveltts birthday.
Our fighting ships observe this date every
year in honor of Roosevelt and in commemoration
of the part he played in building up our navy -
first when he was Assistant secretary of the
Navy, and later as President. The New York
Evening Post tells us they held open house at
the Brooklyn Navy Yar -, and thousands of
visitors were shown over the mighty dreadnaught,
the Colorado and other fighting ships. The
same thing was happening at Naval yards all
over the country at Hampton Hoads, out at
Liego, at ^are Island and wherevar
Uncle Sain has a ship.
It is also interesting to note
that yesterday, on the other side of the
globe, the Japanese were holding the greatest
naval maneuvers they have had for over
twenty years. 165 warships, destroyers, and
submarines, and 72 airplanes and dirigibles
took part in the grand review before the
hmperor of Japan at ^obe, according to a special
dispatch to the New York sun.
hell, no matter what they are doing
out in Japan our ov.n Navy Day reminds us that
our Navy is in very much of a transitional
stage. It Is being shaped and transformed to
fit the terms of the London Naval Treaty, and
of course there is a lot of controversy and
argument over the subject. It is one of the
vital topics of the hour, and as usual the
current Literary Digest sums up what both sides
have to say. There is a startling conflict of
ideas too. If you want to see what amazingly
different opinions people can have on the
same subject, just get the Literary Digest
and look for an article entitled ’’SLASHING
OUR NAVY" .
Fashion
There’s a bustle tonight on Fifth
Avenue and Michigan Boulevard. And I don’t
mean one of those old fashioned bustles
either. I mean a bustle before a big event.
The Metropolitan Gpei>a season is opening in
New York and the Civic Opera in Chicago. And
all the music lovers vho never miss an opening
night are grooming themselves for the social
spotlight. It is rumored that dresses are
to be more deco]lete than ever, and the lines
of m’lady’s opera gown will be of the slinky-
type, unbroken from neckline to hem. That Is,
they’ll be unbroken except by the undulations of
the figure. The fabrics, the fashion page
editors say, will cons5.st mostly of metal cloths,
heavy satin, transparent velvet and flat crepes,
whatever the?/ are. As i or color, 13, the
rumor is that the opening night at the
opera Till he a V.'hite Wight. Gowns will
nearly ell he white.
From Paris comes a story that
purple is to be th fashionable color
this season - royal purple. Well, so far
as I am concerned every woman is a queen
whether she wears the purple of royalty or
not.
Heref s anoth r operatic high note:
Texas
^ene Howe, a newspaper editor, of
Amarillo, Texas, is going to give a tea for
Mary Garden. That famous prima donna is
going to sing at a concert down there in the
Texas Panhandle. And Gene let it be knovn
that his men guests would be expected to wear
frock coats. But in that part of Texas,
sombreros and chaps are more common in
masculine wardrobes than top-hats and morning
coats. Still, all the leading citizens
of Amarillo want to meet Mary Garden,
fhey stormed the clothing stores, says the
Associated Press, but there wasn't a
gol-ch rned frock coat in the whole Panhandle.
The leading clothing store of Amarillo sent
a rush wire to Chicago, ordering 42 frock
coats, assorted sizes. Amarillo is certainly
going to do right by Mary, by gum.
Brazil
Fireworks are still going olf down in
Brazil, according to the International News
Service several people were killed and many
injured in street fighting in Rio. An
unsuccessful attempt was made to start a counter
revolution against the new military junta.
Dame
Rumor has it that Prestes, the man who
was to have been inaugurated presioent on
Novemb r 15th, is now planning a counter
revolution, with strong support from the State
of Gao Paulo.
If there’s trouble in the tropics,
there's a large hint of the same in the sub-
arctic.
Finland
Maybe there will be a finish fight
in Finland. Anyway, a special cable to the
Nev.r 1'erk Times says that secret mobilization
has been start d in the Skyddskaaren. In
case you don’t speak Finnish, that means the
voluntary militia. And that voluntary
militia has more members and just as good
equipment as the regular Finnish army. The
mobilization was ordered by the government,
but nobody else knows why. It probably has
something to do with a Finnish general who
Is in nrison. b-e’s there because he’s been
plotting to establish a military dictatorship
in those little republics on the Baltic dea.
His idea was to line them up for a war against
Russia, •“•ny ay, everybody in Finland is
wondering what the mobilization means.
Venezilos
t.itx. the troubles and disturbances
in various parts of the globe, it»s good to
come across peaceable and friendly news from
the piace where itfs least expected--the
Balkans. An article in the current issue of
the -literary Digest tells of a conference at
Athens of the representatives of six Balkan
states. Their idea in meeting was to find
causes that might lead to trouble and then
remove them. Also, the old, old plan of a
Balkan union came up. The Digest quotes an
article from a Paris paper in which the
presiding officer utter d these striking words:
’’If we could make vocal the souls of all
those who have suffered and died in the long
struggles for the national idea of their
fatherland, they would say to us:
Unite as
one.11
That Digest article strikes a pleasing
note about a region long known as the Vinches
Cauldron where trouble is brewed. Today an
Associated Press dispatch brings us still
more good nev.'s from the same place. The
Greeks and Turks are old enemies, and
Premier Venezilos of ureece has long been
a particularly bitter antagonist of the
Turks. But today in Constantinople,
Venezilos was received with an ovation of
cheering and the boom of salute guns.
Venezilos is on his way to Angora to sign
a Turko-Crecinn treaty of commerce and
amity.
But all is not amity and peaceful
good fellowship in the world of football.
Booth
The sporting pages today are
talking about what that Army football team
did to Albie -booth, the Yale star. You will
recall that in the Yale-Army game on
Saturday, Booth had scarcely been shot into
the game, when three army tacklers hit him
so hard that he was carried off the field.
The New York Evening World prints the
ijc.. tion that the young star has no more
than a wrenched knee, and that he will
probably play against Dartmouth next Saturday.
In the Evening Telegram, Charles
E. Parker tells us what both the Army and
the Yale men are saying.
The Army admits that Booth v/as
tackled hard, but says it was merely an
ordinary rough play, and not dirty football.
The hubbub is all because Albie is a little
fellow. If he had been a big husky, nobody
would have said anything about those three Army
giants diving at him. Yale opinion is different.
The theory is that Albie was deliberately put on
the snot, and that the Army threw a forward pass
directly at him, just so three tacklers assigned
to the job would have an excuse to drop him
hard. The Yale bulldog is growling angrily,
saying that one giant tackier downed Albie.
Then, as the little fellow v/as getting up,
another hit him. Then a third piled on.
'■^ad Jones, former Yale coach,
writes in a syndicated article that in every
game fh„s season, Yale opponents have been
laying for Booth.
V«ell, I saw Albie Booth give Army
just about the neatest trimming that any
pov/erful team ever took at the hands of one
man. That was last year, when I was there
rooting for my friend Biff Jones and his
V.estpoint outfit. And after what Booth did that
day, !Tm not surprised that three men tackled
him Saturday. I'm surprised that the whole
Army team didn't do it.
V»estbrook Pegler, writing in the New
York Evening Post, says it looked to him as if
the whole West Point Cadet Corps tackled Booth
at once. Pegler goes on to say:
MI thought
I even saw Major General. illiam B. Smith, the
Superintendent of V.est Point, somewhere in the
pile yanking Albie by the leg, but that was an
optical illusion."
They ought to get a few of those army
tackiers to look into the case of Frank DeAngelis.
He loves to sleep.
Laziness
According to the N. Y. Daily News,
DeAngelis tell asleep vfhile smoking, and
soon thereafter the mattress started to burn.
DeAngelis’ wife came to the rescue and dragged
him to safety, but he was so mad at being
awakened that he jumped up and hit her. That
was her reward.
Sug- r Bowl
All a would-be robber got out of a
restaurant hold-up in the Lr0nx, says the New
York Times, was a crack on the head from an
earthenware sugar-bowl. The robber, whose name
was Tony Gruliano, told the proprietor and
three customers in the restaurant to "stick 'em
Up,n And they did in a hurry. But when Gruliano
advanced to the cash register — pistol in hand —
the proprietor caught him of^ guard a moment and
let fly with the sugar bowl. And you know
the kind of sugar bowls they have in some
restaurants. Well, Tony Gruliano went
dorm. Then the customers joined the
battle. They laid down a barrage
of
mustard jars and catsup bottles. And
before the police could take Tony Gruliano
to jail they had to take him to a hospital
and sew him up quite a bit.
Hissing Banker
A strange disappearance is causing
excitement out in the town of Galva,
Illinois. Earl Yokum is Galva1 s richest
citizen. And on Saturday night he v/as
standing in his front yard after taking his
two children to a movie. His wife saw two
strange men approach him. They asked something,
v/hich Mr . Yokum didn't hear. Her husband
replied:
"Right over there." Then they
asked him if he would show them the way, and
he replied, "sure", according to the United
Press, Yokum went with the strangers—and then
did not return.
Mrs. Yokum became nervous, and. tried
to telephone to friends. Then it was
discovered that the telephone wires of the
house had been cut. Yesterday afternoon
a special delivery letter came for Mrs, Yokum
but she refused to tell what was in it.
Today the authorities questioned Mrs. Yokum
again, but she still refuses to talk. It is
believed that th banker was kidnapped and
is being held for ransom, and that his wife
has received the threat that he will be
killed if she gives any information to the
authorities.
Whitrey
Newspapers from coast to coast are
giving columns this afternoon to the unique
career of Harry Payne Vvhi tney, ‘•ho j.ed
yesterday. He was a power in finance, with
enormous interests in real estate, banks, and
mining. His father, says the New York Evening
World, left him twenty-four million. His
brother, who died in 1927, left an estate of
i?191
j
OOO
j
OOO, the largest estate on
record. His marriage to Gertrude Vanderbilt
united tv.fo of America’s largest fortunes.
But when v/e think of Harry Payne
Whitney, two pictures come to mind: the
race track and the polo field. All his
life he was a racing enthusiast, and he
owned one of the greatest stables in the
history of the turf.
In polo he gained wide fame by
organizing the team that first took the polo
championship from England. He himself was
one of the greatest players of his time.
freight Cars
The financial page of the New York
Herald Tribune had a bullish look today. It
tells how buyers are crowding the stores of
the large Western cities. A Wisconsin city
started a "buy now" movement, that is
spreading like wildfire. Stores are taking
on additional help in large numbers.
New
Ox Xeans reports a gain in the demand for
cotton, and there's a bumper apple crop in
the State of Washington. I've got a bumper
apple crop up at my farm in Dutchess County
too--only I don't know where to sell 'em.
A commercial note from the
Lav/ndale district in Chicago tells that the
boys in that neighborhood, to the number of
one thousand, have agreed not to play Hallowe'en
pranks this year. They were persuaded to take
this good resolve by the local merchants, who
in former years have suffered from the
Hallowe'en preinks. The inducement? Oh, yes,
The merchants have agreed to "urnish enough
weiners, hamburgers, buns, and peanuts to
give the boys a feast on Hallowe'en night.
Business may be getting bullish, but
the financial reports are bearish - at least so
far as women are concerned.
Women's Incomes
The farther removed a woman is from
marriage the higher her income is likely
to he. That is, single v/omen earn most,
widows and divorcees next, and married ones
least. This information was gathered from
questionnaires submitted to the Bureau of
Business Research of the University of
Michigan.
According to the New York Evening
Vvorld the average income of women is $c2.
a week. Less than 7% of all working women earn
$50. a week.
And here* s another investigation
that pertains to married life.
Grouch
Father’s morning grouch and mother’s
bridge-tea headache are going to be studied in
a big way. The idea is to find out how they
affect the children, especially the children’s
school grades. The Associated Press tells us
that a national conference on Child Health will
get under way on November 24th. First it will
confer with the President at the White House, and
then
it will take up the subject of
growling fathers and snappy mothers,
V*ell where1 s my hat. ITm going home
right now
and tell my wife that if she* 11
swear off bridge If 11 swear off growling.
Let1 s all do that. Goodnight.