WEND EL L« T. - SUKQCQ - FRIDAY. APRIL 24. 1936 It looks sts if we're going to have an increasing 8"iear of revelations and accusations, as the Brooklyn author­ ities go plunging ahead with the Wend el case, A new dragging out of the ugly tangle of politics and political machination that went with the doom of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Today's development points sharply « that way — the indictment of Ellis Parker, Junior -- son of that Hew Jersey detective, Ellis Parker, who undertook to prove the innocence of Hauptmann, Parker Junior is one of six men indicted today by a Brooklyn (Jrand Jury, The six are accused of having tortured £bc and forced that confession from the disbarred lawyer Wendel -- the confession that he had kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby, District Attorney Geoghan claims that the son of the Hew Jersey detective played an active hand in the affair. He's accused of having posed as a detective when they took Wendel to a Brooklyn house and held him a prisoner there. And now the Grand Jury has indicted him houdim Word comes from the Pacific Coast, that a woman will wait on &. mountain—top, wait for a message from the beyond — a mountain-top seance. From whom is the spiritualistic message to come? Why - from Harry Houdini, master magician, who in his life was a tireless enemy and exposer of super-natural phenonena. a compact with two other men - Charles Carter and the wizard Howard Thurston. They agreed that after all three had died, they would make a supreme attempt to communicate with Mrs. Houdini Qnd convey to her a pr^-arranged message. Recently, Howard now Mrs. Houdini is ready for the attempt. She will go to the silence and solitude of the mountain-top, and there await the death, Houdini made Thurslfe# died, and he was the last survivor of the three. So message. WRESTLING f I Here's news - wrestling is on the level. Bouts between § the grunt and groan behemoths are never fixed. What a disappointment" that will be to wrestling fans, who fondly believe that their fa\orite sport is utterly and completely crooked* But Jack Curley says wrestling is straight, and swears it in court under oath. Jack Curley, who was born Herman Shoul, brawny and portly. stately and suave - known far and wide as the king of catch-as- catch can, the czar of hparti notr.q an(j toe holds. Wrestling is the most singular of all sports - the customers in general have no faith whatsoever in its honesty. The fans believe the bouts are fixed. They pay their money to witness what they are convinced are fakes. And they love it. They holler themselves into exhaustion, cheering or booing, as the mighty mammoths hammer and twist each other. They grow wild and excited, although they think it's all staged. Just so much hokum. They gloat in the hokum. They grow rapturous over the artistic^similitude of the fraud. They delight to be taken for a sleigh ride. They're sucMt^ and love it Tonight's wrestling revelations come from Columbus, I 1 : 1 P $ WRESTLING - 2 Ohio, where a lawsuit is being tried amid a tempest of charges and countercharges. The law trouble is tangled around a contract tells a surprising story about the loudly ballyhooed match in which he won his championship. Wrestling fans will remember the bone-busting, muscle-twisting event, Danno O’Mahoney ofAi«w« versus Dick Shikat of Germany. Shikat claims that he was ordered to lose by the wrestling trust. Hp says the sport is controlled by a group which manipulate- every leg-bending, every bellow of anguish emitted by th mastodons, fisct He adds that the to fake his bout with O’Mahoney, lay down and let the Irishman win. And he had to put up eighteen thousand dollars to guarantee that he’d do it. But Shikat double-crossed. He cooly admits that on the witness-stand. There was a championship at stake, so never mind his guarantee to fake mind the made by Dick Shikat, the wrestling -champjtea. wresting trust is run by Jack Curley. So Shikat goes on to say that the trust ordered him eighteen thousand dollars. He went in to win^ And 'the turned into the real thing - to the astonishfflent of the trust WRESTLING - Z I !1 ill 'll He pinned 0-Mahoney’s shoulders to the mat in jig time. He adds further that he was offered his eighteen thousand dollars back 'A 111 and twenty-five thousand dollars extra, if he*d wrestle a return bout with 0TMahoney and A That's the story Jack Curley, the wrestling czar, took the stand to deny. He swears there is no trust, merely a group of six promoters who are banded together for the greater glory I and the greater profit of the spiort. And he testified that wrestling was honest, no crooked OTftxkiEgy matches, no faking or framing. He said he had never heard of a fixed bout. And that 7^? i k-TTV * leaves the fans gasping and groggy, like one of their idols I'd like to give you some more information on this surprising theme — the honesty of wrestling. But the court proceedings were postponed today. The judge called off the trial until tomorrow - to give Shikat a chance to defend his title, time to go from Columbus, to Detroit, to wrestle In a championship bout tonight. In court they must have looked at each other in a peculiar way, wondering whether 3.ch other in a PUERTO RICO Comment in Washington is rather bewilde^ today oyer A* the Tidings Bill to give Puerto Rico its independence. One thing positive is Senator Tidings* insistence that the administration is strongly behind the measure that he has introduced in the Senate — to give the big Carribbean island a chance to cut loose from the United States if it wants to. Will it want to? That’s what the wiseacres have trouble in prognosticating. The Tidings bill proposes to hold an election in Puerto Rico and give the people a chance to vote Yes or No- — independence or notl They’ll be offered a plan to stay under the control of the United States four years more, and then — complete independence. The scheme is modelled on the Phillippine Independence Bill. This would put it squarely up to the agitators who have been conducting an ugly campaign of violence and even terrorism against the Oiil.fei3di»ioLt~a-tg^ — the campaign which led to the murder of the American Chief of Police Colonel Riggs, some weeks ago. Offhand, you v/ould say — that with uch a howl for independence the island would vote for it. B ug freedom might easily mean ruin for Puerto Rico. The island depends on the United States for its trade, Independence would mean tariff barriers against xxxautxxxx Port, but Poor would be a better word to express the economic PDERTQ HICQ -2- Ihe island is right now in a bad way. Puerto Rico means Rich them. Where then would they sell their products? Their sugar? condition. It’s a sugar island and if freedom came and put a crimp in the sugar trade of the United States — it might be a catastrophe. And then Uncle Sam has- been sending a lot of relief money down that Carribbean way, one quarter of a million hurrican relief, big-hearted’Uncle Sam chipping in with millions when the big wind blows. These relief angles will make freedom all the more expensive. So, in a referendum — how would the island vote? That*s what Washington is wondering about tonigb One thing was made clear today - particularly care if Puerto Rico did vote of that expensive Carribbean possession w makes trouble for the giver — biting the a month to help the jobless and the destitute. And Sam is a patient, long-suffering old fell if an island can bit a hand HON DU RAIL The news today provided me personally with a flash of coincidence. One dispatch hit right in the middle of £ job I»ve been doing. I’ve been working on a book about Tex O’Reilly, the soldier of for time who for thirty years has fought in xx* wars and revolutions all over the world. Ar*d today I was putting together a paragraph or two for the close, the wind-up, the last page. Just to show the way coincidence can pop you right between the eyes. the end of that last pagei “A day or so ago I was talking to Tex O'Reilly and he told me he had had an offer to join with a revolution in Honduras. 'Are you going’ I asked. ’No,' Tex replied a little wistful. ’Why not?’ ’X’ve got to have a cause to fight for,* he responded with modest virtue. ’But you've fought in a lot of wars and insurrections,1 I objected, a trifle surprised. ’Yes I have.' he admitted. ’But I could always make HONDURAS -2 myself believe I was fighting for a cause. Now this is different. Maybe I'm not so young as I used to be, maybe it's because I've been to Honduras. I»ve fought £n=3i®Hr«& any cause down there for me to fight for And I can,t figure out After that - le^s see what’s in the newsThe headlines ews-« T] -tie flashedthat^revolution in Honduras had broken out. A fierce battle reported, a rebel victory. The insurgents said to have beaten the government troops on a battlefield thirty-five miles southeast of Tegucigalpa, the capital. The capitart city 9 * T-ogucigalpa surrounded on three sides, with the insurgent army driving hard in savage hand-to-hand fighting. That word came from Mexico City, ttf^ere there’s a large colony of Honduran exiles - though not so large as it was. For several weeks prominent figures among the refugees have been missing from their usual haunts in the Mexican capital. That was a pretty good sign that something was about to break in Honduras. Exiled generals and politicians have been slipping away to the south to join the uprising against the goverhinent of President Carias. From other sources the rebel success is not verified. The Honduran government denies ^rW^il^viotory, and describes HQMD0R4S. -3- the revolution as a few rebel raids. Anyway, there*s trouble in the banana republic. Honduras is another one of those one-crop countries; sugar in Cuba, coffee in Brazil — bananas in Honduras. The rebels would like to fix it for the government of President Carias to slip on a banana peel. As for the rights and wrongs of the quarrel, not much explanation is given. I only know that the present revolution didn*t appeal to Tex 0,fteilly. as a cause to fight for. A GERMAM It isn't clear how much that amnesty in Germany means. It depends a good deal lapon how many political prisoners there are v/iith sentences of six months or less. There may be thousands or mere hundreds. Anyway, they're going to be set free - those minor offenders, who talked anti-Nazi, made remarks against the Hitler government. "Babblers, defamers" - the decree calls them. They'll be turned loose on probation, for three years, to make sure they don't talk out of turn again. Of course the qualification of six months, short-termj^, means only minor political offenders. The more important opponents of the Nazis are serving longer sentences. They'll stay in their prisons and concentration camps, is . Me only the smaller fry of Hitler's critics^ go free. Similiarly - it isn't clear how many Nazis are in German jails for crimes committed, out of excessive zeal for the party. They were too Nazi, so they were locked up. All of these are being turned loose - except^fehose-t-ha:l are beiicvcd to hav®. bgOLt- jus . friva rgrarcTTgl Moreover, more ordinary culprits atox who are serving less than a month in jail, will get out. 1 !i 1 ii GERMANY - 2 It was a surprise move today - a Hitler^ birthday gift. It comes a bit late because the birthday occurred <fV ago. Better late than never, I suppose, and a there’s rejoicing in German jails tonight MQUMT EVEREST Right now four of the hardiest souls on this planet are starting out on their day*3 trudging journey. Itrs not a night journey, because when it*s evening here it's morning in Tibet. The word from London has been that .the party of adventurers in iv-rvv&P the latest Mount Everest climb v&ZX begin their final dash for the A summit on the twenty-fourth, today. This yearfs climb has been luckier than most attempts in the past - lucky weather^ They have established their base camp high on the steep slopes of Everest, at twenty thousand feet - nine thousand more to go. There were no storms to impede them, and they arrived at their camping site a week earlier than -the climbers did in the Nineteen Thirty-Three attempt. The news says they are in excellent condition, in tip-top shape for the dash to the summit — which began today, It»s a four-man party. * The leader is Hugh Ruttledge, 7 /ho commanded the Nineteen Thirty-!hree attempt. He is a retired British magistrate, fifty-one years old. For twenty-four years he worked at his duties on the humid plains of India. One of his companions is Smythe, who was with him in the MOUMT EVEREST - 2 Nineteen Thirty-Three climb up the world.1 s highest mountain. At that time Smythe got within a thousand feet of the top, but was driven back by a blinding tempest of snow. The third man is Eric Shipton, who was with the Nineteen Twenty-Four expedition led by General Bruce. Shipton is a veteran mountaineer of the Himalayas. He has climbed more peaks above twenty thousand feet than any other man in history. He and Smythe were the first to reach the summit of Mount Kamet, twenty thousand feet high. The youngest member of the present- party is Peter Roderick Oliver, a lieutenant in the British Frontier Rifles. He was born in the shadow of the Himalayas, and the lure of the mountains is in his blood. Alien he left for the present trip, his mother told the newspaper mem ^Whenever my boy sees a mountain, he is never happy until he has scaled it." It remains to be seen whether Mount Everest at last Will surrender to the climbing feet of man Jit's hard to breath up there on the panting exertion all mountaineers dread, loss of muscular povei. topmost steeple of the world. Every step is a which the ice and the MOUNT EVEREST - 3 glaring sun, bring a faintness and. sleepiness to the climber. Well, good luck to them, in their hardy attempt to conquer one of the last defiant fortresses of Nature- They toil afoot, yet how easily the planes did it in the Mount Everest flight took place, that former party commanded by Hugh Ruttledge, was struggling up the slope, vainly rying to reach the top. While working on the motion picture - T,Wings Over Everest”, I couldn*t help thinking of the men toiling afoot, somewhere amid# the glaciers, while the planes were skimming like birds above the uppermost peak MPING Things go in cycles, and so do bicycles. The pedalling ride on two rolling wheel^Ls coming back* If there*s -any doubt of that, look at the cycle train the New Haven is putting on, - next Sunday - and then a series of weekly specials for riders on wheels* The winter ski trains were a whale of a success, and now it*s summer cycle trains* The first run is to Connecticut, where a whole series of roads are to be given over to the pedal pushers* All automobiles to creep along* The roads to be patrolled by police and farmers. Whai the gals and boys from the city leave the train they*ll pedal from Cannan, to Sodom, to Gomorrah. So it*s pedal, pedal* And for me it»s soft-pedal, and — SO LONG UN^IL MONDAY,