L.I. - aoNOCQ. THnaaDAit. 51, I9afi. GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: All over the land they* re ringout out the old and ringing in the new, and they're doing it largely with the clinking of coin. Once more the holiday story is told most graphically in terms of money and booming business, Phil­ adelphia chimes In with an estimate of seven million dollars, that much to be spent In celebrating the New Yearl Chicage is looking forward to a four million dollar night, ushering In Nineteen Thirty-Seven, In New York the crowds right now are swelling along Broadway and Times Square. Six hundred policemen are on special duty to keep the jubilation within the bounds of public order. At some of the Broadway hot spots the revellers are being soaked a twenty dollar cover charge - just revel in that1. It takes us right back to the hectic days of Nineteen Twenty-Eight when there seemed no limit to the sucker's ability to take it - or rather give it. One sumptuous party for Nev, Year is being staged at LEAD - 2 Lexington, Kentucky There a thousand ceiebrants will '&$■ commemorate not only^ew Year but a Birthday Party - a doggy affair, a horsey affair, * thoroughbred. They.re toasting the birthday of the oldest living thoroughbred in the world, the famous old race horse - "Ballot". How old is the oldest thoroughbred? On the birthday-cake, thirty-three lighted candles will gleam, and thirty-three is a lot of candles for a horse. navies The stroke of midnight, the biowing of whistles, the shouts and ail the noise-making that usher in Nineteen Thirty- naval race. With the passing of Nineteen Thirty-Six, there also those celebrated Treaties according to which the sea powers of the earth restricted their arrays of warships and the bristling of big guns. Now, they*11 all start building. Germany and Italy are in the naval race with all the ambition their finances will allow. France is laying down four battle- -< \ ships and a flock of destroyers. Our own program calls for / two sea giants and many ottaiwae smaller craft. Great Britain. And here, singularly enough, we find another reminiscence of the royal romance. Everything in England Seven, will also be a signal for a clanging of steel - the The most active contender in the naval race is seems to have a way of evoking that renowned constitutional crisis. What have of the King and the woman of great calibre to do with the drama HAVIES - £ he loved? It's this way. Among the hundred odd warships that England will start building with the crack of Nineteen Thirty- Seven, are two super-giants. They've been planned for some time now, right down to th© last blueprint* Even their names were selected # some time ago, when it was decided to call the two great battleships - «King George 0 and the °Prince of Wales .0 I donft know if the lords of the admiralty have decided txxx on any change, but the Prince of Wales, will have a moody sound - recalling that Prince Charming who became a romantic king and now is a duke in exile* It's a common thing for ttm. European to be veiled in doubt and uncertainty. Tonight the doubt is rather more uneasy, the uncertainty rather more perplexing - than ever. During the last couple of days we have been hearing insistent reports that Hussollni was drawing out of the Spanish tangle and lining up with Paris and London for non-intervention. Tonight we have reports ek & m ? to the contrary — stories of Italian troops being sent to Spain. In one case the name of a the steamer is mentioned andy^harbor from which it sailed, and a^so the number of troops it carried — thirty-five hundred. The rumor states that the pretense was made that the ship and soldiers were bound for hast Africa — Ethiopia — but they were really on their way to join up with General Franco. They say there have been * other sailings on the q.t., secret sending of soldiers from obscure Italian ports. In Rome all of this was denied today - and called nevil propaganda0. On the German side, the doubt and uncertainty T+- -fq not known what the German takes the form of no news. It i reign Secretary said to the ambassadors of Prance and Great itain, but it is strongly intimated that Hitler « has not CHINA It's an o!d and worn out observation that the Chinese do ever thing backwards. The men wear robes and the women wear trousers. They start dinner with the desert and end with the soup. They wear white for mourning, and rejoice at funerals. It's equally trite and done to death to quote Bret Hart's line: "For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinese is peculiar." But nevertheless, all those chestnuts are made exceedtogly' apfefeSeff&Pfr to the point today, At Nanking they played the last act of the weird drama of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the rebellious Marshal Chang. The Marshal was put on trial and sentenced today. The Military Affairs Commission of the Central Chinese government returned a verdict of - guiltyGuilty of eight charges a5t£erned with Marshal Chang's exploit of seizing the head c|f A the government and holding him a prisoner in an attempt to force 1 I 1 : 8 K r m If: III m a war with Japan. "Sentenced to be shot at sunrise", might seem •(r i IjPy to be a moderate penalty for such outrageous conduct. ^The I t m CHINA - £ 5 " 2 - sentence, however, is ten years in prison, and V ibst even that^^S^be called off, A ' A go scot free, One point held in his favor is that he not only turned the Generalissimo im* loose, but himself returned voluntarily to Nanking to take his punishment. Another thing for which he can be thankful is the attitude ol^is victim - Chiang Kai-shek^»to recommends - mercy^|- You'd think the head of the government would be good and*sore^ after being suddenly captured by a rebel general and held a prisoner while all China had a spasm of astonishment and indignation. But Chiang Kai-shek takes another view of it - the Chinese view, another illustration of doing things backwards. ^He declares j that he himself was in part to blame for the Marshal's amazing misdeed* He was at fault, he explains, because he failed in imposing disciplineupon his subordinate officer. So he has twice made the offer to resign his offices and dignities, in expiation - punishing himself for Marshal Ohs offense j CHINA , 3 It reminds me of an episode I read about once in a Chinese history. There was an emperor who was going to the do®3* carousing all the time with wine and slave girls. He filled his palace with beauties and neglected affairs of state. What did his wife do, his empress? She considered her husband's : c misdemeanors, took of all the slave girls and palace beauties - and fWI condemned herself to jail, herself to a A. /\ dungeon. She said it was all her own fault - because she had failed to make herself charming enough to keep her husband away from the slavegirls and palace beauties. ¥es, a 4 . Chinese puzsle, and Chinese wife. A Today, we find something the same in the conclusion of that fantastic affair of Chiang Kai-shek and Marshal Chang - the head of the government accusing himself of having failed to keep his subordinate in proper discipline. ’^Anyway, the word is that Chiang Kai-shek is likely to commute the prison sentence, call off the punishment, and grant Marshal a full pardon, a+Jl 0 \\ < 3 . opiun The news tells of another amazing Chinese way of doing things in roundabout fashion. The stroke of the Uew Year tonight has been announced as a signal for another kind oi stroke the splicing swish of the exeouti onerTs sword, iiocording to what we've been hearing, there will be many a beheading in China, either that —~ or a wholesale refoiro, the reform of all the dope fiends in t he celestial land. The hundreds of thousands of Chinese who hit the pipe, have been warned to give up the delights of opium — or they will be executed. They've been given until the first of the year, tonight at midnight to mend their narcotic ways — if not, off goes your head. The Nanking government not only announces this again, with emphasis, but illustrates the warning with a grim ana threatening display - a display of ooffins. Hundreds of ooffina have "been put on public view in the Chinese oities, as a warning to the addicts drugged dreams• That seems a mighty drastic way of curing the opium habit, by Hilling everybody who has it. Killing the trade by OPIUH - 2 killing the customers. here's the twister. There's no threat tonight of decapitating the merchants who sell the forbidden drug__al­ though they violate a stringent law. now come? The Chinese autnoiities spea^c up with that familiar word — yapan. xhey claim that the drug merchants are mostly Koreans, and Koreans are Japan­ ese subjects; protected by Tokyo. They can't do anything to the Japanese protected sellers of the drug -- the only thing that remains is to put pressure on the Chinese buyers. Chinese pressure — the sharp edge of a sword. However, I don't imagine the event will be as bloodthirsty as the announcement, i suppose that the ferocious promise of executions and the gloomy spectacle of the coffins, is intended to frighten the smokers of the pipe — and persuade them to reform. In it all there seems to be less of grim reality than of the bar Eastern fantastic• At Home and the Vatican — a happy New Year. That is — much happier than had been expected* After all the grawe reports about the condition of Pope Pius the Eleventhj the news now turns favourable. Last k± night the aged Pontiff enjoyed a peac^'ul sleep -» the best for ten days. The agonizing pains in his legs have eased — and there’s a returning hope for his recovery. I'VjjAv) Y{gszQ ^ Su^T' yw CT'V a TV KIDNAPPING Irt the Tacoma kidnapping — nothing tangible to report* There are rumors ±& h that the kx twenty-eieht thousand v. t n /7 ( / — it dollar ransom has been paid — although We are told one exceedingly intangible thing — that the parents of little Charlie Matson seem yoremafctoCT^^. today. And from that the guess is made — that they have reason to expect the boy will be returned fcosttaEa-boon. Otherwise, there is merely a blank nothing to report in this vicious <jzt- raystery of kidnapping, this anxious drama^y^waiting. names I attei----oaptisrr; of a hotel. And how do hotels get their names. In this case It I wondered — was Nlhe Bryant n. ir^jfant n. ,,^s ^ as^ed "because of devotion to the poet ••illiam Cullen Bryant and his stately verse"? "No," Manager Vilsack told ye. No inspiration from Thanatopsis. "We got the name from the telephone book", said he. They just went down the list of telephone centrals and picked Bryant. I talked to Emerson Owen, Editor of t*he Hotel Bed Book. We reminisced about odd hotel names across the country. ?he Tallcom Hotel at Marshalltown, Iowa, the Lamp Post at "Most hotels", said he, "are named after the owner, the man that j * 4 *. Y\A/ putw uo the money — like the Dillard,^The Waldorf-^Astoria^ asdr There is the Grim Altoona, Pennsylva it 4s the Bliss. «ew —---- I- seems that bank nights are okay — at least the He* York State Court of Appeals has pronounced them legal. Chere^j** A been a fight to stop those prize-drawing events in motion picture theatres - legal proceedings against ttL Neighborhood Theatre A in Rochester. The prosecutor used these words: “The most pernicious and far-reaching of all forms of gambling** But the £ judges thought oterwise and said the movie soiree of chance does A not violate the New York State Anti-Lottery ■* law* -t- T&ibte* <9e fhat*s news $0 motion picture* all over the country* A A Four thousand out of fifteen thousand movie houses in the United States pack-fem-in on bank nights. The idea started four years ago in Colorado^ where theatre managers began placing large books in their lobbies. The cus­ tomers could enter their names opposite numbers in the book. Then on bank night there was a drawing, ■‘•lie lucicy number wme selected and the lucky winn*er paid off .ith the prize money. The question of legality hinges around the fact that the customer doesn't buy any ticket in the game. He merely a hands in his v. Q ticket to the show. And today money at the box office for a ^ ^ was okay* the New York State Court of Appeals s football Tills is the night of the flovilng howl. „hVle tomorrow ^11 be a day of various other bowls - the hose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, Orange, sun, Cotton and Baoardi Bowl. 1'he Rose Bowl is at Pasadena — PittsBurgH tossing rose petals at Washington. The Sugar Bowl is at new Orleans, where Santa Clara and Louisian v/ill attract the sugar at the gate. The Orange Bowl at Miami where Buquesne v/ill try to squeeze the ^uioe out of Hississippi. The Sun Bowl is at El Paso, Texas, where Hardin-Simmona and Texas Mines will fight for an exceedingly small place in the sun. ihe cotton Bowl is at uallas, Texas, with Texas Christian refusing to ootton to Harquette and vice versa. Yes, there’s even a Baoardi Bowl, .and you can guess where it is — Havana. There iuhurn and villa Hove will stagger through four quarters. At San rranoioso it’s not the case of a howl — Just an ordinary football game, the All-East and All-west stars Plus Larry Helley. as Damon Runyan says if they'll Just give Kelley one other man to help him, he’ll win the gam of the great minds of college At the recent meeting vuOTRAijJi ~ ^ athle cios there was a £jood deal of oritioism of these bov/1 games -- statements that they were Just steaming up the old football demon - !Tover-emphasis,T. Complaints that they were stimulating that other football inoubus — professionalism. Tomorrow’s schedule shows the bov/1 games to be a regular epidemic — Just bowling along. ending <• And now if that New Xork Central train doesn’t bowl off and leave me I’ll be bowling on my way to the Adirondack^ for some Winter Sports in this summery New Year weather - and to crown Soglow King of the Winter Carnival. Well, Happy New Year, and SO LONG UNTif~L MONDAY.