LOWELL THOMAS * SUNOCO - MQHDAY. JULY 9. 1934 GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY:* Let* 8 imagine we're away off in Asia, that vast continent of strange, swarming peoples and legendary mystery. Why the Oriental flair tonight? It’s one of those round-the- world ideas I get occasionally. There ought to be some fun in making a midsummer tour of the continents, one particular continent every few days. And so, around the world, seeing 3dui how the news is going on each continent, and. looking at the news from all over the globe from the viewpoint of Asia, then Africa, South America, and the other great land masses spread among the seven seas* I thought we'd begin with Asia, because most of my sentimental reminiscences are Asiatic. Much of my travel­ ling in years past was out there* And also — I've a special store of information on hand just now. My sister, Pherbia Thomas, is on a tour of the Orient, and she has been sending me a flock of stories, oddities and impressions lUTRO « 2 For example, she has just written me about a trip across Manohuk© to the remote oity of Tsitsihar. That‘a a place where a big battle was fought when the regiments of the Mikado drove the Chinese back beyond the Great Vail, "I left Muokden yesterday morning,a she writes, "and have been riding ever since through this vast undeveloped empire* Miles and miles of wasteland that has never been cultivated S But the Japanese railroad is one of the best I ever travelled on, anywhere, in any land. Until recently this was bandit country, and even now it's reassuring to see soldiers at every station — also, to see how the tall grass has been cut down for a wide space on each side of the track, so there'll be no cover for snipers." Well, that's one significant bit of detail — a splendid railroad, and the tall Manchurian grass cut down on either side so there'll be no lurking place for the bandits to ambush the train BUSSES The newspapers tell us dally of Japan's hugely ambitious program in Manchugo* The latest concerns the remote province of Jehol. It was conquered fifteen months ago. and ever since the Japanese have been pushing a road and railway building program all through the mountainous land. In Jehol they had never heard of such a thing as a motor bus. Today there are nine long bus lines with forty-four busses operating, and thirty two trucks. Sounds small. But so deep in Asia it's big in importance. GEJRMAMY la the most distant part of Asia observers haven't any trouble in spotting the figure that stands in the limelight in Central Europe today.j in the turbulent affaire of Germany a new figure has stepped into prominence. That radio address by Rudolf Hess, speaking for Hitler, would seem to mark a turning point of policy - it was so pointedly a gesture of friendship toward France. The appeal o f war veterans was shrewdly timed, with a great convention of French war veterans meeting in Pari e . Rudolf Hess himself a war veteran adopted a tone of comradship toward the French soldiers of the trenches *We Front fighters", he declared, "are not willing that inept diplomacy should once more blunder into a catastrophe in which the Front fighters would be the chief victims," It was a speech of moderation and conciliation stepping on the soft pedal in foreign affairs. And that changes the music after all that loud pedal Mazl diplomacy. There are rumours that Rudolf Hess might sue- GfiKiflAMY Jo ceed Von Papen as Vice-Chancellor. Thr 11yr t 1 11111*■ i >■> i > i »nir ~i rn rr that tfro■ "44H»ri Guy ii\\ i.'nulu bc l ume "V ic u'=-etp uttb ] ley» They the truculent Goerlng as second in command to Hitler*That makes it worth while to study this now figure in the limelight a little closer. Rudolf Hess was born in Egypt the son of a German mer­ chant. Educated in bwitzerland he fought side by side with Hitler in the same company during the Worjd War. Ho was v/ounded at Verduh, After the War he was side by slue with Hitler in the famous Beer Seller Putsch, which ended in a ridiculous fiasco. He went to 'Jail with Hitler, ind as Hitler rose to power Hess remained his close co-worker. The significant thin* is this: Rudolf Hess is a moderate, so much x of a moderate that a year ago he advocated sending some of the Nazi Wild-men to prison camps if they didn’t stop spreading go further and say that is challenging the power of A their campaign of lies against the Antl-Hazis. Bow the Wild-men GbhftLnM 5 have fallen. Hess has been given ‘;he finishing of fch#- cleaning up the Storm Troops, He also was m ±=to speak for Hitler In that address of friendship directed toward France. All this is another striking sign that the dvurti- Tsoirf -erg the overlords of the Storm Troops is being followed by a Nazi policy of Moderation FRAHCB That peaceful proclamation from Germany providea a large topic of cotiversation for two gentlemen who are confabulating in London. Foreign Minister Barthou of France is in the Britieh capital today for a conference with Sir John Simon, the British Foreign Secretary. The dope is that he is trying to talk Sir John into an arrangement whereby Sngland will stand aide-oy-side with France, in oaee Germany gets out of hand. The French Foreign Minister is no spring-chicken. He Is seventy-two, small, stocky, bearded. He's not the traditional type of diplomat, cool. Impassive and aloof. He*e an excitable Frenchman, waving all over the place -- yet a shrewd customer. He's one of the cleverest of talkers both with words and hands; but he is also exceedingly shy. He's painfully sensitive because he's so near-sighted. He is wulte a savant, a prolific writer of biographies and histories, end he's one of the "immortals” of the French Academy. He collects stamps, letters of famous people, and bric-a-brac. He's quite a traveller too, a travelled diplomat. For weeks he has been on a series of protracted visits to BHANGE -2 Poland, Czechoslovakia, kaooudtK Roumania, Yugo-Slavla and j^hat not. lie has had bombs tossed at him^aaii^in Austria they hung him in effigy. His travels now come to a climax in London, with an attempt to line England up with France In case of trouble with Germany ■TAPANi^E bXRIi£K Our strike troubles here in the \'i est are serious enough. but they haven’t the elaborate Ingenuity which the Oriental mind can devise. In Tokb there was a strike of employees in a motion tAA\ picture theatre. £ive of the strikers *?ot into the Isis jWlfc furled long banners telling of their grievances .and hung the ban­ ners out etf the windows. They locked the doors of the theatre, and nobody could geu They threatened that if anybody tried to force the door they would smash a projection machine worth one hundred thousand yen.And that certainly tied things up, tied them up for a whole day - until a police officer managed^,unnoticed^ to force open a window. il _1 ■ STfilKfiii Our own Pacific '©oast strike has quited dov/n a bit, but is threatening to grow even bigger,Teamsters and truck drivers are threatening to go out on Thursday in sympathy with the striking stevedores. That would cripple the delivery system of ban Fran­ cisco^ completely. Meanwhile the president* s Arbitration Board opened public hearings today and is operating under its widest powers. Under these it can summon both sides and practically force a coin­ promise. If it should succeed In doing this it will be a feather k£L in the smartntrimmed hat of the becretary of Labor. President \ A Roosevelt delegated his labor powers to Miss K mm Frances Perkins, General Johnson thought the ,iob should be left to his own MRA, but £ ^*. 1^1 er11 ffrrrny* bo the General Is going on a vacation during which he will make a series of speeches in praise of the Blue Ea=le, if you would call a series of speeches a vaca­ tion - I wouldn*t PERSIA Our Asiatic inspection shows us a cheerful state of affairs in Persia, at least so far as unemployment is concerned • no unemployment at all. The Persian minister to Paris makes the statement that there is a scarcity of labor in many parts of the ancient land of Omar Khgaam. Maybe they still hare too many Omars in Persia. The income tax is only 4 per cent. Thatvs enough to make a few million Americans want to go to Persia; but if they did, that would start unemployment oyer there and no doubt the income tax would go up. BASEBALL Among the bite of information I have from the Orient is one from the Nippon Yueen Kaiska steamship line about the baseball season in Japan. 11*8 in full swing. .Per years the sporting pages over here have told us plenty about the enthusiastic way the Japanese have gone in for baseball. But. here's a new wrinkle. One of the favorite Japanese baseball terms is Mo-my". Whenever the star hitter of the home team strikes out. the Nipponese crowds shout: Mo-ay". TLi American bleeeherites would be more inclined to howl:- "Back to Bush Leagues for him!" Whenever the star hitter of the enemy team lines out a home-run the Japanese fans yell once again: "do-my". The American version would be: "You call that bird a pitcher? Take him out!" Well, let's see what the word "do-my" means in Japanese. It's perfectly good English, or at least it used to be. It's really:- "don't mind", which the little brown base­ ball enthusiasts have simplified to the more Oriental sounding "do-my". I 'll bet those little brown baseball enthusiasts, if BASEBALL - 2 they were oyer here certainly would be pulling for that big brown baseball enthusiast, the mighty Bambino, the Babe. The Babe is supposed to be pretty much on his last legs this year. He*s celebrating his twentieth anniversity in the Big Leagues. His latest celebration was a magnificent bit of festivity, when, with the bases full, be slugged the ball into the bleachers for his six hundred and ninety-ninth home-run. Six hundred and ninety-nine four-base hits for that Babe-in-arms. And the baseball addicts all over the country are rooting their heads off for the venerable old fellow to make it seven hundred, whether it loses the game for the home team or not. He's going on forty-one now, that orphan from the Baltimore Industrial School who has become the greatest single individual hero that baseball has ever known. He has made more runs than any other man. He has made as much as eighty thousand dollars a year, salary, and that's a record. In his twenty Big League years he has made more than a million, out of baseball. And you can add to that the money he has raked in from newspaper articles which he doesn't write, radio speeches which he does speak, and testimonial advertisements BASEBALL - 3 for baseballs, bats, golf balls, shoes, shot-guns, soap and sausages. He still weighs about two hundred and thirty, has the same old excellent appetite, and the same style of beauty he always had, a pug nose, little eyes, chubby cheeks, a good- natured grin, and funny legs* His intellectual interests have changed a bit of late years -- I mean the common subject of his conversation. When the Babe starts to converse these days, he’s likely to make one favorite, constantly repeated remark:* *My pins ain’t as good as they used to be.” His legs are going back on him, slowing up. He has small feet and ankles for such a majestic bulk of muscle. And a paunch that is always threatening to become majestic too. His pins ain’t what they used to be, he says but he doesn’t hgve to do so much fast base-running when he slams the ball out of the lot. And he’ll hit that seven hundredth home- run! You can leave that to the Babe, even if he has to be brought on in a rocking-chair to do it G5T3Z3 If you xar-t to see a Toicauo iraklag-up, a fiasLisg crater cccie to life, you don’t naTe to go to any j - far off txalmx* continent or distant snore. You can find it rignt nere in cur can tread i’crtn American land. Cut on the lacific Coast nctorists are driving adles out of th*tr aay to see the roicano yaan, open its eyes, and say "Good Horning.* That is the aay a volcano does its own peculiar iind of mJce-up act. Sign in the Sierras of California, in Lassen Parle, is a fane us crater . Iti last eruption aas in 1914. Since then it has heen dersant, sound asleep. iToa, ^CiOuis cT steas are snooting nigh in the sicy fren tne Lassen crater. Sene huge jcind of volcanic geyser is spouting. Scientists helieve that the crater Is filling up aith boiling lava, anich nears that there say s-ccn be a bursting, b.azing eruption. On. tne o.ner nani, It nay be pcsslble that .aui tne 3 te-ax is .ust so nuch evaporation, fo__caing 3 tne recent drenching storm. MANUSCRIPT Our adventures with the Asiatic news take us to the discovery of an ancient manuscript. What kind of ancient manuscript would you expect-=them to discover in Japan? Certain­ ly not a venerable parchment of medieval Europe. But that * s what it is. The Japanese are proudly displaying a beautifully illialnated copy of a theological work of an Italian eooleslast/e of the twelfth century. How did it get to Nippon? That's the Interesting story. Three hundred and fifty years ago. when the Far East was still unknown land to the West, the Saperor of Japan sent a mission to Rome. And among the presents which the Pope gave to the ambassadors from Chepango that same book, which even then was already an ancient manuscript. And now. dust found SCHOOL Many of ua used to read that humourous serlss called "The Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy*11 But herefe a case of a Japanese schoolboy that's somewhat different. In Tokio an old retired army officer, am a major general went to school • to grammar school along with the boys and girls. Day after day the venerable warrior attended classes. Why? He was taking the place of his son. His boy fell ill and had to be kept out of school, so the father went to school instead. He studied faithfully and hard and each day took home what he had learned and taught it to the boy. And with that devoted coaching, the lad kept up with hie olaeeea. And this is the way the old man explains it; Says he;- "Aa I am retired from military service, it's my duty to train my son to the best of my ability for the sake of our country." And there you have the spirit of old Japan -- of modern Japan too flQ.SL. Here's some perfumed news from Arabia — frankin­ cense and myrrh. A man has taken out some insurance. What's perfumed about that? Well he had hi a nose insured. Yes, Sheik Jelal Quaraiahl has taken out a policy with a London company for two thousand pounds worth of insurance on his nose. No doubt it's one of those curbed handsome Semitic noses, though its looks are not what make it so valuable. Xt*s the smelling- est nose in the world. This Sheik Schno&zle is a collector of rare perfumes. This Jimmy Durante of the Sands travels incessantly the length and breadth of Arabia adding new rare-scented essences to his priceless collection. As the world's prime connoisseur of perfumes the exquisitely schnozzled sheik has cultivated his sense of smell to a marvelous delicacy. Just give that price- 1‘so nose of his the slightest whiff of any fragrant odor and he will analyze it for you and tell you what it's made of and how it's blended. It's a priceless shmeller - an invaluable beezer, and it would be a sacrilege to take a punch at a nose like that Let1 a end this Asiatic broadcast with a character­ istic bit of Far Eastern comedy which my Orientalizing sister sends along* It's one of those public signs in bungled-up English you see out there - Japanese schoolboy English* Here's the way the sign reads: "Ladies' Tailor -- Ladies Hare Fits Upstairs.” Yes, ladles hare fits upstairs and studio engineers will hare fits downstairs unless I say * well let's say it in Korean; that's an odd language. Here goes; "Hall gaji kedarlo". Which means: "Please wait until we meet tomorrow", the neareat thing the Koreans can come to "So long until tomorrow”.