Volume 147

November 23, 1927

Number 12

The Pittsburgh Explosion

I

F it be true, as seems probable, that the Pittsburgh disaster was caused

by the use of a blow torch in repairing a tank next that which exploded, the flame being carried through a connecting pipe, then it is only one more example of the vast tragedy that may result from human careless or lack of perception and of the constant need of skilled inspection at all danger points.

Whatever the cause, the tragedy was devastating. The gigantic holder of natural-gas reserves laid in ruins a district of tenements for blocks around; 25 or more killed; perhaps 500 injured; $5,000,000 worth of property destroyed --such are the bare facts as they appear the day after the calamity. The suffering, terror, panic, and despair caused cannot be put into statistics.

This was the largest natural-gas tank in the world. It had a cubic capacity of 5,000,000 cubic feet. It stood over 200 feet high. It went up, witnesses say, for a great height like an enormous balloon, and burst into flames, "a gigantic ball of fire against the sky."

THE WEEK

Red Cross when he states that the need, not for charity, but for rehabilitation, is pressing. In some places farms have been abandoned because they are flooded or lie half buried by rocks and débris. That Congress will recognize the need and deal with the New England flood situation and the Mississippi Valley situation with equal liberality and an equally long view to the future cannot be doubted.

It is interesting to note that one sequel of the New England emergency was the establishing by the PostmasterGeneral of airplane mail service between Concord, New Hampshire, Montpelier, and Burlington.

Not alone tributaries of the Connecticut River, but the streams of other watersheds, such as the Winooski, Mud River, Westfield River, and others, overflowed their banks, broke down dams, and caused havoc. The situation was not that of one great disaster, but of many comparatively local disasters, so that the work of both relief and reparation must be carried on here, there, and all but everywhere. Winter is coming and at mid-November there were still towns so isolated that they could be reached only afoot or by airplane; about 7,500 people in the four States injured are receiving Red Cross assistance.

Yankee thrift and resource are proverbial; New England's people are independent; all the more, therefore, they deserve and must have friendly help.

Where the War Ended

cue.

tomb of Napoleon, amid the relics of many a war, and viewed weekly by hundreds of sightseers. But the weather was rapidly destroying it, and in the quandary which arose it was an American, Mr. Arthur D. Fleming, of Pasadena, California, who came to the resLearning of the difficulty, Mr. Fleming, who is President of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology, contributed the money with which a concrete shelter has been built at "the crossroads of the Armistice." Now the car stands just where it was when Marshal Foch and Herr Erzberger ended the war at five o'clock one autumn morning in 1918.

At the recent ceremony of inauguration, M. Fournier Sarloveze, Mayor of Compiègne, presided, and M. Painlevé, Minister of War, Marshal Foch, and the American Club of Paris attended. A drive through the Compiègne country is still an utterly depressing affair, for much as reconstruction has progressed, the section is still full of completely shell-torn houses and churches.

In recognition of the generous gift, President Doumergue has made Mr. Fleming a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

best relief might be afforded and preventive methods taken for the future.

It is believed that Federal aid will be needed, for in Vermont alone transportation by highroads and railways and over bridges has been so crippled that it may take not far from a million dollars to make them passable. Governor Weeks, of Vermont, is confirmed by the

ΟΝ

was held in the Forest of Compiègne, where just nine years before the war ended. In an ordinary car of the Wagon-Lit Company, a halt was called to the business which had been devastating half a continent.

For some time this Armistice Car had stood in the great courtyard of the Invalides in Paris, in the shadow of the

and popular demonstration at the official opening, on Saturday November 12, of the Holland Vehicular Tunnel, which connects New York City with Jersey City under the Hudson River. President Coolidge, pressing a golden telegraph key in Washington, excited the electric current that drew aside the flags which curtained the tunnel's eastern and

western entrances. The excited electric current communicated its vitality and briskness to waiting thousands who availed themselves of the opportunity offered them of walking through the white-tiled, perfectly ventilated, and electrically lighted tubes before the never-to-end procession of automobiles began streaming through.

On the first day of its public existence between forty and fifty thousand motor cars passed through the tunnel, carrying about 180,000 passengers, without a mishap.

The tunnel, nearly two miles long, is a result of the demands of mtotorists for rapid transit. But even the tunnel, a remarkable feat of engineering, will not satisfy the needs of King Automobile. For his comfort the Hudson is to be bridged by the hugest suspension span in the world at a point not very far north of the Holland Tunnel. The newspapers announce that a little morsel of 50,000 tons of steel is already in progress of fabrication for the bridge, the plans for which are hardly yet drafted.

We are certainly living in an empire of speed, and the automobile is its monarch.

The New York exit of the new vehicular tunnel

A Railroad Election

THE city of Cincinnati has several

claims to distinction. It is the birthplace of the only living ex-President of the United States; it is the nearest large city to that hypothetical and abstract mathematical point known as the center of the population of the United States; and it is the only city in the United States-in the entire world, for that matter which owns a trunk-line steam railroad.

This municipally owned railroad, about 350 miles in length, is the Cincinnati Southern. Its construction was begun in 1869 and completed in 1889 by the municipality of Cincinnati in order to maintain that city's claim that it is the "gateway of the South." At first the municipality tried to operate the road, but failed to make it pay, and finally leased it to a private company, now a part of the Southern Railway system. Under the lease the property has been profitable and returns to the city a net annual income of more than a million dollars.

In the recent election the citizens of Cincinnati, by an overwhelming majority, voted to extend the lease for ninety-nine years at a regularly increas

ing rental which will not only pay the interest on the municipal bonds required for the construction of the road but will yield a handsome surplus for the payment of interest on other municipal bonds.

Cincinnati's unique railway is an object-lesson in the economic policy of government ownership combined with private operation of public utilities.

A Quiet Bower

F

OOTBALL is not, contrary to a commonly entertained opinion, the only autumn activity at Yale University. The authorities of that venerable institution, where athletic skill is both an art and a science, are hard at work com pleting the new Art Museum of the University, which will cost $1,000,000, a sum quite as large as the cost of a good football stadium. The Museum will not only contain the administrative offices of the Art School and an auditorium to seat five hundred persons, but it will house some of Yale's collections of sculptures and paintings, already cele brated in the educational and art world Among these perhaps the most notable

is the Jarves collection of Italian primitivas. Thus the Yale undergraduates will have the satisfaction of finding out for themselves by observation whether A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

A stadium is a good thing for a university, but so is a quiet bower.

Money-Making and Generosity

F this is an age of money-making on a vast scale, it is also an age of generosity of equal proportions.

The Art Museum at Yale, referred to in a foregoing paragraph, is largely the gift of two anonymous donors of New York. Yale has also received a handsome sum for special research work from Charles H. Ludington, Vice-President of the Curtis Publishing Company, whose death occurred on November 13. Mr. Ludington was also a benefactor of the University of Pennsylvania.

The growth of the Curtis Publishing Company, famous as the producers of he "Ladies' Home Journal" and the 'Saturday Evening Post," is one of the omances of American business, comarable in many respects to the rise of he Ford Motor Company. Mr. Cyrus 1. K. Curtis and Mr. Henry Ford both ad a vision of the enormous purchasing power of that group of millions whom Lincoln called the plain people. Begining in a small way and with untiring personal industry and persistence in the ace of discouraging obstacles, Ford and Curtis have supplied great masses of Americans with commodities that are oth useful and pleasure-giving. Their nerchandising is really a form of philanhropy or public service.

Perhaps this could hardly be said of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., but as a disributer of wealth in useful public serice he has had no peer in history. The atest Rockefeller benefaction is a gift by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., of $2,000,100 to the Government of Palestine for he building and endowment of an arhæological museum. This is a part of he "Jerusalem town-planning scheme," n which Mr. Rockefeller is interested ecause Palestine is "a country whose ast is perhaps of more importance to he world than that of any other land." The younger Rockefeller has been a

ardent battle for his view of an intellectual-scientific controversy such as could

reach great heights only among the French people. With less excuse French

Cabinets have even been known to fall, or, as the French say, "step on a banana peel."

In 1924 a peasant's plow revealed at Glozel, near the celebrated Vichy, a few bushels of clay tablets, clay pots, arrowheads, and other artifacts. The tablets bore strange inscriptions. Some of the characters resembled those of our alphabet. And on this evidence an elaborate theory has been built up: that the alphabet we use, instead of originating merely with the Phoenicians, dates back several thousand years farther; that instead of tracing to Asia it traces to Europe; that stone age man invented and used an alphabet-our alphabet, in fact; that written language is far older than archeologists formerly thought, for

All this, if established, would throw quite a troublesome monkey-wrench into the wheels of the historian. And the French, after three years of argument, have now appointed a committee of anthropologists to study the Glozel finds and render, if possible, a decision. In the meantime the newspapers are full of Glozel date-lines. President Herriot has listed the locality as a national monument, thus removing it from the hands of local amateur archæologists.

Among eminent French scientists some are as definitely committed to a belief in the authenticity of these finds at Glozel as others are committed to the opinion that they are a hoax. Still others who do not think them fraudulent regard them as the comparatively recent work of Roman sorcerers. Diverse opinions about them are held so stoutly that, no matter what decision is rendered by the committee, the question is likely to remain open for years to vex the world's students of language and writing. The lead tablets bearing "Jewish" records of 1100 A.D., found a couple of years ago in Arizona, might aptly be recalled to mind. The layman will do well for a time to take newspaper items about Glozel cum grano salis.

If the alphabet should be traced to the stone age, some French and Phoenician reputations will fall; but, luckily, the Phoenicians are beyond bothering about their chief title to fame.

How Far Away Is

Abyssinia?

A

DAM site in Abyssinia-which seems too remote to concern Americans has lately caused a near-controversy between Great Britain and the United States.

First it was announced that an American engineering firm was to build a $20,000,000 dam across. the Blue Nile River where it flows out of Lake Tsana for the Abyssinian Government. The purpose was to stop destructive floods and to supply irrigation to the British Sudan, west of Abyssinia.

Then it appeared that, under a treaty of 1902 with Great Britain, Abyssinia could not grant the right without British consent. While negotiations for a British concession for the work had been unsuccessful, Great Britain made it evident that she would oppose a concession

THE

HE Nobel Literature Prize has just been awarded for the year 1926 to Signora Grazia Deledda. Only one other woman (Selma Lagerlöf) has won this prize. Signora Deledda is known. to English and American readers chiefly, if not solely, by her tragic story "La Madre." Besides this, only one other book of hers, so far as we know, has been translated into English, and that was written nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Signora Deledda is highly esteemed in her own land, and is one of the three women writers who were included in the Italian Academy of Immortals, founded by Mussolini.

The bent of this author is distinctly tragic, and she has been especially fond of describing the wild nature of the people of her own birthplace, Sardinia. "The Mother," which led to the Nobel award, is peculiarly and devastatingly tragic and sad. It is, however, in point of art almost perfect; and as we read of the temptation of the son, a priest, and the sorrow and final death of the mother, we are profoundly moved.

Pirandello, who all but stands at the head of Italian literature of our day, has called this book one of the greatest novels in the Italian language.

On the appearance of "The Mother" four years ago, The Outlook review said of it: "The subject is tragic, the emotion aroused is poignant (a much-abused word, but precisely correct here), and the soundness of the psychology and the 358

to advertise flood relief. Whatever incidental publicity Big Bill, as he is called, might get from this visit to the Nation's capital was presumably not unwelcome. Surrounded by mayors from various towns and cities in the Mississippi Valley, he informed the members of the House Flood Control Committee that the only institution that could stop the floods was the Federal Government. He heard himself praised as worthy to stand beside Lincoln and Roosevelt. He

breakfasted at the White House the next day in company with Senator Lorimer, with whom in 1910 Theodore Roosevelt refused to sit down at dinner. Then he returned to Chicago. Washington, accustomed to parades, was not greatly thrilled, and there is no evidence that the House Flood Control Committee was greatly informed. Certainly the country at large was hardly aware of the event. There was a time when such a gesture would have awakened great enthusiasm. Perhaps it has had its effect along the Mississippi Valley; but it has certainly left the Nation cold.

So Mayor Thompson is back to renew his attacks on the British.

Three days after election-on Armistice Day-representatives from the British Empire gathered at Arlington Cemetery at Washington. They were the British Ambassador, the Canadian Minister, and several members of the Canadian Cabinet, accompanied by others from the Dominion and by Cana dian troops. They came to dedicate a monument presented by the Government of Canada to the Government and peo ple of the United States in honor of citi

zens of the United States who had served in the Canadian army and giver their lives in the World War. Thes were men who anticipated the decision of their country and joined the Allie before the United States declared war o afterwards found in the Canadian army their easiest way toward service. A Arlington stands the tomb of the Un known Soldier. Near it will now stan the monument to what might rightly b called America's Unknown Army. Ce tainly it is not known how many them there were. It is certain only the by thousands men of this countr crossed the border to fight with those the British forces in the common caus And the monument will stand as a n minder, not only of them, but also those common ideals that have kept an will keep the border between the Repu lic and the Dominion guarded, as M Davis, the United States Secretary War, said, "only by the common love liberty and justice in the hearts of t people of both Canada and the Unite States."

Even the strident tones of a trouble-maker may be drowned by the eloquent silence of a granite

cross.

Not Wet and Dry

THE State-wide vote in Ohio and t

Mayoralty election in Detro Michigan, have been interpreted as victory for the wets and a victory i the drys, respectively. In Ohio a b supported by the Anti-Saloon Leag was defeated in a referendum. In I troit the candidate which had the su port of the dry element was elect Mayor. In neither case, however, w the issue the simple one of the enfor ment of prohibition.

In Ohio the vote against the bill su ported by the Anti-Saloon League w not by any means cast wholly by t wets. For years in the so-called "villa liquor courts" the justices collected th