Daily News from New York, New York • 460

Famous American sayings see page 2 Pacifists are always with us, have been and will be, and often they're big names like contemporaries Jane Fonda or Joan Baez. But, would you believe millionaire auto-maker Henry Ford was one during World War In December 1915, while the U.S. was busy preparing for our inevitable entry into the conflict, Ford, then 52 years old, chartered the steamer Oscar II and sent a peace delegation to Europe with the purpose of getting the soldiers "out of the trenches and back to their homes by Christmas." A noble idea, indeed, but the delegation included so many of differing and fanatical views with fuzzy and disorganized plans on how to do it that the bickering and antics aboard ship caused the fundamentally pragmatic Ford to abandon the Oscar II and the movement. In the rising war fever sweeping the country, the whole notion was soon laughed out of existence. Walter C.

Meyer Answers to last weeks puzzles Better days continued from page 24 handsome reception-dining room and a parlor, finished entirely in antique oak. Upstairs were private dining and card rooms, plus a splendidly lit billiard room. "(It) has not its equal in size in any New York or Brooklyn clubhouse," an 1890 Harper's Weekly crowed of this nine-table wonder. For years the club was one of Brooklyn's most prosperous and exclusive. Lincoln Club boys took an especially keen interest in bowling: the basement housed four full-size alleys, and every score of every game was recorded.

But one by one the fine old clubs began to disappear, as the Depression brought an end to the way of life that had nourished them. The Lincoln Club was sold to a fraternal group known as the Royal Arcanum, then to another fraternal organization, the Independent Order of Mechanics, which now uses it for weddings, dances and religious the building's function as Western Hemisphere headquarters for the order, the honor seems a little thin, for the building, like much of the surrounding Clinton Hill neighborhood, has slipped into decline. Bright turquoise paint has been splashed over much of the interior, covering mahogany paneling and water-stained woodwork with equal disregard. Slats are missing from the winding banister, and much of the stained glass is cracked and pockmarked. Upstairs is a rabbit warren of tiny disorganized spaces: a chapel, its walls lined with photographs of solemn-looking Mechanic leaders, and rooms outfitted with mysterious religious paraphernalia: a miniature ark, a rickety altar with a primitively drawn eye, a cardboard star.

Some rooms are so private, only a Mechanic may enter. Among the very few traces of the past that have been preserved intact are the three glass maidens. Though must peer out from behind a dusty Venetian blind, she and her colorful sisters have survived and in fact become curiously entwined in Mechanic rites. Says Past Grandmaster Austin Finigan: "They blend in very well." Eldridge St Synagogue This was one of the outstanding synagogues, insists former member Louis Pas ton, born 71 years ago in the tenement next door and now owner of religious goods shop on the site. "You had to be a somebody to go here." Sender Yarmulovsky, the noted banker, was such a somebody; so What to do continued from page 11 allergic to eggs are warned against getting the vaccines.

The swine flu vaccine is a case in point. One person I know who has a severe allergy to eggs was unable to travel abroad for years, until the requirement for a smallpox vaccination was eliminated. He' couldn't get vaccinated because the pox virus is grown in eggs. A number of mysteries about-, allergies persist. For some reason, food allergies may go away (or at least decrease in intensity) as a child grows up.

On the other hand, hay fever has been known to show itself for the first time in the teenage years, and there are a number of cases on record in which middle-aged people, previously free of allergies, developed full-blown cases of hay fever, or allergies to any one of the incredibly long list of allergens: dust, mold spores, feathers, animal fur, wool, tobacco, nylon, metals, cosmetics. oreover the borderline between allergies and conditions that resemble them is vague. Some physicians believe there is a "tension-fatigue syndrome" in which an allergy acts on the nervous system to turn a child into a cranky horror; eliminate the allergen, say these physicians, and you transform the imp into a model child. Most allergists don't believe in such a syndrome although even some doubters can tell you about a case or two in which a child's behavior changed overnight when a given food was eliminated from his diet. If you add in such complexities as the emotional factor and the fact that air pollution (among other things) can produce symptoms similar to those of allergy, you can understand why one of the major tasks of allergists is determining whether a patient is, indeed, suffering from an allergy.

The critical question, Dworetzky is whether the symptoms are caused by an immune response, the classic allergen-antibody-cell complex. The hope of research is that physicians may some day be able to interfere with this kind of response perhaps by stopping the release of mediators entirely, perhaps by drugs that work selectively and effectively on the autonomous nervous system, perhaps by other techniques based on yet-to-be-made research findings. All the advances made to date advances that have considerably eased -the miseries of allergy for many patients have come out of basic research into allergy on the cellular level. Research may someday produce a complete answer. Until then, gesundheit.

was Isaac Gellis, of sausage-firm fame. Their names are emblazoned on a marble plaque at the entrance to the sanctuary, for they, along with countless other devout Jews, prayed at Congregation Khal Adath Jeshu-run and Anshei Lubz, the imposing Orthodox temple at the foot of Eldridge St. Built in 1886, the synagogue flourished in the first quarter of the 20th century, when services were held three times a day and the con-gregation numbered in the thousands. On holidays, the place was so mobbed, a private guard had to be posted at the entrance. The facade, looming suddenly and imposingly on the narrow street, was dominated by a huge rose window, the centerpiece of a fantastically ornate arrangement of arches and columns with a vaguely Moorish flavor.

Inside was a sanctuary of awesome dimensions. The ceiling soared to a dome sky blue and studded with painted stars from which hung an enormous brass chandelier. Sunlight filtered through the rich golds and yellows of the stained glass and flooded the space with a warm, subtle glow. The ark was of hand-carved Italian oak: "$35,000 in cheap times," reports sexton Benjamin Markowitz. But the exodus of Jews from the lower East Side that began in the 20s signaled a change.

Forty years ago the sanctuary was abandoned and its electricity was shut off; now regular services, which take place only a couple of times a week, are held in the basement. Today, on a Saturday morning, a dozen diminutive men in their 70s and 80s come to pray. Upstairs it is chilly and dark, but not dark enough to hide the deterioration worked by vandalism and neglect. Peeling piaster eats at the starry dome, and sexton Markowitz reports that kids once torched a fire here using pages torn from a Bible. Patches of sky shine through gaping holes in the magnificent stained glass.

Says Paston, "The kids, to them a pleasure to break the windows There is talk of restoring the building Markowitz is saving every piece of broken glass but it's unlikely that it could serve as anything but a historic shrine. "Everyone's. Chinese around here," says Markowitz. "What would they do with a synagogue?" For now the synagogue's 30 Torahs, with their once-lustrous wrappings of crimson velvet and creamy satin, are worn and faded. The eternal light that is supposed to burn day and night above the ark hasn't been lit for decades.

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