Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 6

Tuesday, January 5, 1937. DECATUR HERALD PAGE SIX Monday's Wash hampered use of the Mediterranean, the most important link in "the life line" of the empire. So Great Britain and Italy are bound together by a new treaty. Britain has an agreement with France. Britain signed a naval treaty with Germany.

Germany and Italy understand each other because of the common political philosophy of fascism. Germany has a treaty with Japan. France and Russia are parties to a treaty. So while it is possible to range the nations in groups against each other, it is also possible to link all the great powers of Europe and Asia by treaties, to which separate nations are signatories. Russia is friendly with France which is friendly with England which is friendly with Germany which is friendly with Japan.

Thus Russia and Japan are, in a round about way, joined by amicable treaties. The international treaty set-up might delight Pollyanna, but more practical observers find small comfort in the historical fact that when a treaty does not serve a desired purpose, it. becomes just another scrap, of paper. The Presidential Tenure Editorials Scrap iron now commands good prices and this old paragrapher probably grew up in an era of peace, because he can recall the sale of a wagon load of old iron to the community junk dealer tor seven cents and even then felt that he had driven a shrewd bargain. Uncle Andy Mellon has offered to build a 10 million dollar gallery to house the 18 million dollar art collection he would give the people of the United States, but if Uncle Sam insists that Uncle Andy still is short three millions on his 1931 income tax payment.

Uncle Andy may decide that a seven million dollar gallery should be good enough. Who'll Make the Headlines? How many persons had heard, on Jan. 5, 1936, of General Francisco Franco, John D. M. Hamilton, Dr.

Franz Sarga, the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, Fthel Du Pont, Margaret Mitchell or Mrs. Ernest Simpson? Virtual unknowns a year ago, they are now familiar to all newspaper readers.

Chairman Hamilton had his hour during and immediately following the Republican national convention. Doctor Sarga held the headlines for weeks with his proposed marathon duels. Ethel Du Pont's engagement to the son of the President of the United States was one of the prime society stories of our times. The Reverend Smith rarely crashes the front pages any more, but for a few frenzied months he commanded national attention. General Franco still continues the siege of Madrid.

Margaret Mitchell's novel. "Gone With the Wind," still is a favorite with book buyers and Mrs. Ernest Simpson will be news until the day she dies. Then history will take over her story. But a year ago they were known only in limited circles.

Who will be the headlined personages of 1937? Nobody can tell. Somewhere in this wide world are men and women living quietly and unheralded who will emerge during the next 12 months as national or even international figures. Will there be another Margaret Mitchell in 1937? Thousands of yearning writers hope so. Will there be another Mrs. Simpson? The outlook is not promising.

Will there be another Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith? Heaven forbid! Nebraska has a new one-house legislature and the lobbyists, with only one house to patrol, should have twice as much time to entertain impressionable lawgivers. Marshal Chang has been granted a full pardon for kidnaping his superior, Oen-eralissimo Chiang, and within a few days the Chinese government may decide to give him a reward and charge it to publicity and advertising.

In Business for Profit. The Italian Line is planning two new passenger liners for the regular Naples to New York run. But the projected boats will not be a couple of feet longer than the Normandie or Queen Mary. They will be relatively modest craft of 25,000 tons each. They will be swift and will offer comfo.table accommodations, but they will not pretend to be floating palaces or queens of the sea.

They will be merely modern passenger liners designed to carry passengers who want to cross the ocean from Italy to the United States and back again. The Italian Line reasons that profit is more important than publicity. The Rex and the Rome will gather whatever publicity is necessary to the line, whatever is left after the Queen Mary and the Normandie have skimmed the cream. The English and French are proud of the bulk, speed and appointments of the Queen Mary and Normandie, but giant ships of 75.000 tons are not operated at a profit when their cost is included in the figures. Smaller liners, entirely adequate and completely modern, can handle the passenger traffic and do so at a profit.

Eventually the nations may leave speed competition on the sea to millionaire yachtsmen who can afford such luxury. Elaine Barrie Barrymore says that Husband John is on probation because "he roughed me up a bit" and remembering Ariel's pursuit of Caliban not so many months ago, we are noi so sure that Mrs. Barrymore didn't need a little rougn-ing. Inauguration of the President has been moved up from March 4 to January 21) but March will be fairly memorable this year for St. Patrick's day.

Easter and the income tax filing deadline. Endless Chain of Treaties. If the geometrical theorem "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" could be applied to international affairs and read "nations friendly with the same nation are friendly with each other," there would be no chance of a general war in Europe. Great Britain and Italy have signed a treaty defining the agreed rights of each nation in the Mediterranean. The ancient Romans called the Mediterranean "Mare Nostrum," meaning "our sea." Today the phrase might be revived with Britain and Italy sharing possession.

The Mediterranean is Italy's maritime highroad to the rest of the world and all the more important now that Italy as annexed Ethiopia in Africa. Great Britain must have rights in the Mediterranean so long as India. Egypt, the Sudan and South Africa are parts of the British empire. The threat of an clash arose during the Ethiopian war because of Britain's concern for un Length of a President's Term of Office and His Eligibility for Re-election Has Been Debated Since Very Beginning of Our Government New Proposals Will Be Offered in the Seventy-Fifth Congress. Second Thoughts David V.

Fells: Academy of American Poet was or-- ganized about two years ago "to subsidize poets of proved merit." Because our name happens to be on several mailing lists we received a bundle of literature explaining the project along with an invitation to join up, pay dues and promote the worthy cause. Our recollection is that we wrote a few paragraphs on the project and threw all the literature in the waste basket. Our thought was that poets get along better without subsidies. We felt that a "poet of proved merit" should be able to sell his stuff. If the poet was found to be without merit, there was no sense in encouraging him in a literary career.

Better that he find some more practical employment and write his verses just for the fun of it. As we understood the academy's purpose, encouragement would be given to younger poets of proved merit. But now comes announcement that the Academy of American Poets has granted an award of $5,000 to Edwin Markham. Now 84 years old and in poor health. Poet Markham needs the money.

His poem, "The Man With The gave him world wide fame. He is listed with the great poets of our times and in his old age he finds himself without funds. Edwin Markham is a poet of proved merit and eligible to the academy's subsidy, but if a Markham can make a living by writing, what will happen to the just so-so poets? Within the last few weeks we read a bit of excellent advice to poets from a qualified commentator whose name we forget. That advice was: "Get a job and write poetry as a sideline or merely as a hobby." Very few ol the great poets made a living by writing verses. Poe was a magazine editor; Longflrl-low, a college professor; Holmes, a physician; Burns, a farmer; Byron, a nobleman with sn independent income; Bryant, a newspaper editor; Whitman, a government clerk; Vachel Lindsay, a lecturer the list is long.

Some poets have made a good living by exclusive strumming -of the lyre, but occasionally a fellow picks up a diamond as big as a baseball. PLIOCENE PAIL REVERE Smithsonian Institution paleontologists have reconstructed from fossil remains a notable link in the equine family tree, a Pliocene ancestor of the horse. It is believed that the beast. Plesippus Shoshonensis. perished when the glacier swept over the North American continent and inaugurated the Ice ages.

The glacier swept down from the Northern Pole Millions of years ago. And buried this country, valley and knoll, 'Neath a blanket of ice and snow. But Pithecanthropus Erectus bestrode Plesippus Shoshonensis. And ahead of the dreaded glacier he rode. Leaping rivers and hills and fences.

The glacier caught the ancient man And his faithful steed so docile. We read their history as best we can From remains distinctly fossil. Christmas is the season for stupendous eating. During the recent holiday season we had two mammoth turkey dinners, one "at our own table and another at the old homestead. Each was delicious, delightful and altogether de-lovely.

But there was another memorable dinner at the old homestead on the day after the formal family turkey dinner. Father and Mother, three sons, three daughters-in-law and three grandchildren failed to eat all the gigantic bird at the first assault, so the cold turkey was served on the second day. But also on the menu for the second feast was a big dish of turnips, a platter of fat pork which had been cooked with the turnips, and a big disc of corn bread. We postponed the pleasure of cold turftey and helped ourself to turnips, pork and cornbread. After a second helping possibly a third we passed up the turkey for want of room and appetite.

There was a time when we would have scorned turnips, fat meat and corn broad. We learned to eat the combination and like it while pushing a plow and making hay. In those days we would have preferred canned corn and "light bread" from the store, but healthy hunger does not quibble over preferences. We did not dream then that one day we would account turnips, fat meat and corn bread a dish suited to holiday feasting. And we are looking forward to hog's jaw and turnip greens.

The Illinois Masonic Home Club No. 1 at Sullivan recently installed the foTlowing officers: Charles Lamson. W. M. Thomas J.

Farrington, S. W. Charles Besser. J. W.

Charles E. Graven, Treasurer. Charles T. Wagner. Secretary.

Thomas J. Churchill. S. D. Charles Kellman, J.

D. Charles A. Greenwald. S. S.

Willis C. Belknap. J. S. Charles H.

Ferris. Marshal. Ezra K. Routzahn, Tyler. The above roster was submitted by an alert correspondent who enquires: Vass you dare, Sharley? Temporal fame is rather funny at times.

The ancient and honorable city of Baltimore is currently best known as the birthplace of Mrs. Simpson, and Wellesley, long established and highly regarded college for women, is known to all newspaper readers as the alma mater of Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek. The radio feature known as "Your Hit Parade" professes to rank songs according to the frequency with which they are played and sung during a certain week but the iist for the week preceding Christmas did not even mention "Silent Night, Holy Night" or "Adeste Fideles." Newsprint. Prof.

Clarence E. Libby, of the New York State College of Forestry, has figured out that a single issue of a big city daily uses more paper than was made in the entire United States in 1800; a Sunday edition requires the product of 240 acres of pulp wood; yet newsprint uses only 4 per cent of the wood annually harvested in North America. mr. second term of a re-elected Presider.t. hea the incumbent cannot regard it as sti-ed at himself unless it is his purpose to defy the third-term trad.tion.

For tht Burke-Tinkham proposal in the new Cor.grea will be particularly well-timed to receive consideration on its merits. Thin Out the Press Agents Detroit News. The flood of publicity and prnpsgsr.d concerning Government activit.es that has been coming out of Washington is to be restricted, says rumor at the Capital. Except the army of press agents, some of whm rr.sy lose their jobs, nobody will protest much. Least of all will the newspapers feel the loss.

There it a legitimate serv ice to be performed by some official agency to co-operate the press in Washington. The activities of the Government have real news value ar.d should be reported accurately to the people whe pay the bills. But this news will be discoursed by readers whenever it is colored or ir.f.sted with evident political purpose. There should be no need to sell the Government to the people and to charge the cost cf the scll.r.g the tax -payers. The second term of the Administration may well be freed from this extravsgar.ee since the President is not expected to be candidate again.

The Government in the newspaper business never has done a good job, while the independent press of the nation hai proved wonderfully efficient. The tons of expensively printed periodicals that have been circulated at Government expense and the even larger bulk of mimeo-grapher speeches delivered for political effect and circulated long after they have lost what news value they may have had should cease to clutter the mail. Taxpayers will be grateful and the general information of the people will not suffer. Thanks to Gulliver T. B.

Haber, in American Speech-It may not be known generally to Swift scholars that an early "influence" of Swift in America is the naming of the creek Lulbe-grud. which now forms a part of the boundary between Clark and Powell counties in Kentucky. The fact that the famous scout, Daniel Boone, is the authority for our information concerning the fixing of the name constitutes an additional interest to the event itself. Lulbegrud creek is a tributary of the Red river, near which Daniel Boone and brother Squir together with a few other hunters, had established a camp in 1770, near the old Shawnee village of EskippaKi-thiki. Although other white men had preceded them through this region most of the water courses were still unnamed by the explorers.

Many years later. September 15. 1796. Boone made the following deposition: "In the yr. 1770, I encamped on Red river with five other men, and we had with us for our amusement the History of Samuel Gulliver's Travels, wherein he gave an account of his young master, Glumdelick.

carcing carrying) him on a market day for a show to i town called Lulbegrud. A young man of our company called Alexander Neely came to camp one night and told us he had been that day to Lulbegrud and had killed 2 Brobdig-nags in their capital." The name Lulbegrud was also given to an early trading post or settlement in Clark county probably loosely applied to the Indian town already named. I am told by Mr. D. J.

Jones. State geologist of iventucky, thst no town by this name exist in the State Philip La Follette has been inaugurated for a third term as governor of Wisconsin and if either he or Senator Young Bob should relinquish public office, it would be nice to grant the retiring statesman the title Duke of Milwaukee. Critical educators have discovered so many subversive angles in "Alice in Wonderland'' that many growrfups who scorned the volume in childhood are now reading it carefully, even if furtively. The Senator Who Wasn't Among the new senators elected November 3 was Guy V. Howard, of Minnesota, but he has no part in the proceedings when the Senate convenes today because his term of office expired at noon Sunday.

He was Senator from Minnesota for 60 days and the Senate was not in session during that time. Nevertheless, Senator Howard went to Washington, sat in his office, enjoyed the privileges of a senator, and collected his salary for two months. He even appointed a secretary who drew a salary from the fund allotted lawmakers for clerical expense. Senator Howard introduced no bill, made no speech and cast not one vote, but he must have had a great time in the capital and for the rest of his days he can be addressed, with right, as "Senator." As a former member of the Senate he will have the privilege of the Senate floor should he drop in for a visit. Senator Howard, an alert opportunist, managed his 60 days an inert senator by taking advantage of a quirk in the Minnesota election laws.

The Senate needs alert men, particularly on the Republican side and Senator Howard is a Republican. But in view of the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate, the Minneso-tan is almost as influential in lawmaking on the outside as if he sat with his few party brethren on the inside. News You Read in Your Herald Twenty-Five Years Ago Today Under the terms of a decision by the interstate commerce commission, Decatur will become an important grain shipping center. W. H.

Suffern was a leader in the movement to obtain for Decatur shippers the through transit privileges as granted to Cairo. 111. The city's grain business should double within the year. Phineas B. Provost, for 18 years a justice of the peace in Decatur, died at the home of a son.

Frank Provost, in Toledo. Ohio. He was the first chief of the Decatur volunteer fire department. W. D.

Fairbanks has gone to New Orleans on a business trip. One span of mules brought $B05 at a sale of livestock on the Frank Howsman farm near Harristown. President A. R. Taylor of James Millikin university read a paper on "The Modern College" at the regular meeting of the University club.

James F. Donovan of Niantic was re-elected president of the county highway commissioners and town clerks. While You Wait. Baltimore Evening Sun. Business men seem to agree that they will have to hire one new bookkeeper for every 400 employes in order to do the accounting required by the Social Security Act.

It is estimated that the act affects some 26.000,000 employes, so it looks very much as if the act had created jobs for 65.000 bookkeepers in private employment. Add to these the 15.000 new jobholding bookkeepers that it is said will be required and there they are, 81,000 nice new jobs for bookkeepers. The census of 1930 gave the number ot bookkeepers with jobs at that time as 930.648, which probably means there are a round million bookkeepers today. If the ratio of unemployment among bookkeepers is the same as that which obtains, among the population in general, some 200.000 of these bookkeepers have been looking for jobs. All right then, here are jobs for 81.000 of them, all at one crack.

Among bookkeepers, the unemployment problem is more than 40 per cent solved. Bring on your next problem. EARLY HARDSHIPS The Kansas pioneers lived hard lives. They had no fountain pens to leak on their fingers. No telephones to ring while they were taking baths.

No motor cars to get flat tires or run out of gasoline. No radios to burn out tubes or be overcome by static. No brush salesmen to ring their doorbells. And no newspapers to make them mad. It took real men to stand up under such hardships.

By RICHARD M. BOECKEL (Copyright, 1936, Editorial Research Reports) THE remarkable thing about the Burke-Tinkham proposal for a single-term presidency is not its novelty but the fact that the proposal has so often been brought forward in Congress and has never been adopted as a part of the Constitution of the United States. When the new Congress meets Tuesday. Senator Burke, Democrat of Nebraska, and Rep. Tinkham, Republican of Massachusetts, will deposit in the legislative hoppers of their respective houses, resolutions which will propose that Congress submit to the states an amendment to the Constitution to fix the term of future Presidents at six years ana prohibit any man who had once occupied the White House from again being a candidate for the presidential office.

No proposal to amend the Constitution has been more frequently offered in Congress. Since the Constitution was adopted in 1788, there have been about 200 resolutions introduced in the House and Senate to limit the tenure of one man as President. About two-thirds of them have proposed a single six-year term. About one-third of them have proposed to write into the fundamental law the tradition that no President shall serve more than two four-year terms. Constitutional Convention Debate The length of the presidential tenure was a subject of prolonged debate in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

On the question whether the President should have a long term and be ineligible for re-election or a short term with the re-eligibility the Philadelphia convention reversed itself many times. The plan for the new government presented by Edmund Randolph at the opening of the convention provided for "a national executive to be chosen by the national legislature for a term of years" and "to be ineligible a second time." The plan of Charles Pinckney likewise proposed selection of the Chief Executive by Congress "for. years," but added that he "shall be re-eligible." It was argued, to the satisfaction of the convention, that if the President was to be chosen by Congress he should be given a long term at least six years and should be made ineligible to succeed himself. In no other way could he be made independent of the Congress to which he would owe his election. When the plan of having the President chosen by an electoral college was brought forward and adopted, however, the convention approved a term of four years for the President and omitted any provision that would prohibit his holding the office for as many times as he might be chosen by the electors.

The tradition v.hich limits the service of American Presidents to a maximum of two four-year terms is generally traced back to Washington's Farewell Address, but Washington's reasons for declining to serve a third time were personal. They did not grow out of his political philosophy. Jefferson was the real author of the third-term tradition. Madison and Monroe each served two terms, and Jefferson wrote in his autobiography in 1826 that: "The example of four Presidents voluntarily retiring at the end of their eighth year, and the progress of public opinion that the principle is salutary, have given it in practise the form of precedent and usage; insomuch that, should a President consent to be a candidate for a third election. I trust he would be rejected on this demonstration of ambitious views." Half a century later, in 1876.

when it was rumored that Grant would again be a candidate, the House of Representatives effectively squelched a third-term boom by adopting a resolution declaring that the third-term tradition had become "by universal concurrence a part of our republican system of government, and that any departure from this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions." A resolution identically worded was adopted by the Senate in 1928 when it was believed that Calvin Coolidge might be a candidate for a third term despite his earlier statement that he did not "choose to run." During the last century, amendment of the Constitution to limit the President to one term has been recommended or indorsed by Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes. Gro-ver Cleveland, and William Howard Taft. Eli-hu Root and William Jennings Bryan were also among the advocates of this change. Platform Tlank In the Democratic platform of 1912 on which Woodrow Wilson ran for the presidency it was specifically stated that: "We favor a single presidential term, and to that end urge the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution making the President of the United States ineligible for re-election, and we pledge the candidate of this convention to this principle." But Wilson was a vigorous opponent of all proposals to limit the President to one term.

He saw no very serious objection to a two-term limitation, if that were desired, but he believed it better on the whole to leave any limitation upon the President's re-eligibility out of the Constitution. Three times during its history the United States Senate has approved constitutional amendments proposing to limit the service of one man as President. In 1824 an amendment to prohibit a third term was approved 36 to 3. and in 1826 a similar amendment was approved 32 to 7. In 1913 an amendment to limit the President to a single six-year term was given Senate approval by a margin of one vote over the required two-thirds majority 47 to 23.

The Senate, controlled by Republicans, was seeking to carry out the single-term plank of the 1912 Democratic platform. It refused to incorporate in the amendment a clause which would have made it inapplicable to Woodrow Wilson. The letter of the President-elect to Rep. Palmer led the Democratic House to withhold action, and the resolution died when the 62nd Congress came to an end on March 4, 1913. The fact of "the matter is that whenever a demand has been raised in Congress in the past for a constitutional amendment to limit the tenure of the Chief Executive its authors have usually been moved by a desire to do injury to the occupant of the White House.

If the change is to be made, the appropriate time to make it is at the beginning ot the.