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The Brussels Post, 1950-5-31, Page 3Pmbring By Rk I,tlyd Bill Wilkinson It. Jeff Boynton of the t 11ion 0Inly.s 1'qi parry L, Second regi. men 1,. MiIssacitusetts voulntcers, wore a look of utter dejection as he entered headquarters tent, nodded wearily to Capt. Finn Lacey and slumped onto It stool. The captain :topped writing, lean- ed back in his chair. '.She wouldn't talk, ell'. "No, she wouldn't talk," Boyn- ton answered. Ife stretched his long legs out in front of him and studied the worn toe of his hoot. "Maybe -she's not a soy, after all," Lacey hazarded. L'oynton's blue eyes flashed a< he jerked up his head, "Ves, she is! 1.'m sure Of it." Lacey shrugged and gestured with his cigar: "ll you're so sure, we'll hold a court-martial and.. -- "Not" Boynton was on his feet. "Don't do that, sir We haven't enough evidence to con- vict. It will mean she'll go free and we'll lose our one chance of stopping the leak. In- formation is getting through somehow, Alice Struthers is responsible, We must learn her methods." "How?" How? that was the question that had driven Lt. Boynton nearly to distraction, had caused him the loss of sleep and wearied his brain from thinking. A week ago, basing the art on the slimmest of reasons, Ile had had Alice Struthers arrested, to be held for questioning regard- ing the leakage of information to Confederate Gen, Johnson, - "You can't hold her forever with- out a trial, Boynton," the older man pointed ' out ofter another week had passed in which the lieu- tenant had failed completely in his One day while going through the relies of tong -ago battles, he came upon a letter. efforts to unearth some grain of evidence, "Miss Struthers is pop- ular among the officers. Some swear they have known her for years and will vouch for her loyal- ty to the Union." "Which makes it all the more likely she would succeed as a spy. I happen to know that all of Miss Struthers' maternal ancestors carne from Georgia. She herself spent a good part of her girlhood in Savannah." 'Idly he fingered a package of letters that he brought in with him, "1'm convinced that in these let- ters the girl is sending out the in- formation. HMV, I don't know, Certainly she is using no code, I have checked every letter a dozen times. Purposely I have permitted each to be mailed. Events im- mediately following convince me that somehow those letters ace the means of conveying the inform- ation." Capt. Lacey picked up the letters and read thein briefly. They con- tained nothing to excite suspicion— mere messages of lore and levo- tion to friends in the South, Lacey suddenly pounded the table. "13y George, Boynton, I believe 111ave it! Obviously some- thing has to be done. and 1'111 more than half Convinced—though hea- ven knows why—.that your ensile. ions arc well founder," "So?" "So we'll deport her. Turn her over to the Confederate army, If that stops the leakage we'll know she was the guilty party, and Cher will no longer be danger of its continuance," 'And it will mean Alice Struth- ers' complete freedom," Two day's Inter prisoner Alice Struthers was Horned over to Con- federate Gen, Johnson under 11 flag of truce. But it wasn't until arta• the war had ended that he found the ao- swer to the riddle: One clay while going through his relics of long ago battles he cause upon a letter. It was one 111111 Alice Sh'uthers'lutd written to her friends in the South, and which he"liac1 kept ,for a sou- venir. The paper was yellow, the ink faded, The postage stomp had •dried and was hanging by a inert thread. As he looked at it, f,t, Boynton's eyes grew wide, her beneath the Mann) were scene Close. ly written finely penned words, obviously 1110 cipher eupioyed by Alice Struthers which 1x1 11001 tried so hard to .locate, Made Big Fortune From Nightmare Sonic ideas even their authors c'an't kill --and Tarzan was one of them, 1t is over a year since Edgar Bice 'Burroughs declared that he was finished with his famous ape- man and would never write another line about him. Now Burroughs has dier! --in his 75th year—but Tarzan continues to heat his mighty chest and to tree -swing. Burroughs was known as tate world's wealthiest writer. In 25 years, his incredible—and yet cred- ible—apeman brought hint in a per- sonal fortune of $10,000,000 and built up gross earnings for a world- wide Tarzan industry of $125,000,- 000. -111 a movie sense, Tarzan recently rate of age, 11 is 21 years since 111110 Lincoln first went swinging through the ties dressed from head to foot 111 fur, Since then, there have been nine other Tarzans, in- cluding swimming champs Buster Crabbe and Johnny \'s eisntttllcr. 1'lond Lex !Barker tools over as Tarzan the Tenth just before his creator's death. Thirty years old, the new Tarzan was an outstanding athlete at Princeton University and is the first of the ape actors to have his name in the select New York Social Reg- ister, That's how it should be for, after all, the original Tarzan was the son of an English nobleman— and once sat in the house of Lords. But nothing that has happened to his jungle creation eau he half as astonishing as the real life story of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who once peddled lead pencils for a living and pawned his wife's brooches to help pay the grocer-, The first Tarzan story appeared in a magazine as long ago as 1912, but it was two years before lie could find a pub- lisher willing to put Tarzan in book form. 10 all Burroughs was an •unsuc- cessful businessman for 15 years before lie wrote a line of fiction. His success gives a persistent lie to the legend that a rolling stone gathers 110 moss. At one time Ile tried to sell books on the doorstep. The uppers of my shoes wore out trying to keep the doors open," he said, He sold everything from cars to chocolates before he landed a job as floorwalker in a department store, Worried, plagued with troubled sleep, he used to lie awake at night, telling himself stories, cre- ating diabolical monsters out of the humdrum worries of the day. He sprat these nightmares to himself for five years before it occurred to him that he alight sell them. Even then, he thought his stories so medi- ocre that they appeared under the pen -name "Normal Bean"—slang in those days for an average brain, Ills first stories were fantasies set in Mars chiefly for the reason that 110 one could catch hint out in his facts. Tarzan swung out of the jungle for notch the same reason, Burroughs merely swotted up Stan- ley's "In Darkest Africa" for 1115 background, He never went to Africa. When the stoney did start costing in, it came in a torrent. There were Tarzan conic books, Tarzan games and chewing gum. At one time there were t'arzath trapezes, swim- suits, schoolbags, soaps, statuettes and toys. At 55, Burroughs took up flying. He married a young actress for his second bride at 58 and, eight years later, became America's oldest war correspondent. (Tarzan meanwhile was banned in Nazi Germany for biting German officers and feeding them to the lions). Burroughs was probably the oldest man to fly over Tokyo in a bomber, But then lie suffered a heart attack and his days of adventure were over. Shortly before he died, he de- clared that he had tired of his ape- man, "I yawn when I wake up and Pause Before Parley—Before tackling. Cold War problems, the Big Three foreign ministers have an informal talk at Lancaster House, London. From left to right are U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. Schuman gave an account of the plan for pooling the coal and steel industries of France and Germany. keep yawning all day long," 11e said, "Every day I think I 'night start writing again, but thinking about it alone wears tete out." Then he promptly wrote a crime story with 27 corpses! "My books sell and entertain," ha cnce said. "That's all I ever in- tended. People who want to escape from themselves arc willing to pay for it 'That's the whole Tarzan appeal in a word—escape!" Orkney Islanders Real Producers Inhabitants of the Orkney Islands, off the noe'th coast of Scotland, have their own pet ideas on food production. They are work- ing agricultural miracles. With a population of 22,000 mien, women and children, 56,000,000 eggs per year are being produced for export. This ivories out at 38 pounds per head of population. Sponsored by the Scottish Agri- cultural Organization Society, a super -efficient system of egg -mar- keting has been developed. The result is that today the value of Orkney's egg exports is greater than all the pure-bred Shorthorn and Aberdeen Angus cattle sold at public auctions throughout Scot- land. Orkney's fowl population, 4.7 fowls per acre of land, is greater than any county in Scotland. But the industrious Orcadians do not rely solely on hens and eggs for their prosperity, Year by year, they are increasing their cattle stocks. This year they expect to make $3,500,000 from their herds. Since 1946, they have increased their milk production tenfold. To accommodate their money - spinning herds was a problem they solved in their typically enterprising manner. At Government auctions they bought up discarded Army, Navy and Air Force huts. They even used these to build their own horses, strengthening thein by building cement walls round them and converting them into comfort- able dwellings. They vie with each other in their vigorous efforts to reclaim what was 0ttee regarded as "impossible" land. Arable acreage in some cases has increased sixfold since 1948. No wonder there are more than 4,000 cars and 900 tractors on the islands (for a population of 22,000), almost one ear for every family, And no wonder they are known as the "Milk -and -Honey" Orlcneys. Axa wale,ul The judge Steps Out—judge Roy Bean steps impatiently out of his special airplane, having completed an 8000 -anile air tour. 'file fudge is a I200 -pound Hereford steer that won grand 11)i1111p irltlahill boners and sold for $11,50 a pound at the 1940 international Live Stock 1ixpos.ition, Catching Sharks Brings Wealth et . . Tile shark—murderer of the high seas—i's called in France a requin. It comes front the Latin requiem, and therefore speaks for itself! But today, elan -eating. sharks have, through the brains and ingenuity of a Frenchman, become useful members of society. The story of holy this caste about has a dash of romance to it. The Frenchman is an ex-refrig_ erator salesman named Andre Couard, In a lonely spot, some 200 miles south of Dakar in French West Africa, he has built a factory which is the centre of what the French call "A Shark Trust." Cou- ard has already made a vast fortune extracting an oil from sharks' liv- ers, which contains even more vitamins than cod liver oil. But as Couard says, first catch your shark! ,Norway was the country which supplied the world with most of its cod liver oil before Germany over- ran her, When that happened, the Allies became desperately short of Vitamin A—obtained from cod liver oil and essential to bomber pilots as an aid to night visftion. So the American began to hunt sharks off the coasts of California and Florida. The U.S.A. was not then in the war, but knew what a vital contri- bution would be shade if shark liver oil could be supplied. At that time, France had capit- ulated and Andre Couard was in Dakar with This wife and two chil- dren. Suddenly, he had enough of it, He assembled his entire fortune of £300, packed his family into his old Renault, and drove southwards until he reached a place called Joal-Cap Vert. Couard knew that the waters around Joal were just where he might find sharks. He decided to build a factory, but had no tools. First, he made his own spades—out of old petrol tins. He needed rakes, so he drove nails into sawn-off planks of wood. There were no wheelbarrows, so he used disca-ded hospital stretch- ers. Then he began to build with sand; sea shells and chalk, which took five weeks to dry. That was 1113 cement! Stones! Ile hired a native canoe and fetched thein from 15 miles away. Wood came from a near -by forest. Couard cut down trees and hired 17 ponies to drag them to his building -site. Meanwhile, he was getting ready his first shark -hunting boat, She was called the Dorado, Madame Couard made the net. I{nives to cut up the sharks Couard made from some old motor car springs; three hundred were made in this way and riveted on to wooden handles. Couard bought an old lorry. From time to time he removed the motor and let it run a mechanical saw. When he could afford a jeep, the lorry became a fire engine. In his first year, Couard caught sharks which yielded 40 tons of liver, which, in turn, yielded 20 tons of oil. In terms of vitamins, this was 400,000,000,000,000 of units. Today he has a fleet of nine shark hunting vessels, and he catches an average of 40 sharks a day' There is no danger of the supply running out, because there are approximate- ly 4;000,000 sharks in the world's oceans. Every morning the nine boats put to sea, all of then, incidentally, built in Coward's own shipyards. A vessel called the Vitamina leads the line, with the Thiof bringing up the rear. Between then', the boats carry 280 nets. 'When the signal is given, the boats fish over an area of 10 miles, In each boat is a crew of nine natives. The crews know their prey are about when they see shoals of fish leaping out of the water, fleeing front the sharks, of which there are a dozen kinds. Some of theta, like the whale shark, are harmless. But the hammer shark and particularly the tiger shark, a man-eater, are very dangerous. They have enorm- ous appetites and are always gorg- ing themselves. Curious things have been found in their stomachs. One had a torn -tont, half a donkey and a 'human foot. Even when a shark is mortally injured, Ile goes on eat- ing and dies with his mouth full. Other sharks will set on him at such a time, finish hint off and eat him —all but the head. Natives are not afraid of sharks. They say they'll eat white meat only. If a native's cork hat blows overboard, he will calmly dive after it. But he takes care to rub tar over the palms of his hands, be- cause they are whitish. After a shark is caught and killed, it is cut up and taken to the factory. The liver is extracted to produce oil. The flesh is boneless, Fresh, the meat is delicious and tastes ex- actly lilce tunna fish. Most of it, however, is salted, packed and dis- patched to various countries where it masquerades as salted cod. The less tasty portions are dried and ground dollen into an excellent manure. The fins are dispatched to China, where shark fin soup is a great delicacy. Teeth Make Jewelry The skins of the sharks are tan- ned and make a very pretty leather which has several varieties of pat- tern, according to the species of shark from which it is taken. The lining of the stomach is soft and durable and comparable to chamois leather. Inside the stomach of the shark are certain deposits which are extracted and sent to chemical laboratories. The jaws of some spe- cimens are often found in contin- ental brie -a -brat shops, Sharks' teeth are often used as costume jewelry, .It is not surprising, there- fore, that Couard's £300 has beet turned into a limited liability com- pany with a capital of 8100,000—i11 less than five years! Couard Makes his own anchors. Ile has a staff ashore of 120—cut- ting up sharks, salting, packing— besides mechanics, builders and carpenters. Between spring and autumn, the height of the season, Couard takes oil an additional 100 natives. Today he lives in a line nine - roomed house with his faultily. His nature laborers are paid the highest wages in French Africa. Tie builds French -type houses for tient and recently gave them a cinema—built after a particularly good day's shark fishing when his nine boats caught no fewer than 417 sharks, Front the staff manager's office: "Have you any references?" "Yes, but they're like any photographs— none of 1110111 does me justice." Saw Funny Side Of Everything .. Mark Twain died 40 years ago on April 21. There have been many humorous writers since then, but Mark Twain is still the greatest of them all. Ife evolved a new humour — the comic twist to a sentence that brought to light an unsuspected funny angle. He was frequently cheated by people he trusted; lost all of his money in wildcat schemes; but he never lost his sense of humour. He was on a trip abroad when a fellow traveller showed him a min- iature of his sister, and Mark Twain—his real name of Samuel Clemens—immediately fell in love with iter. Ile went back with the brother, met the girl, and without any of the usual preliminaries, lie started courting her, Olivia was not at all sure that she liked this shock -headed man with the queer clothes and uncon- ventional manners, but he grew on her and she eventually capitulated, They were married in 1870 and from then until she died in 1904, she was his other half, spiritually, mentally and physically. She helped him to work to a method and be- came absolutely indispensable to him. Mark Twain could see fun in everything. Once, when his wife was ill in bed, he pinned a note to a tree in the garden which read, "Notice to birds. Please don't sing too loudly—lady sleeping." Them at the bottoms he added a postscript, "Baritones come back later." When he became editor and part owner of "The Buffalo Express" he wrote iu his first editorial, "I shall not often meddle with politics because we have a political editor who is already excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect. I shall not write any poetry unless I con- ceive a spite against the subscrib- ers." His quiet humour is illustrated in this extract from "Innocesa Abroad." "Here and there on the front of the roadside inns we found huge coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs. It could not have dimin- ished their sufferings to be so un- couthly represented." When be went to England, the people tools him to their hearts and crowds followed hint from hall to hall. Everywhere he spoke, the place was packed to capacity, He would walk on to the plat- form with a pained expression on his face and begin by saying he was deeply hurt, that he was not a thief and that it was all a mistake. By this time the audience 'would be wondering what on earth he was talking about. Then he would tell theist that when he first reached London, the first thing Ile saw was a newspaper placard: "Marie Twain arrives in London." And under- neath, on the same sheet, "Ascot Cup Stolen." He enjoyed entertaining people and when lie became famous and the money was rolling in, he enter- tained lavishly. He was very keen on any kind of invention and be- cause he never lost his boyish in. tlocenee, he was taken in by alt sorts of people on the make, The final result was bankruptcy, When Americans heard that Ito was brenkr'upt, they were shocked, and there was talk of a national subscription. Many of his creditor's waived their claims, Marls Twain might have been an innocent dupe, but he wars also stub- born and he refused both the na- tional subscription and the waived. claims of his creditors. Ile would pay every penny in full He wrote feverishly. and the world gained "Tom Sawyer Abroad," "The American Claim- ant," "Puddin' Head Wilson," and an historical novel published under the nom de plume, called "The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arr." He undertook long lecture tours and by alinost ruining his health managed to clear his debts and leave enough to keep 13110 comfor- tably for the rest of his life. For nine years he was a happy man, but when, in 1904, his wife died, his wish to write died too, Then he was honored with the honorary degree of Doctor of Lit- erature at Orford University ail 10 was go pleased that for a snort time the old Mark Twain revived. On Christmas Eve, 1909, his fav- orite daughter had a seizure and died immediately. The old mao never recovered from the shock, He lived until April the following year and became rather eccentric. When people remonstrated ;with hien, he told them that when Hai- ley's Comet reappeared they would have no trouble for he would bet dead. And, strangely enough, hie prophecy was true. When Halley'e Comet did appear, he died. IT STILL PAYS! A traveller seeking advertise- ments for a country newspaper called on the village grocer, "Nothing doing," he was told. "Been established 80 years and never advertised." As lie turned to leave, the traveller said: "Excuse me, but what is that building on the hill-?" "Oh that," said the grocer, "is the village church." "Been there long?" asked the traveller, "Yes," said the grocer, "300 years." "Well," replied the traveller, "they still ring the bell." In Tulsa, Okla., sheriff's deputies watched a drunken pig lurch down the street. They followed it straigh' to the drain pipe of a still. Art Without Arms—Arnulf Erich Stegmann, crippled I,v paralysis, puts the finishing touches to a crayon drawing at his art publishing office in Deiseultofrtt, Cierntany. Now 38, Steg- manic was paralyzed at the age of two and never regained the rise of his arms. He taught himself to draw by holding a pencil in his mouth, and now employs other handicapped per- sons in his art linin, which he shares with an amputee partner. JITTER Au.RIGN1 ONE -MORE GAME OF"st1DE THE THIMBLE, RUT', RBMI:MAER T19513 TIM LAer ONE. S. ,+e a HM -SWELL IDEAL if1Etoses IT, W6") von PtAYANY - i> o O,IcJl775a, By Arthur Pointer FRED, WHAT HAVE YOU 'DONE t' NOTA LIGHT IN THE House WILL WORK! DADDY, WHERE ARE VOu2 OUCH! I BUMPED Nr0 THE KIRE r0N65 PIPElOWN, IK SHE FINDS US WE'LL mart: PIX WAtT'LL T GETTHAT MONK! x'* * a