The Charlotte News

Saturday, December 17, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "The Master Crook" gives us yet more on the knight-errant scam-man, Coster/Musica. Oh, he would've gone straight if only that last scheme had gone a little better. Then he would've given half the profits to all the poor little orphans and widows of the world and made all safe for everyone, even Tiny Tim.

We also provide a psychoanalytic report, sounding in the classic vein of the Oedipal, by Heywood Broun re Lindbergh. We tend, ourselves, to regard the whole matter of Lindbergh a little more simplistically than to cast it in the high drama of Freud. Rather, we think simply that Junior was plainly and simply an uneducated man who happened to like to fly aeroplanes. And, without doubt, he was good at it, and had trained his adrenals to stimulate him just properly enough to withstand great stretches of monotony.

He wasn't, however, a stupid fellow, just an uneducated one. There's a difference.

A stupid fellow has no ability to see; an uneducated one does but does not develop it fully because at heart he is a lazy, overly imaginative fellow, given to flights of fancy with his see and thus derring-do to try to attract remarkable hero worship, all engendered in his youth by reading one too many Hardy Boy-type phantasy stories, all the while issuing the characteristic, "Aw shucks, 'tweren't nothin'," in the ingratiation stage of his triumphant landing, primping himself the while for the fuzzy-poppers.

We say he wasn't stupid because he helped to design his aeroplane and had the innovative good sense to replace his windscreen with a fuel tank, quite counter-intuitively, not only keeping the weight balanced off the wings or tail, where others had improvidently sought to store too much, with disastrous and usually fatal consequence, but also, and moreover, to keep from being hypnotized by unending views of sea and sky over 3,000 miles and 27 hours, sky and sea, sea and sky, a side-glance much the easier to avoid the daze of the waves rushing by the face.

And he had a sufficiently active mind that he could employ himself on a mental plane without dozing for those 27 hours, no mean feat. So, we conclude, he was by no means stupid.

But, for all that, the man was ultimately also a bit of a Bottom by definition, for he hadn't the understanding of his own limitations of education, enough sense to realize that his fame could be used and manipulated by the worst forces in the world for their own self-aggrandizement, cajoling him the while with plaudits and garlands and ribbons and smiles, the Weavers making him in the end not merely a Bottom but also withal the resplendent Ass of the Dream as well.

But, anyway, before we get to that article by Heywood, as well as the little additional filler following, from Statesville, on Hitler's phone number, we thought we would, in keeping with the story of Lindbergh, and the more on Coster/Musica, return to the report on The Strange Death of President Harding, installment no. 2, the last of it. It got so good we could hardly resist finishing it and scarcely more resist telling you all about that which we learned.

So here the remainder of our report:

It appears, of special interest to North Carolinians, that Gaston B. Means, Hero of the Tale, wrongly accused of wrongdoing while only doing his dirty job at the behest of the First Lady--someone had to do it, after all, and no better at the trade than Gaston, by his own humble admission--hails from Concord, N.C., himself; so no wonder his wife hung out there while Gaston did his time in the Pen. His daddy was a well-known lawyer thereabouts who knew the Cannons and, when he had a big case, which was usual, says Gaston, he would send his ten-year old son down to the general store where all the old burghers of the community hung about the potbelly, drinking in the day's events, while whittling away the hours. And Gaston would take it all in, including talk on the latest case, impart it to his dad, who then could use it either to challenge desultory jurors or dissembling witnesses, all to the advantage of pop and son, as son got his first training thereby at being a crack investigator, leading on ultimately to his most cracked case of all, investigating the President of the United States. Particularly, his love life, his, hush-hush and on the Q.T. love life, no less.

Well, in that latter capacity, it seems that Gaston learns that Madam X, that soothsayer, told Florence, the First Lady, that she would outlive the President and that she was the "Child of Destiny". Gaston could not understand what this meant and uselessly plied the Lady for more information, but she, being of iron will and determined spirit and icy, penetrating stares, her husband being after all her only hobby, herself by her own self-analogy the new Josephine to the new Napoleon in the White House, (she no doubt would have enjoyed that Mr. Elly's entire folio for sale mentioned below), told him instead only that she had it in mind to protect her husband from the brow-beating, (and brows big he had to beat), by the likes of Harry Daugherty, A.G., who had Warren by the short ones because, it seems--and here's where it gets juicy--of a little Miss named Nan Britton, a tow-headed trollop, a slatternly strumpet, of low wit and lacking in moral fortitude, says Flo to Gaston, who as a young girl, wearing no less début de siècle mini-skirts, was accustomed to hang about the Marion Star run by Warren and methodically taunt the man old enough to be her grandfather with such eye-fluttering flattery that Warren, said rumor, without any truth thereto insists Flo, eventually succumbed to her temerarious, amorous advances--and perhaps even at some time, more, or so said the printer's devil to Gaston during his subsequent investigation trying on behalf of the Lady to dispel these scurrilous falsehoods, that, as the devil stayed behind to clean up the print, allowed to befall him the vantaged coign of peering over the transom, yes, to see the future President, handsome, while still small-town editor, patting the 15-year old Nan right upon her head, as 'twere--all says Mr. Means, anyway, in his book told to Mrs. May Dixon Thacker.

And so, you see, with such patting, or scurrilous rumors of same, having gone forth at such tender years, notwithstanding that many in town swore Nan to be the picture of wholesome Marion, Mr. Daugherty had the pats on Warren, thus to control him forever, and thus came the intent to make him President so that Mr. Daugherty and his clique of crooks could control the wealth of the country, including most especially, as they accomplished, the transfer from the Navy to the Department of Interior the oil lands of Teapot Dome and Elk Hills such that they could take payment from private concerns to afford those private concerns leases of these lands for drilling to afford all the motorcars to go zoom. And all because of a little pat on little Nan's head--or at least rumor to that effect.

But there's more, and far more sinister doings, too.

For, Gaston, being thus employed by the imperious Flo, who Gaston believes is nine years the senior of Warren, though in actuality only five, and Flo being clearly to Gaston not the least bit given to troilism, decides that he must accommodate the Lady's every wish--for she is the First Lady, and probably, according to Madam X, most definitely, the Child of Destiny. For who else could she be if not Josephine incarnate?

So, Gaston then pursues his mark, the letters! Always, the letters. And Nan, Gaston found in his letabund pursuit, had plenty from Warren, spanning well back into a period of plentiful indiscretion. So much so that Gaston discovered that Nan's game had been to be quick and, once done being quick, pretty dame quickly claim Warren as papa. Thus, to hold him at her whimsy. And, meanwhile, Daugherty and the gang continued to harangue Warren's independent executive will, bending it to their own, while enriching themselves accordingly, including, said the Lady to Gaston, she thought, giving Warren bad stock advice so that, in order to recoup his losses, he would enable Daugherty to investigate Sherman Anti-trust Act violations of specified innocent companies, to wit, to get their stock tanked as the gang pocketed the resultant loot on insider trading information. And even so far back as Marion, as Flo suspects, Daugherty set Nan to the mini-skirted chase to manipulate Warren the while.

All of this illegal booty, says Means, millions and millions of it, is tracked and distributed about by the nefarious dry goods clerk, Jess Smith, from Marion, brought to Washington as Man-Friday to Daugherty, with a peculiar relationship going on between them at the Wardman Park Hotel suite which both men occupied, (remembering that Daugherty found Warren's looks to be of compellingly Presidential timber). Well, all of this illegal booty was being distributed about by this fellow Smith. Smith set Gaston up like royalty, chauffeured limousine always at his disposal, $1,000 per month Washington townhouse, lavish meal tabs, road expenses at the finest hotels, etc., though Gaston earned only $89.33⅓ per week on his government salary. All maintained from the slush fund, "to pay off campaign debts" (which, come to think of it, hath a familiar later gang, that is, ring-a-ling to it). (All of which begs the question, incidentally, as to how the Government paid Gaston either ⅔ of a copper after two weeks' pay or ⅓ of same after a month's, especially when a ha'-penny would do, a question we intend to resolve by demanding F.O.I. from G.S.A. on all this stuff, and double-quick, as we find ourselves most remarkably pregnant with insouciant curiosity on it all. Aren't you? After all, it is illegal to cut up money. In fact, if you, too, wish to get to the bottom of this long-standing quagmire of deceit, send your contributions to the Free Gaston B. Means Fund, c/o New Teapot Drilling Hills, Olde Frontier Deal, Ak. 00000. Sorry, we only accept $1,000 contributions, cash only. All widows and orphans of the party will be provided for adequately by your contributions. Rest assured.)

So, Gaston did his dirty work, for someone had to do it. And he came up with the letters from Nan to Warren and Warren to Nan, supplied them reluctantly to a demanding Flo who read them bitterly and demanded justice. She would use these letters now, she told Gaston, to control every aspect of Warren's life from that point forth, and thus no longer would he be subject to the vagaries of Daugherty and the gang, or even Nan, and thus the Crown, that is, the Republic would be thus saved by Josephine. And Warren would have his second term, in order thus to make a Big Busy Mess of everything all over again.

As she reads, her outrage at Warren is palpable and disturbing, says Means. A few days later, she tells Warren all about her discovery, whereupon she summons Gaston to the WH, Warren enters the scene and shakes his finger at Gaston, has him summarily fired from his $89.33⅓ per week job at B.I., though not from his lavish surroundings supplied by Smith and the gang, warning Gaston that he will be indicted for this roguish activity of investigating the President. Gaston blithely tells us that he is loyal only to his client, the Lady, and thus politely proceeds to treat the President like a grocery clerk and departs the WH cavalierly, never to return save after the President's death a few months afterward, this now being spring, 1923. Yet, despite being fired so summarily, within a few weeks, the President realized his mistake, that he needed the crack investigative skills of Gaston to combat the vagaries of the gang, for someone was now leaking vital incriminating information to the press, and the President therefore turned to Gaston to find out who it was, principal focus being on Colonel Darwin, (maybe his monkey, too).

We also learn along the way, incidentally, that Gaston had his hand in many other things at the behest of the President. For instance, once there was a party, a sort of stag affair, where some dancing girls arrived, and as the table was hastily cleared so that they might dance upon the it, a jug was hurled carelessly by one of the stags, identity unimparted to Gaston, hitting one of the dancing girls in the head, causing her severe trauma and coma and requiring intensive medical care and surgery. Gaston was called in to take care of the matter to alleviate fuss, for it so happened that among the stags present was Warren, leaning dolefully upon the mantelpiece when Gaston arrived upon the scene. We never find out what happened to the hapless lass, for Gaston never bothers himself to find out what happened. She was simply and quietly put into a hospital, bills quietly paid, and forgotten.

Also, we learn that Gaston, upon a professor having dug up in Warren's lineage a "Negro taint", (spelt this time thusly, probably to distinguish properly between the former usage, "negro", referring then to a person employed by Gaston as a "roper" to obtain advantage over a young lady who was the maid of "Mrs. Whiteley" so as to gain access to her apartment to procure those critical letters from Flo to Madam X, and this politer, more appropriate usage presently to refer to the alleged blood taint in the President), had procured all of these books in print, the printing plates to be used to print even more of these tainted books, and placed them all in a boxcar in Ohio, had it steamed down the tracks to Washington, and in one big bonfire in the backyard of his lavish townhouse supplied by Smith, did burn and destroy otherwise all of this tainted evidence of taint of the Negro.

Gaston, you can see, kept very busy.

Anyway, Flo told Gaston, this Concord boy made good in White House royalty and laundry sniffing, that she and her husband had been having "terrible scenes" since these revelations from the Nan letters. In one, Warren had exclaimed:

"I will tell the truth. The exact truth. There can be no jury of twelve American men or women who would send me to jail. But even a jail--a prison, would be peace compared to this! I am no criminal. Let them impeach! God knows--I'm sick and tired of it all. I'll be glad to have it over. Glad! Glad!... No, I am not crazy! That too-- would be a relief:--to go crazy! If they impeach--then--then do you know what I'll do? Do you want to know? I'll tell you! The world is a big place,--and--I'll take my child and go away. No one shall keep me from my child. You shall not. You hear me. You shall not." [Emphasis supplied.] (Well, too bad they didn't have any of that on dictaphone record. They'd still be playing it on the late, late news for us--the little Teapot Tapes.)

So, in response to this disconsulate harangue intending apparent dissoluteness and peripatetic prodigalism, Flo told Gaston that she had determined that she was going to take a trip with Warren to Alaska and Vancouver and San Francisco, upon which trip she would reacquire control of Warren's affairs, much as she had while he was publishing the newspaper in Marion--yet we thought..., oh well, banish the thought--and thereby fulfill her role as Child of Destiny, and also the other prediction by Madam X that she would expire only after did Warren.

All of which curiously then turned out to occur as Warren, indeed, before disputed reports of whether his doctor, Colonel Sawyer, or Mrs. Harding was last with him, and before Mrs. Harding refused both a customary death mask and an autopsy for the late President, suffered either stroke or heart attack suddenly in that Palace suite, the evening of August 2, 1923. Dr. Sawyer, whom, Gaston relates, told him that he regretted greatly having left the President alone like that with the First Lady, regretted it greatly, would die also in the presence of the First Lady, the Child of Destiny, in September, 1924 at his farm in Ohio, as in fact not only was reported by Gaston but The New York Times as well (as we find from the ample appendix). And then the First Lady--who cryptically, says Gaston, told him, that it all had to be done according to the plan, to save her husband from humiliation of impeachment had he died just a day later, and that there were certain things she could tell no one, not even so trusted and reliable a friend and confidante as Gaston--, the Child of Destiny, died also at the Sawyer Farm in Ohio on November 21, 1924.

Gaston impels us as reader of his little story to the inevitable conclusion that somewhere between the doctor, the gang, and the Lady of Destiny, Warren met with foul end, whether through complicity with his own contrivance or that strictly by agency from without, we don't exactly know. Clearly, if his quotes are at all accurate from the Doctor and the Lady, the only logical inference to draw is that they quite mercifully killed him to protect him from the sordid mess coming imminently forth on Nan, the Dome and all the other stuff, maybe even ultimately the taint.

Thus, we are told poignantly by Mr. Means of Concord, son of a prominent lawyer trained early on at the fine art of dissimulation, to be carefully distinguished from lying, came the Strange Death of President Harding and the merciful end of his term as Chief Executive, to be succeeded by the more staid New England schoolmarm personality of Silent Cal Coolidge. (Cal, incidentally, though Gaston makes no mention of him at all, made a point of taking lots of naps each day, to stay out of trouble. Would it were that Warren perhaps had followed the same pursuit more often than those for which at least it is ascribed to him that he perhaps did pursue, whether the transom peerage by the devil in prints from darkness has any truth or no.)

Thus endeth our report on this strange little book. We were correct in our understanding from the beginning of its ultimate moral. So, again: Be careful of that for which you get soothed, especially by anyone calling herself Madam X. She is probably an X alright, and of manifold activities.

As to poor Gaston, who, as Cash pointed out a few days earlier, wound up dying in jail in December, 1938, while serving his 15-year sentence in the Lindbergh ransom hoax affair, poor Gaston never, tellingly, bothers to tell us precisely what it was for which he was sent to the Atlanta Pen in 1925 for three years, only that it was the result of Daugherty seeking to shut him up, though Gaston spilled the beans to Congress anyway, getting Daugherty indicted and out of government, though not convicted. Yet, that which remains troubling in Gaston's tale, though full of truth we don't doubt it is, is that we also have it intimated time and time again by Gaston that all the principals in the matter, President, First Lady, Doctor Sawyer, Smith, and a whole host of other functionaries in the Daugherty gang, suffered strange and incoherent deaths, Smith, for instance, by pistol suicide in Daugherty's apartment, when Smith was known to be afraid of pistols. Yet, Means lived so long to tell his tale and even exit prison, and even re-enter prison this second time, apparently at least, strictly by his own contrivance, without influence from Daugherty who was long since out of Washington power by then, and then didn't die until 1938, during the term of Franklin Roosevelt, who was the Vice-Presidential candidate with Mr. Cox who Warren and Cal soundly trounced in 1920 for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Why didn't Daugherty silence Gaston then also by the handy means employed on Smith, the others? That Gaston never quite explains to satisfaction. Perhaps, it was because he was from Concord and his father knew the Predestined Towel Kings.

Or, maybe the gang did ultimately get him in prison, with that mysterious "white powder" of which Gaston tells us Smith is always talking fearfully as the means by which certain and undetectable death by poison would occur to anyone who ran afoul of the gang's motives tending toward self-enrichment through manipulation of government.

Perhaps, the German Government, for whom Means worked, recall, during WWI, asked him to do more and he refused, Nazis being against his scruples, and so they got him.

Or perhaps he simply keeled over, tired from telling so many tales of woe and investigating so much dirty laundry since he was ten, not to mention the burden of having to be courier for so many hundred thousand dollar transactions across time.

Whatever the case, we are certainly glad that no such things as that imparted in this little book have ever again been heard of in Washington since those bad old days of Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties, producing thus the need for the BI becoming the FBI to get the bootleggers, from whom Gaston avers to us candidly and undoubtedly truthfully he would regularly receive as bagman payola in a hotel room at the Vanderbilt in NYC, (or at other hotels in The Loop, St. Louis, Cinci, Motor City, North Beach), as the bootleggers dropped their weekly $1,000 bills into a fishbowl, filling to $55,000 to $65,000 per diem haul, seven million over time, to insure the continuing operation without BI interference of their bootlegging rackets. All, of course, for the payment of party campaign expenditures. But who avers that such a thing ever occurred but this pitiful Gaston B. Means of Concord, N.C.? Such inscrutable things are not to be believed at all, as we well know all operations of the government, the B.I., and the Justice Department were regularly found henceforth to be as clean as a hound's tooth, from Teapot Dome, forward.

Well, we do go on. Again, thus endeth that tale--and no doubt forever and for good. It endethed at the Palace in St. Francis-co, August 2, 1923. Sine die.

By Heywood Broun

Colonel Lindbergh has been fervently praised and bitterly criticized by his countrymen. Probably no time has he been understood. Even men who have been much in his company do not profess to know him well. And yet one rather plausible explanation can be found for the strange career of the Colonel. However, it does necessitate the use of a phrase and a theory which have been used so lavishly that they are currently outmoded. There was a day when that good old friend "an inferiority complex" served to explain the problem of every individual. Psychology was made simple, and all men were brothers as shareholders in a universal ailment.

Life is more complex than that, and we all grew weary of being taken in by each other's wishful thinking. But in the case of Colonel Lindbergh I would like to take the old phrase down from the shelf and send it out for another airing.

HIS FATHER WAS FAMOUS AS A PROGRESSIVE

Charles A. Lindbergh, the Colonel's father, was born in Sweden, but he came to America when he was a year old, and he is still remembered as one of the earliest and most valiant pioneers in progressive politics. He touched with prophetic vision certain issues which are under violent discussion today.

More than twenty years ago he made a speech in which he said, "Politics and business, we are told, should be kept separate. The wealth grabbers told us that... but the wealth grabbers did not keep their business out of politics. When we get down to 'brass tacks' we will discover that business and politics should go hand in hand and should not be separated."

The elder Lindbergh's platform included "a Federal financial system that is independent of private monopoly control" and Government ownership of transportation systems and telegraph and telephone companies.

As a boy Colonel Lindbergh vastly admired his father. Indeed, he undertook to take him by airplane to a political rally in Minnesota some 25 years ago. The plane cracked up in a farmer's ditch, and that was Mr. Lindbergh's first and last flight. His son, of course, did continue to maintain an interest in aviation.

AND HE HAS REACTED AGAINST HIS PARENT

But the flying Lindbergh must have realized from the beginning that he could never hope to be as great a man as his father. No opportunities for important pioneering such as the older Lindbergh had done were open to him. And so, as frequently happens, Colonel Lindbergh in approaching maturity made no attempt to emulate his father. Instead, as a sort of self-defense, he took precisely the opposite road. The very fact that his father had been a radical moved Colonel Lindbergh to espouse in all things the conservative point of view. And this tendency has grown upon him.

It began with a mild statement in support of Herbert Hoover for the Presidency and has developed into close contact with Chamberlain and the Cliveden school of politics. To cap the climax, Colonel Lindbergh accepted a decoration from Hitler, and it hangs about his neck like the albatross of the Ancient Mariner. All these things Colonel Lindbergh did in his retreat from reality. But even though he flew the Atlantic alone, he cannot get away from the voice within himself which cried out, "You're not the man your father was." And when fate casts an individual for a tragic role it can turn the iron in his soul in the most savage manner.

His present status is more punishing than that which afflicted him in youth. The New Yorker recently called attention to the psychic significance of the Colonel's concern with the artificial heart. And his unconscious mind urges him as ardently as ever to escape realities.

Again his ego is tortured because today the world identifies Colonel Lindbergh merely as a highly competent flier who happens to be the husband of one of the most sensitive prose stylists now writing the English language.

And so I think America should feel sorry for Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.

(Statesville Daily)

Chancellor Adolf Hitler's telephone number in Berlin is 116191, in case you want to call him up sometime to inquire about his health or his latest tirade against the Jew.

The phone rate from Statesville to Berlin would run in the neighborhood of $24 for three minutes' conversation, and in case it takes more than three minutes to tell Adolf what you think of him, the cost will be eight dollars for each additional minute. There would be a little Federal tax of 20 cents, but you wouldn't mind that. The schedules are for conversations between 4:30 and 7 P.M. If you can bear to wait, you can save about six dollars.

The only trouble about the whole thing is that profanity is prohibited.

This week the Federal Trade Commission issued an order against one Walter C. Elly, of New York, trading as the Postal Company, ordering him to cease and desist from representing that the books he peddled would enable their little readers,

The books in question are "Aunt Sally's Policy Players' Dream Book," and "Napoleon's Dream Book," and "How to Win a Husband"--the last a tome containing the sage advice to the gals "not to sit back and let the other girl have him."

It is disquieting to think on, and plainly, we believe, against public policy. Consider, for instance, how many people are going to run nuts from having to decide for themselves, out of all the millions of possible combinations, what number is going to win the butter and eggs. And as for girl friends, it is appalling to contemplate what this is bound to do to their morale--to foresee them, in their turn, heading for the crazy-hatch as they try to make up their minds whether to risk all on their unaided charms or gloomily succumbing to doubt, to "sit back and let the other girl have him."

"To take the guesswork out of life!" What an order, mates. Try to imagine a world in which you'd have to wait until the evening of Jan. 2 to make up your mind that Duke is good to beat USC by 7 points!

The Administration is reported in a quandary over the appointment of a Federal judge in Boss Hague's private preserve. Two men are under consideration--one a Hague man, the other an anti. The Administration, it is said, yearns to appoint the anti by way of rebuking Boss Hague for his methods. But alas, the Department of Justice, which investigates the records of such candidates, has come toting in a report that the Hague man is much the better of the two!

We were going to say that New Jersey must be dreadfully hard up for judge timber, on the theory that no man who could conceivably be reckoned fit for a judgeship or any other position of public responsibility could possibly be working hand in glove with Hague. But on second thought--we suddenly remembered that the Administration itself has been working hand in glove with Hague. If it has developed any discernible will to rebuke him, it is only since his candidate for the Senate got overwhelmed in the November election. The Hague has held and still holds his seat as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, obviously with the consent of the President, who could have him removed for a nod. More than that, in this very election New Dealers, obviously with the blessings of Mr. Roosevelt, went into New Jersey to campaign for the Hague candidate who got beat!

So we had better haul in our horns. For, far be it from us to suggest, even by indirection, that Franklin Roosevelt is unfit for a post of public responsibility.

The railroads of the Southeast have decided to give up the two-cent basic passenger fare which they put into effect in November, 1937, and to go back to the cent and a half rate they used from 1933 until last year.

The day before yesterday, the president of a Middle Western road came out with the declaration that he had concluded that the salvation of the railroads lies in reducing, not only passenger rates but freight rates as well.

And two weeks ago even the Eastern roads, the most Bourbonish of all, announced that they plan to cut their basic passenger fair from two and one-half cents a mile, the figure they demanded and got from the ICC last year, for the holidays and throughout the term of the World's Fair at New York, and rumor immediately added that the reduction would in fact probably be permanent.

The evidence gathers, in short, that the railroads are (1) getting tired of hauling the empties (the earnings of class 1 railroads for the first ten months of 1938 were $337,758,798 as compared with $369,558,376 the same period in 1937, when the rates were lower); and (2) discovering that, for all the clever arguments they have put up against it, and however bitter it may be for them to swallow, the rule that runs, "the higher the fare the fewer the passengers," is an inexorably sound one.

Site Ed. Note: The Chaco War mentioned below, with putative connection to financing by Musica, occurred between Bolivia and Paraguay from 1932 through 1935 over the right of Bolivia to traverse land claimed by Paraguay to the Paraguay River to transport oil to sea trading nations--guess who?--after oil was discovered in the theretofore useless lands of the barren Chaco Boreal, a land ostensibly belonging to Bolivia but which had been settled for over a hundred years by Paraguayans, settlement enforced by the Paraguayan military forces, evicting native Bolivians. All to no great controversy until the discovery of the cursed mineral. Then, 100,000 died, until the two sides got tired of the blood, and Bolivia got their freeway via the river while Paraguay retained rights to most of the Gran Chaco. There are German colonies today in Gran Chaco which extends over parts of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Wonder why that would be. Historically, other than the oil discovery, only two primary economic activities occur in this region, the harvesting of a plant which produces tannin for leather tanning, and the growing of cotton, both useful commodities in wartime for trading, of course, as was any profitable commodity, probably including Argentine beef bound for Mexico. ABC.

Incidentally, Waterbury, Connecticut is about 15 miles up the road from Wallingford, site of Choate School. Just another strange coincidence, perhaps. Maybe like the mention above, this date, of the line on the upcoming Rose Bowl game, where someone met...

Mr. Philip Musica, alias William Johnson, alias F. Donald Coster, president of the $87,000,000 McKesson & Robbins Co., turns out to have been one of the prize crooks of history. Even Ponzi of Boston wasn't in his class.

Son of a Neapolitan barber, coming to this country in the steerage at six, he was to spend his life thieving huge sums, without ever paying the law any real penalty. Twice, indeed, he was convicted for grand larceny, but President Taft pardoned him the first time, and a considerate judge suspended sentence the second time. On the heels of that he turned up, amazingly, as a special investigator for the New York Attorney-General. And then he came back. Came back not by fleeing to distant parts, but by returning boldly to his old haunts, shaving off his beard, and changing his name and whole personality. Daily, men who had known him as Musica saw him as Coster and never dreamed who he was. He borrowed millions from banks; he became a figure of international intrigue, perhaps financing the war in the Grand Chaco, and smuggling guns to the Spanish Government; he got his company accepted for listing on the stock exchange, sold his dubious stocks to thousands of unsuspecting investors; he invented a scheme to defraud the town of Waterbury, Conn., of a million dollars; he gathered his brothers boldly around him and paid them enormous salaries; he coolly made away with $18,000,000--and not a man ever suspected him until his affairs got in such shape that the SEC had to be called in!

And--finally Coster killed himself--killed himself, we suspect, because it had been found out that Coster, the man of position, was only a crook named Musica. It is Musica, not Coster, that they'll be burying.

For a long time, the University of North Carolina, possessing all the while the earmarks of greatness, rocked along modestly like many another Southern state university. Then--it must have been about 1913 or 1914--Edward Kidder Graham was made its president. The University began to branch out. The Legislature began to loosen up and Chapel Hill began to grow.

In the few years of his life remaining, Ed Graham made something exceptional of the institution. The war both helped and hurt. Afterwards, a psychology professor named Chase continued to chuck the Legislature under its several chins, and appropriations came forth in the style to which Chapel Hill had become accustomed. Students flocked to the place, the faculty growing meanwhile in size and distinction. The University was made.

The history of Queens College somewhat parallels that of its older brother. For years it functioned as a boarding and day school for young ladies, mostly of the Presbyterian faith. In 1921 Dr. William H. Frazer became its president, and Queens' horizon began to broaden. It qualified as an A-grade college. It absorbed Chicora. The church board, much as had the Legislature, loosened up, and an endowment began to accumulate.

In those seventeen years Dr. Frazer has worked miracles at the erstwhile boarding school. But he is ready now to retire from active administration and to devote his time, probably, to the accumulation of a greater endowment. And Queens needs a Chase to take up where its Graham, which is to say its Frazer, is leaving off.

To its presidency has been invited Dr. William Taliafero Thompson who, everybody agrees, is made for the place. And while he decides, the college board is sitting on the anxious bench. They know they've found their man. Their only uncertainty is can they get him?