Passing Events

PASSING EVENTS 1071 The Mystery of Life. Professor F. G. Donnan. lecturing before the British So- ciety for the Advancement of Science, at Glasgow, Scotland, Sept. 11, 1928, de- clared that the long-sought link between living and non-living matter "may" have been discovered in the form of certain minute organisms called bacteriophage. "If" it should prove that living matter has arisen on this planet from what is re- garded as non-living matter, where, the speaker asked, can we say that here is life and there is no life? He said further that it is almost certain that life originated in a primeval ocean, so that the image of Aphrodite arising from the sea is not with- out scientific justification. Granite Stake Presidency. Pres. Frank Y. Taylor and his counselors of the stake presidency. George S. Spencer and Hugh B. Brown, were honorably released, Sept. 9. 1928, and given a vote of appreciation of their work in the stake. Elder Hugh B. Brown was sustained as president, with Elders Marvin O. Ashton and Stayner Richards as counselors. President Rudger Clawson presided at the meetings. Pres. Brown is a native of Salt Lake, but resided in Canada from 1902 until 1927, when he returned to this city. While in Canada he entered a military training school and was graduated with a commission of major in the Canadian army, which position he held for three years at the battle front during the World War. Fate of Captain Amundsen. That Captain Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian explorer, and his French pilot. Rene Guilbaud, perished shortly after their departure from Tromsoe, Norway, June 18. 1928, for Spitzbergen, is considered proved by the finding of a float belong- ing to the sea plane, in which the journey was undertaken. The float was picked up by fishermen near Vaun island, of the Fugle group of islands. Aug. 31. and brought to Tromsoe the following day. Crushed to death. Seven persons lost their lives at the Pocatello field, Sept. 4, 1928, when the Super-Universal Fokker. six-passenger plane crashed in making a landing at 11:50 a. m. Two of the passengers showed signs of life when ex- tricated from the wreckage, but life had fled before the physicians arrived. The victims are: Paul V. Wheatley, pilot, Carleton hotel, Salt Lake; Jesse S. Rich- ards. Ogden, secretary Ogden chamber of commerce; Floyd A. Timmerman, Ogden. newspaper man; W. A. M'Lean, Spokane, representative Liberty Magazine; Mrs. Lawrence C. Schaper, Salt Lake; Carl Schaper, aged 6; Ramona Schaper, aged 1 8 months. The only witness of the ac- cident, Calvin Moser, the National Parks Airways representative at Pocatello, is re- ported to have said that the right wing of the big monoplane suddenly appeared to be lifted as if by a terrific gust of wind. The plane then was across the road and over the edge of the field and about thirty feet from the ground. The ship kept tip- ping, he said, until the left wing hit the ground, winging the plane over to the left, nosed into the ground and then in that position turned over several times, the body of the plane eventually striking the ground. In the final plunge and roll, the plane went into the ground nose foremost, implanting the motor in the ground. The force drove the heavy motor backward into the passenger cabin. None of the passengers had a chance to escape. The bodies were found in a huddled mass among the wreckage of motor and fuselage. Millions Starving. A report from Shanghai, China, Aug. 27, 1928, says that the population along the border of South Chihli and northeast Shangtung. number- ing a million and a half, is facing death from starvation. Drought and grasshop- pers, the report says, have ruined the crops in the famine district. The grasshoppers now form part of the diet of the stricken people. One village, it is said, was eating fried grasshoppers on a wholesale scale, the insects being the only food of many houses. Others are trying to sustain life by eating hard cakes made from bark, cotton chaff and grass. Disease, resulting from improp- er food, is rapidly gaining sway in the district. Across the country at a terrific speed. Art Goebel and Harry Tucker, on Aug. 20. 1928, completed a non-stop flight be- tween Los Angeles and New York, 2,700 miles, in 18 hours 58 minutes, making an average of 150 miles an hour. In 1924.

1072 IMPROVEMENT ERA a year after the MacReady-Kelley flight, Lieutenant Russell Maughan of Salt Lake City made the east-west flight, with five stops for refueling, but he was two hours and fifty minutes slower than Goebel and Tucker. Goebel, who won the Dole race to Hawaii last year, was at the controls all the way across the continent. Tucker was financial backer of the flight and rode as passenger. Destructive Tornadoes. On Sept. 18, 1928, it was reported from Miami, Fla., that 139 persons had lost their lives in a tropical storm that swept southern Florida, Sept. 1 6, and that the property loss amounted to 25 million dollars. Disastrous storms were also reported from portions of Nebraska, Illinois, South Dakota and Wis- consin, Sept. 13 and 14. The south- eastern district of Rockford, 111., bore the brunt of the Illinois tornado, which swept north into Wisconsin and along Lake Superior. Hundreds of buildings were demolished in Nebraska. Among the dead were several school pupils. Porto Rico was also swept by a hurricane, which left destruction in its path. The American Red Cross hastened to send relief to the stricken population. It is reported that 700,000 people were rendered destitute. George B. Harvey, former ambassador to Great Britain, died suddenly at his home in Dublin, N. H., August 20, of a heart attack, 64 years of age. Col. Harvey is credited with having launched Woodrow Wilson on the political sea on which he was wafted to the White House, although afterwards he became a bitter enemy of Pres. Wilson. He is also said to have had a large share in the selection of Warren G. Harding for the presidency, and the anti-Wilson policy. His reward for his political services was appointment of am- bassador to London. Harvey started his career on the Springfield Republican. Later he was on the staff of the Chicago Daily News. Then he turned to the strongly Democratic New York World, of which he became managing editor, leaving the World in 1893 to become president of several electric railways which he built. Later he bought the North American Re- view, which he edited almost continuous- ly until he sold it in October, 1926. Harvey also was president and editor of Harper's Weekly. Are they also lost!' Grave anxiety is felt for Bert Hassell and Parker Cramer, aviators who left Rockford, 111., Aug. 16, 1928, for a flight to Stockholm, Sweden, via Greenland. According to a dispatch dated Chicago, Aug. 20, they had then not been heard from since Sunday morn- ing at 4 o'clock, Chicago daylight saving time, and it was thought that they, per- haps, had been forced down somewhere in Greenland. On Sept. 2, the two aviators were reported safe and well in Camp Lloyd, Mt. Evans, Greenland. The Kellogg Peace Pact Signed. Rep- resentatives of fifteen nations on Aug. 27, 1928, affixed their signatures to the Kellogg-Briand peace treaty, in Paris, France, with impressive ceremonies. The signatures were, Kellogg for America, Cushendun for Britain, New Zealand and India, Briand for France, Stresemann for Germany, Hymanns for Belgium, Zaleski for Poland, Benes for Czecho-Slovakia, Mackenzie-King for Canada, Cosgrave for the Irish Free State, Menzoni for Italy, Uchida for Japan, MacLachlan for Aus- tralia and Smuts for South Africa. The representatives of Germany were the first to sign; then followed the other represen- tatives in alphabetical order of the names of the respective countries, as written in French. To suppose that the treaty makes war impossible would be to over-rate its importance; for no mere agreement can do that; but it makes the aggressor among nations a promise breaker, almost a per- jurer, and certainly an outlaw. It makes limitations of armaments easier, and thus strengthens the sentiment of good will generally, and it establishes a new prin- ciple of international law — that aggressive war, which is every war, is illegal, and must be dealt with by other nations as such. It is, moreover, as the French Pres- ident Doumergue expresses it, an act which "responds to the innermost longings of all mankind," and for that reason it rep- resents an irresistible force operating in ac- cordance with the plan of the Almighty for the salvation of mankind.