1937-05-20 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL, MAY 20, 1937.

Cecil

B. de Mille

Says These Were

The 10 Biggest Fools In History!

manu-

And he should know. The great film producer has spent 25 years digging, into history for spectacular cinema stories,

"If these books agree with the Koran they are superfluous and need not be preserved; if they dis-

are agree, they

pernicious and -ought to be destroyed.”.

I have an unnamed rajah för NUMBER SIX on my list.

STAND in danger of hell-fire. When Thomas Carlyle sent his Says the Bible: "Whosover completed draft för Volume One of shall say, Thou fool" is flirting his French Revolution to Mill for with damnation. Yet I'm about to expert annotation, this housemaid indict for you the ten biggest fools garnered the handwritten of all time!

script from the table and tossed it For a quarter of a century I have as trash into the fire.

Gaza, bound him with brass, and been digging into archives looking Mill, torn with rage over what

set him to work grinding grain in for historical spectacles for the had happened, pressed upon Carlyle the prison house.

He was a far greater fool than Esau, who sold his birthright for a a £100, and the writer began again Samson is my idea of a perfect few notable fools. And my staff of the long tedious months of hard

mess of pottage; a more vicious ass fool, but my choice NUMBER than Belshazzar, who threw a wild human "bloodhounds” has ferreted work.

Scores of the lists before me in- THREE is almost his equal and party and got plastered while his clude Napoleon.

films. I have discovered quite

out scores.

Still I wanted more.

virtually for the same reason.

This is Louis XV.

I called upon university presid- The charge: He tossed away anI ents, historians, scientists, doctors, empire by an ill-timed march on mistress practically run his gov- his closest friend in the bedcham- lawyers, clergymen.

Moscow with more than 650,000

They all gave me lists.

*

men.

I admit that the Moscow fiasco was foolish, but it represents but one silly act in the life of a man

He was silly enough to let his

ernment for seven years and sow the seeds of the French Revolution.

Great fool NUMBER FOUR is

The most cordially hated yet by who, starting with nothing but a far the most popular nominee for puny body and a determined will, Bishop Theophilus, who destroyed a fool's disgrace is Judas Iscariot. made himself the greatest soldier

as a "pagan monument" vast sec- The charge: He sold out Jesus of Nazareth for a little more than £. My fool NUMBER TWO is Sam- tions of the once famed library at

of

his century.

Alexandria.

That vast collection was the re-

enemies ravaged the country,

This rajah, inordinately pleased at the glory of his bride, secreted

ber so that the visitor, too, might feast his eyes for a fleeting moment upon this transcending prize.

The result. A murdered rajah and an abducted queen!

and

Galileo was compel don

Great fool NUMBER SEVEN, in

quisitor, who forced-Galileo to re my judgment, was the Grand In-

But I contend that Judas was no son.

cant publicly the theory that the fool. Judas, like the Bishop whe I charge him with the very words

sun was an immovable centuries later ordered Jeanne which are supposed to have been pository of the rarest of culture, that the earth moved.. d'Arc to be burned, was a knave. spoken at the time of his escapade: and the missing link in the chain of

A knave isn't a fool; he's a deli- "He lost his eyes because he fol- world history.

his books, for the sale of them was And after Theophilus performed prohibited. berate criminal

lowed them too often"-followed Consider now a typical genuine them until at last Delilah called in his outrage against knowledge in He was vehemently suspected of fool: NUMBER ONE in my group the lords of the Philistines, collect A.D. 389, prize fool NUMBER FIVE heresey' and required to recite once of ten "champions”—and I don't ed the cash in advance, and lulled a Mahomedan official, Caliph Omar, a week for three years the seven

Samson to sleep on her knees while completely annihilated what

was penitential psalms. gathered This prize fool was a woman; a the boys

around and left of the library in the year 641. The sentence was signed by He ordered burnt the priceless geven cardinals, but did not receive maid in the household of John' shaved his head. Stuart Mill some hundred years

Then they gouged-out his eyes, scrolls with this asinine explana- customary papal ratification. ago.

took him down to a place called tion:——

even know her name!

If You're

Figures Crazy" Be Careful!

Do you figure out the number of

Do

times you blink?

The number of hairs you from your head each day?

lose

How far you walk during an aver- age day's work?

This statistics business is gettng hot!

You may finish by counting the hairs on your chin and that's a dangerous sign, writes

DENIS SULLIVAN

He tells you a lot of facts about yourself which you didn't know before.

The figure-fiends have worked out so many things about us in recent years that to learn them all one except those whose "thatch" would need a brain like a calculat- had its day. ing machine,

Here is a selection

cent. în a woman,

And the male brain weighs 81⁄2lb. and the female only 2lb. 11oz.

NUMBER EIGHT was guilty of a similar outrage against science and intellectual advancement.

He was the common soldier who Blew Archimedes because that learned student was too occupied figuring out the answer to a difficult problem to “snap to” and respond with gusto to a casual question put by the warrior.

My fool NUMBER NINE is an the profligate English king-not Charles II, but George III.

Male or female, your brain reaches its maximum power at the age of sixteen. You can learn more but not get brainier after that.

Best age for sport varies widely This shortsighted ruler lost the according to the game.

American colonies through" bad

of

It is thirty for cricket, thirty-one judgment and wholesale taxation.

If Britain's empire to-day includ- has for golf, twenty-eight to twenty

nine for tennis, twenty-four for ed the United States as it does

half Canada, no country or group a The 15,000,000 Englishmen who football, twenty-three and shave cut 50,000 miles of hair a for sprinting, just under twenty countries on the face of the globe

two for boxing. ↑ Twice a minute during a sixteen- day.

Polo players are at their zenith hour day gives us 2,000 blinks. What is your body worth? About

chemical constituents. at fifty, and bowlers usually start These enable the lachrymal fluid to 3s. 6d. in wash dust and microbes from the You contain enough phosphorus to then. surface of the eyes.

make 2,000 matches.

If you top the 2,000 you had bet- ter see an oculist and join the specs brigade.:

not

could cope with it.

England, by itself, could be the economic military and social dicta- tor of the world!.

But if you have reached twenty-

NUMBER TEN, the You could hoist an eight-year-old five you are too old for top-class Finally

greatest of all, the prince of fools, lad on to your shoulder with the ping-pong. force spent in opening and closing Averaging it out, adults spent per was that historical nonentity who your eyes for a year.

head £5 48. Sd. on wines, spirits conceived the idea of the Children's

1935.

Crusade! Seventeen million people in Bri- You will ache plenty when the and beer in

nd beer enjoy ourselves? That crusade, launched upon the drive for national fitness gets go- tain belong to that brigade.

Artificial light is the chief re- ing. You have 400 pairs of muscles For we are a vanishing race, we assumption that only innocent blood could regain the Holy Land, are told. cruiting force. It has enabled us in your body. to read and work more, but we use There are some single muscles If the present rate of decline in enlisted some 30,000 French child- too little.

too, but they will speak for them population goes on, there will be ren and about 20,000 youngsters, Average power of light in our selves when you start exercising. only six people in England by the some of them mere tots, from Ger- rooms is five foot candles, whereas A woman shopping walks more year 2336.

Their attempt brought more natural light, even in winter, is than

doing a round of the shops. If why fennd according to another figures. twenty times as strong.

a round of the shops. If she fiend, those six will be mad. Be-grief, inhuman suffering, and chaos If we used enough artificial to does that her husband may as a re- cause, if the rate for insanity in- than any man, or group of men, can equal natural- light our annual sult walk still farther for a few creases as it has done in the past depict. Many of the French child- electricity bill would rise from the weeks-saving his fare to the office. ten years there will not be a sane ren were lured aboard vessels in present £60,000,000 to £2,500,000,-

000.

im

Gig lamps are cheaper.

A mán grows 25,000 hairs on his face, a woman anything from 25,000 to 160,000 on her head. --

person in the land by 2039.

Do you feel fit anyway, whether

It is remarkable how we keep out

you take exercise or not?:

~ many.

Marseilles by slave merchants.

Thousands of the German young- sters lost their lives through the What can you do about it? One of the best safeguards would horrible hardships in crossing the of hospital, for we have some sixty- be to imprison all statisticians. If Alps, eight useless organs and parts of we give them a free rein they will To me, it all represents history's organs in our bodies, such as the make us dizzy-brained long before blackest page.

Surely the person who frat Blondes vary between 140,000 and appendix. But only the appendix 2099

is the So pull yourself up sharply if you thought of that Crusade “160,000, brunettes between 80,000 seems to cause trouble. and 125,000, red-heads between Men are stronger than women find you are counting the number champion of all fools of all time!

Upon this specific indictment I'll 25,000 and 55,000.

84 per cent, of a man's weight re- of times you blink or the hairs on

risk my fate in eternity. And we all shed forty hairs daily, presents strength, against 64 per your chin!