1939-10-13 — Page 17

THE CHINA MA OCT

DEAR ENEMY Germany

(Continued from Page 16)

of a long line of natives spread out in horseshoe formation. They were less than a mile from Campbell's wrecked machine, obviously con- verging on it.

Mahsuds! There was no mistak- ing the glint of their rifle barrels. He was only just in time.

His emotions were decidedly mix- ed as he glided earthwards in u series of spiral turns. Satisfaction that he would establish a permanent ascendancy over Campbell by sav- ing his life; anxiety lest he made a bloomer in his landing and damaged the bus; gladness that he would snatch Campbell from the horrors of the bandits' maltreatment.

aircraft

He sideslipped, the last couple of hundred [eet; straightened out; pulled the control column steadily towards him. Wheels and tail skid touched together. The bumped forward across the ground. As the machine came to a stand- still he saw Campbell running to- wards him. He waited, nose into wind, his hand on the throttle.

"Hop in, Colin!" he shouted Campbell approached. "There's no time to lose."

THERE she Was,

Stream-lined, Air-con-

ultramodern, swank. ditioned and bright as a colonel's shoes at dress parade. And just so we couldn't miss it, flying a huge red flag with a black swastika. She was the Patria, nazi Germany's latest bid for passenger service supremacy along the southern Paci- fle coast. This was her maiden voy- age from, Hamburg to Valparaiso. Somebody reminded me that she'd left New York a day after we had,. but had beaten us into Callao by several hours. And despite her de luxe accommodations, her passen- gers had paid less than we had for slower transportation on our Amer- lean liner.

No wonder the Patria's deck's were thronged with admiring, duly- impressed Peruvians. No wonder her crew seemed to peer across at us with a certain triumphant cock- iness.

Number One

This was Incident for my second look at South Ameri- ca in two years.

as

I went up into the savage hinterlands of We stopped in

Recognising the voice, Campbell slowed to a walk.

"What do you

manded

want?" he de-

didn't know

rudely. "I

you were allowed to fly solo."

Bartlett bit back the retort that rose to his lips.

"Don't rot about, Colin," he urged. "There are Mahsuds all round this place, They'll be here in a minute or two. Hop in and let's beat it!"

Campbell shook his head

and folded his arms.

"I'm not going back with you; not for all the Mahsuds in Waziristan. So you can just take off again. I'll wait until they send the tender out."

"Bartlett's mouth shut in a grim

line.

"Don't be a priceless idiot, Colin,

"he began, but a sharp crack from somewhere interrupted him.

Simultaneously Campbell threw up his arms and crashed forward on to his face.

Bartlett was out of the cockpit in two seconds. Turning the wound- ed man on to his backt he was ro- lieved to find he was still alive. Campbell smiled up at him faintly.

"Serves me right for being so pig- headed, Dick," he whispered. "Don't bother about me. Get away before they pip you too."

to

Crack! Crack! As though emphasise the warning, two more bullets smacked into the fuselage above their heads.

"If only I could lift you," grunt- ed Bartlett, and ignoring the other's protestations, tried it.

He managed to get Campbell to his feet and was straining to raise him higher when a bullet took him in the leg. The two collapsed in a heap.

"That's torn it," cried Bartlett bitterly.

It was maddening to know that safety, as represented by the air- craft, was within reach of them, and yet they were powerless to achieve it.

"What tough luck for you," de- clared Campbell generously.. "I'm terribly sorry Dick, old man; if I hadn't been such a fool as to get lost, you wouldn't be in this rotten mess,"

Bartlett steeled himself to tell the truth.

"I'm the one who is to blame," he confessed steadily, and went on to disclose what he had done.

There was silence for a moment when he had finished, then Camp- bell laughed.

"You always did try to take everything on your own shoulders, Cocky Bartlett. As a matter of fact you're wrong again. I spotted. the compass was incorrect shortly after I left the aerodrome and made due allowance for the error. wanted to see if I could spot some'. of these native johnnies on the war path, and it was while I was fool- Ing about that I came, to grief."

But I

He smiled grimly at Bartlett's ex-.

barren. the Andes. Arequipa. Sur- rounded by deserts and

19,000- foot peaks, it's

a thriving oasis of a city; the second largest in Peru, I came in from La Paz with General Carlos Quintanilla, commander-in-chief of the Bolivian army. When he found we could speak German together, the general became very friendly. He was a big, finely-built professional soldier of fifty, and he came naturally by his Prussian-like carriage, for he had taken his commission in the kaiser's Imperial army shortly before the war. Hitler, he said, was the great- est man in the world.

in Arequipa the general insisted I must be his guest for tea or what- have-you at the German Club. I accepted because-up there in the Peruvian Andes--clubs of any kind are scarce. Besides, I was curious as to what kind of club the nazis would have. So we walked through narrow streets and over a bridge. We came to a large one-story.build- ing. It didn't look like much until we got inside and then I gasped with surprise and pleasure. Grave- led walks, a big. garden rampant with flowers; spacious, open rooms with modernistic furnishings; and a bright and cozy bar.

I hadn't seen anything to com- pare with it outside of Lima. And the Germans had built an outdoor bowling alley, surely the only one within hundreds of miles.

The general, of course, was as pleased as the only surviving gob- bler on a turkey farm. He'd been telling me what smart people the nazis were. Now I could see what

clamation of relief. The lie was well worth while if it made him feel any happier. They would both be dead in a few minutes anyway.

There came yell of fiendish triumph from the Mahsuds. Dark forms rushing towards them waving rifles. This was the end.

Bartlett left his hand clutched in

a sympathetic grip.

"Sorry, old fellow."

He gulped back the fear that be- set him.

"We're together; that's thing."

some-

Came the metallic roar of power- ful engines, the staccato rattle of machine guns. The natives paused, hesitated, ran back. Two or three of their number sprawled _grotes- quely on the ground.

An aeroplane landed, leaving two others circling on guard. The C.O. climbed down from the cockpit.

"So we've found you at last, Campbell; I'm sorry we didn't manage it sooner." He turned to Bartlett. "As for you, running off with an aeroplane without orders, I don't know what to say. In the circumstances, perhaps it will be sufficient nunishment if you

**are shut up in hospital for a few weeks with the man you hate so much."

Bartlett and Campbell smlied at one another understandingly.

Invades S. America

splendid hospitality they offered their Latin American friends. "Schr schoen, nicht wahr?" he said. Yes, I had to admit it. But I was thinking that you'd never find an "American Club" in an out-of-the-way place like this. We still didn't think that clubrooms and informal but well- prepared hospitality had any direct relation to our national prestige and our diplomatic progress in the out. posts of South America.

You'll find a good many American residents. But you won't find.many of them "mixing in' with Latin- Americans in the same easy, in- gratiating manner of Hitler's and Mussolini's chosen representatives.

In most of these countries the. boys from the European dictator- ships have got the jump on 115.

By Leland Stowe

They've been out in front in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil for a good while. Now they're using every weapon and ruthlessly pushing us back in Argentina. In every South Ameri- can country Germans and Italians are pressing every advantage. They are on their toes all the time, and they fight hard. The totalitarian governments hold the offensive and they intend to keep it at all costs!

At what cost to us? There's the rub. Certainly more unemployment right now. Eventually, perhaps, the loss of countless thousands of lives.

In November, 1936, I flew from Chicago to Buenos Aires. For three -solid days we sped along the const- line of a single country. I learned that Brazil's one uninterrupted cost- line is longer than our own Atlan- tic and Pacific coastlines combined. I gazed down on hundreds of miles of magnificent beaches, totally un- inhabited and open to the sea. I saw the yawning mouth of the Amazon, virtually unprotected from entrance by anybody's fleet. Who's to prevent the Germans or Italians or Japanese walking right in? Obviously, nobody but Uncle Sam. Marvellous plains and beaches for the invaders' air- fields, too. Some would be only a few hours' flight from Puerto Rico and Miami..

Brazil is larger than the U. S. A.

by a second Texas-the largest 'na- tion in the western hemisphere and likewise the most thinly populated? in proportion to its area, It also contains two-thirds of all the raw material riches in South America coffee, cotton, rubber fabulous forests.

incredible amountains of iron. Just a natural

heaven for colony-cravers, like Bennie and Adolf. But its rubber is absolutely vital to us in the event of war, whereas control of this Eldo- rado's, resources would make the Rome-Berlin dictators masters of the world. Flying for three days across Brazil I realised that if Eng- land's frontier to-day reaches the Rhine, our American frontier stretches as far as Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps we Americans need Brazil's friendship more than any other nu- tion's in the world except Canada's.. Any nazi-fascist inroads down there must directly menace our security at home.

Why worry about Chile? You'd be surprised. I know I was. We Americans have our third largest foreign investment no less than $483,000,000 in. Chile. The only places where we have larger in- vestments are in Canada and Cuba. And for all our excitement about Japan, China and the Philippines, we've actually got a bigger stake in little Chile than in the entire Far East! In addition. Chile has 95 per-. cent of all the world's nitrates, a first essential for the senews of war. And she has the Straits of Magellan, something we ought to remember, For if ever the Panama canal is blocked, we can only reunite our leets through those straits and with the Chilean government's consent. Back in 1823 President Monroe proclaimed us the watchdog of the Western World. Under the Inter- American Solidarity declaration of Lima all twenty-one American -na- tions agree to share the watch-dog- ging. Nevertheless, the man's end of the job is still ours and is justi- fied by our own interests. -But being the Western World's watchdog isn't so simple any more. Now we don't have declared wars. The nazi- fascists have invested the new tech- nique of "invasion from within”--- by means of à sub-rosa nazi organi- sation inside. Austria, or a Sudeten "autonomy" party, or an "Inde- pendence" movement in Slovakia. That's how Austria and Czecho- slovakia disappeared from the map.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

"Good party last night, wasn't it ? '

J

"Er—yes—I suppose so. Somehow I don't seem to remember things very clearly. I've got a vague recollection of somebody wearing a fix!

"Yes. That was you."

« Oh, I sse. Tell me, Philip - - do you remember me being dropped hand downwards from a great height on to a concrete floor, by any chance ?”

"Slight headache, ch?"

#

Philip -

› — I wish I had your flair for understatement. I feel as though I had lived on an exclusive dist of iron filings and broken glass for the last five years. What amazes me is that you seem to be

to disgustingly cheerful and bright this morning.“.

"I know. It must be very exasperat. ing. A medicine man warned me to stick to *Gimlets at parties. So 1 always take the precaution of bring- ing my own bottle of Rose's Lime Juice. You may cock a sceptical cye- brow, Edwin but it works,” "How?"

"Rose's Lime Juice is the latest thing in therapeutic agents. It restores the metabolic balance. In simple non- scientific parlance --- ́suitable for a mind such as youts, Edwin prevents hangovers."

Why-oh why didn't you tell me this last night P” .

it