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editorial page THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered aS second-olass matter at postortice at Atlanta, under act of March S, UTS. Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.00 a year Payable In advance. Atlanta’s Wealth and Water The municipality of Atlanta can no longer whine that it is a pauper. The statement of Comptroller Goldsmith that the city has a borrowing capacity of more than $5,000,000 above its present debt has eliminated that lame and time-dishonored excuse. It has smothered the reactionaries and stand-patters who have blocked the development of a greater city with their wails of poverty. It means that Atlanta can begin to prepare itself for a pop ulation of a half million. With a borrowing capacity of almost eleven million and a net debt of only five and a half million, the city is put in the light of a miser with half his gold buried where it can be of use to any one. But now that hoard has been found, and it will have to be dug up. A business administration that will engineer a new bond is sue and go to work with a clear idea of’the present needs of At lanta and an imagination of her future needs can do more good than all the watch dogs of the supposedly empty treasury ever did. Sensible economy is a blessing, but parsimony is a menace. An excellent proof of this has been furnished by the water board. Within thirty feet of the coagulating basins of the water works are four open vaults and a pig pen. Nothing except a ditch prevents the drainage from flowing into the water that you eventually drink. Daily tests show that the water has not been defiled, but the board members says eventually it will be. Their remedy—and they say that under the existing health ordinances there is no other —is to buy the strip of land on which these vaults and the houses to which they belong stand. A very fe<v thousand dollars would make the purchase, and members of the board point out that the water would not only be safeguarded, but the city would acquire a piece of property that may be necessary for reservoir expansion in years to come. Without taking into consideration what funds the city can borrow in the future, the premium on the water bonds provides an ample amount for the purchase. The bond commission has not been impressed with the plan, because of new water pipes to be laid. There lies the trouble. What will it profit a city if there is water running through a dozen pipes in every street, if that water is defiled and germ laden? Atlanta’s fine water is one of her greatest assets. And it must be protected. Providing Exit for the Turk “There arc no good Indians but dead Indians,’’ said General Custer, in the Wyoming hills. “There are no good Turks but dead Turks.’’ seems to be the motto of the Bulgarians and Serbs, as they hold Turkey’s peace overtures in their hands and close in three columns upon the last re maining Moslem defenses at Tchatalja. The Bulgarians have not retaliated in barbarities upon the Turk. Under unparalleled provocation they have preserved the honor of a Christian civilization, treated their prisoners humanely and refrained from vengeance upon the families of defeated Turks. But the Balkan allies know their enemy—and. knowing the Turk, they trust him neither in peace nor war. No armistice has been granted to give the Turkish army an opportunity to strength en its fortifications and to hearten its demoralized soldiers for a renewal of the battle. No artful terms of peace proposed by the sultan are to be con sidered with the Turk. It is stern, wise diplomacy in the Bulgarian army to fight the war to a finish without compromise or delay. It is wise policy for the Balkan armies to enter Constantinople and Adrianople. No other spectacle would sufficiently emphasize the Turk’s utter defeat and make his recuperation impossible. No other spectacle would lay such logical obligation upon the powers of Europe to grant the Balkans the fruits of their wonder ful victory and remove the apprehension of future Turkish atroci ties by disbanding or dividing the Turkish empire in Europe. Surely the nations have never had such frightful object lessons of Turkish savagery as this war has afforded. While the allies have been defeating the Turks on the field, the Turks have been destroy ing themselves in the diplomatic world. Even Europe, with an atrophied conscience toward Turkish brutalities, has been shocked into sensibility and retribution by the Turkish aftermath of battle. Forty-two villages of non-combatants sacked and burned ami ravished and butchered in a single day. Men and women left on frozen roads with their eyes gouged out, feet and hands cut off. to die by horrible inches. It has gone to the limit. Even the selfish veins of trade and ter ritorial greed revolt against the brutal blood-dripping savage who has been permitted centuries of pillage and murder in Europe. And the ediet seems to have framed itself into English and Russian andi French and German diplomacy that the allies must be permitted ti. work their will with the Turk. And the will ot the allies for the Turk should be back to Asia! Providence and their vietoriohs army have opened this waA |h Alor the vindication of civilization—-and the promise of future gen-i * erations. 3 The Atlanta Georgian ' The Transformation Drawn By HAL COFFMAN. I! I | z t I . SALOON •• /j SA wii H Th<l WW 7 Wm ,K W/ - Aa. L r-Z -ow, zL owfe sci # C OtIB Pj ' A>ll --zJBhIV- IN. The your.g man enters the saloon. He “.can quit whisky whenever he wants to.’’ He goes in young, self-respecting, with bright prospects. It’s nobody’s business but his own if he “takes a few in the evening.’’ Surgeons Can Reconstruct Human Body THERE was once a lunatic in an asylum for the insane who gravely assured his vis itors that he was wearing the head ot' King Charles lof England. He didn’t like the king's head and begged everybody to help him find his own again. Pathetically, he de scribed how, after the beheading of the king< somebody seized his (the madman’s) head, gave it a twirl, * twisted it off the (op of the ver tebral column, and then spun Charles’ head on. like a nut, in its place. One can not help thinking of this lunatic's day dream while reading in The Cosmopolitan for December a.sober, unexaggerated account of the marvels that modern surgery is performing with the human body. If the men who are now doing these things in their operating rooms had lived a few hundred years ago, and had done them then, they would probably have been drawn and quartered, or burned at the stake as emissaries of Satan or practitioners of the black art. All That Is Needed. Tlte surgeons grow bolder every day, and success seems to justify their apparent recklessness. Os course, there Is nothing really reck less about them. Theii proceedings are guided by the finest results of the most profound science. They have found out that the body of a man is a machine that can, to a great extent, be taken apart and put together again as safely as one can remove, replace and substitute the various parts of an automobile. All 'that is needed is a perfect knowledge of its structure ami a hand that can be trusted to cut within a thousandth of an inch. They can come within that dis- WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1912 By GARRETT P. SERVISS. v tance of a man’s life and leave it untouched and intact! Sometimes their proceedings look to the layman as rough and ready as those of a carpenter. Think of having your broken bones fastened together with a sixteen-penny nail or with a number of ordinary wire nails driven in with a hammer! This feat has been performed again j and again. Usually the nails are taken out after the bones have grown together, but occasionally a nail is left in place without harm. Surgery’s Discoveries. The bones of a lower jaw have been removed and a jaw Os silver put in their place which works as well as if nature had ’ made it. There are photographs to prove this if you doubt It. If the surgeon can not take off your head and put a better one in its place, he can practically make your skull over if nature has done a bad job with it. He can even re pair the brain itself to a certain ex tent. Many persons who were regarded by their acquaintances as “moral degenerates,” or who suffered from paralysis or insanity, have had their skulls opened up and obstructions removed with the result of making them sane. clear-headed and healthy. Like professional tamers who know how to deal with a vi cious horse, modern surgeons have less and less fear of the brain and the heart the more they handle them. Tlte life-principle will not kick up its heels and run away if it feels tlte hand of a master aiding it to throw off the incubus that has interfered with its proper func tions. On the contrary, like the Hon with a festering thorn in its paw, it will lick the hand that boldly, un hesitatingly. relieves it. Thousands of "stupid," backward child ten have been rendered as OUT. Years later the young man with bright prospects has been transformed into an old man—without even a past. He quits whisky only when the bartender sneers at his whin ing plea for “credit.” • bright ana active as their more for tunate fellows by surgical opera tions, for surgery has discovered that there are many stones in the stream of intelligence which ob struct the flow if they are not re moved. When the bed is cleared the river runs straight. If your child seems weak-minded don’t as sume that it is really the mind that is at fault. Let a good surgeon look over its body in search of de fects. Among the most wonderful of the recent achievements of surgery are the many cases of transplantation or “grafting.” A sightless eye has been made to see by cutting out the imperfect human cornea and putting that of a rabbit in its place. Grafting surfaces of skin to cover the ravages of disease or fire has become almost a common opera tion. Perhaps the time is not far distant when new legs and arms may be obtained by grafting, for the thing has already been done with a dog. Dr. Lexter recently transplanted the entire hind leg of one dog to another dog with com plete success. Stimulating Effect. In the article to which I refer you will find many strange suggestions based upon accomplished facts as to what may ultimately be done even with the bodies of the dead. One thing almost mystical in its suggestiveness is the stimulating effect upon the mental powers pro duced by the transplantation of a piece of thyroid gland from the neck of a young woman to the body of another who was mentally de fective. The intelligence of the lat ter immediately took a leap up ward! Apparently the surgeons are touching upon secrets that na ture is not unwilling to have dis covered THE HOME PAPER DOROTHY DIX Writes on I I Husbands , Habits T. Women Can Xot i Change 'Them, j < But They Should i Not Be Discon- so late Over . Neglect \\ ives Should Face the J Truth. By DOROTHY DIN. IN the course of a year 1 get thousands of letters from un- | happy wives complaining tha' their husbands neglect them, or that their husbands will never take thepi to any place of amusement,. that their husbands are niggardly and stingy to them. These women are all miserable and they all want to know what they can do to ameliorate theii hard lots in life. Os course, what they really de sire is some magical formula that will change a neglectful husband into an attentive one, an indiffer ent husband into a lover and a tightwad into a generous husband. Unfortunately, the day, of miracles is past, and a woman can no’more alter a man over to her taste than she could the Rock of Gibraltar. In novels a husband sometimes is led by his wife’s gentleness and an gelic patience to turn over a new leaf, and from having been a con eatination of cussedness become a paragon of domestic virtues; but if any such metamorphosis ever took place in real life, I can only say that I have never been privileged to behold it. The Man and Time. As a general working proposition a wife may take it that what her husband is he is going to be to the end of the chapter, only more so as the years go by. If he is kind, and tender, and considerate, he will be tenderer, and kinder, and more con siderate as they go down the hill together, because big souls grow with age. If a man is mean, and selfish, and stingy, and tyrannical, he will grow meaner, and more selfish, and stingier, and more ty rannical as he grows old, because little souls narrow, and warp, and grow bitter with age. If a man neglects his wife, he does so because he is tired of her and she bores him. If he doesn’t want to take her out with him to any place of amusement, it is be cause he has a better time with out her. If he is penurious with her it is because he wants to save his money for himself. These are blunt and brutal facts, but they arc facts. Furthermore, there is not one blessed thing that a woman can do to alter them. The only remedy for the situation is to face it fairly and squarely. ,and for women to go to work to make over their own lives, which can be done, instead of trying to make over their husbands, which can nut be done. I 4 or instance, why should a wom an rend the air with her wails be cause her husband m vei’ wants to take her out to. any place of amuse ment with him? Why doesn’t she just accept the truth that he doesn't enjoy her society, and get’ up and hunt up some amusement on her own account? The time has gone by when a woman has to approach any place of popular amusement hooked on to a masculine arm. Nor do women in this day of grace lack for diver sions. With every theater having two matinees a week, with moving ?• picture shows on every corner .vttft the innumerable women's clubs that abound, with good bridge players in I every neighborhood, with restau rants and tea rooms on every side, 1 with hen luncheons and parties I crowding on the heels of each oth- { ei, surely there is more diversion ready at every woman’s hand than is good for In . Just Pins On Hat. All of tjtese amusements are j equally open to her, married or siri- i gle, and if a woman’s- husband X won't take her to the theater at night, all she's got to co is to pin I on her hat. rind go to the matinee; I if he won't take her to a restau- I rant to dinner and she y.-arris for I the shaded lights, the gorgeously I dressed women, the artificial palms I and the music of case life, sii>- c„n I find a perfect substitute by going I to tea at any of the smart hotels. I And if she’s a sensible woman, I she does go, instead of fretting I herself into a fiddle st: irg be-ruse fj her husband won't lake her out il with him. It isn't a question now I of a woman being "taken.” It's a I question of her "going.” I Exactly the same thing may be I said to the woman whose -ais-.ainl I is stingy to her. Tne woman who I is married to a man wim r--fas--e to I give her the money she m-t-ils is I foolish to waste her str--iigt:i and ■ energy in whining or trying to I wheedle dollars out of . She I had far better face the .a--t that if ■ she is to have any yto do I with as site pl'-ascsslie will have to ■ earn it herself, and go to w>-:k. ■ And tile sooner the b-.-i-r. he- ■ cause a woman must i--;,rn her ■ trade and get established in. ft ■ while she is young, if sit-- stnci-etis. I Any woman of ordinary int.'ligeree ■ and industrj- can earn - - '-rvi- ■ ble living witli much i- -r mi ■ tear on iter nervous syro ■ involved in getting mat - ■ and clothes out of a peit'.i: band. H The trouble with wo:o-a th ;t M they so seldom have th" > to ■ admit the truth to theaisei>- - ■ their marriages when ' -f'. v ■' ■ made matrimonial mi. *■ keep on trying to drap< -he P inll ■ chiffons of roinanct about t • I etons in their closet, anti lv>P*ng ■ against hope that their Imslrit ■ will somehow, some wa ■ ■ Could Save Misery. ■ So they go on ciingt' ■ misery, like a man who it t v- " V a losing business, mt il s ° ■ bankrupt in happiness. 1 ‘ I the time they might It-av-' ■ tlieinselves If they liml ” n I ’ot ave “enough to have io- -:- H mistake in the eye, ..nil H best of a bad bargain. ■ consists not in weeping <■' ' ;t - I,li H in appropriating foryom-< L • !, ‘ t * ■ ever good the situation - 111 " ;I1 I when you can't get your d’ 1 ■ taking the next. ■ it is, of course, hard l,r ’ B when she isn’t privil-g- 1 B down at the head of the f< " B tnestic bliss, but she can j very tasty dish of tin- B happiness that fail fro - - 5 B if she has the wit ami c ’ - ' ' ul H nation to do it B