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editorial, page The Atlanta Georgian i. THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GE<>R‘» AN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St Atlanta. Oa. Entered as seeond-olass matter at poHt'fJ real Atlanta, under act of March 8, 1873 Subscription Brice—Delivered by carrier 10 cents a week By mall, $5.00 a year Payable In Advance. Perhaps Peter the Great DID Have Brown Eyes He Was Not a Really Great Man Anyhow. No GREAT MAN Has Had Anything: But Blue or Gray Eyes. We Are Sorry for J. M. P. (Copyright, 1918.) The great men of the world are and have been men with blue or gray eyes. The only exception is the man with so-called hazel eyes, so light that they are included in the category of “light-eyed men.” Brown eyes and black eyes often belong to meritorious indi viduals. They are the eyes very often of honest men, capable, energetic men. But of the world’s GREATEST MEN concerning whom we have definite knowledge, EVERY ONE WITHOUT EXCEP TION HAD LIGHT EYES. Respectable gentlemen with brown or black eyes dislike the light-eyed theory, but they must in some way accommodate them selves to it. The simplest way is to hope that the next time they come to this earth they will have evolved into light-eyed men. Observe these FACTS. The greatest of all musicians was Beethoven—gray eyes. And the next among musicians was Wagner—gray eyes. The three greatest fighters were Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon—all with light eyes. And the men whom they thrashed, pursued and conquered were brown-eyed as a rule. Vercingetorix, the Gaul who made the best fight against Caesar, was blue-eyed. General Lee was gray-eyed and General Grant was blue eyed; so was Lincoln, bigger than Grant. Greatest of all writers, Shakespeare, had light eyes, and the next man to him in modern days, Goethe, was a blue-eyed man. Dante, greatest of the writing Italians, had gray eyes. And that was true of Michael Angelo, the greatest artist. The biggest living American inventor, Edison, has blue eyes that would suit any young baby. Blue-eyed also were Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. In fact, the rule holds good on every page of history. One young man, Mr. J. M. P., is very earnest and rugged, and with a few thousand years of evolution on this planet he will be a great man—this young person dislikes the blue-eyed theory —he possessing very nice liquid, honest brown eyes. So he writes in substance as follows: “I have busted your blue-eye, brown-eye theory. Study ing the life of Peter the Great of Russia, I find that his eyes were very dark. You can’t deny that HE was a great man, and so your blue-eye theory falls to the ground.” On the contrary, the theory stands up admirably. Perhaps Peter the Great DID have black eyes, although we doubt it in view of his race. But Peter the Great was not by any means a great man. He was only PETER the Great. He was remarkable for his day, for his courage, for his will power. But if he had been the right kind of a great man he would not have killed dozens of seamen, on the theory that he could gradually teach them to drink salt water safely. He would not have been so needlessly and inconceivably brutal. Cruelty is ignorance. Some day we shall know why it is that the man with the light hair and light eyes is ahead of the dark-haired, black eyed man. That it IS so we feel instinctively. Even our young friend J. M. P. will admit this. He could not imagine a Viking of the old days sailing the sea and conquering the south except as a big broad-shouldered man with fair skin, yellow hair and blue eyes. He could not imagine black or brown eyes in the place of Napoleon’s gray eyes, piercing through men big and little, find ing a great marshal in the son of a small lawyer, discovering the ridiculous weakness of the kings that he kept waiting in his ante-chamber. We know that this is irritating to our brown eyed brothers. But let them remember that a man can be very successful, very useful, and a great deal of an American, even if he has brown eyes. It is true that Rockefeller, Carnegie, and the modern DOL LAR conquerors are blue-eyed. Morgan and Harriman had blue eyes. But that need not cause despair. Brown-eyed friends, DE SERVE success, and you’ll find joy in deserving as graat^is the joy of possession. The Rising Sun of Suffrage By LILIAN LAUFERTY. I ’M far away In wood lands green, While she is shackled down With chains and gyves and links alire That bind her to the town. With rust and lust of customs old The treadmill of the town Still holds my little sister fast, l’ale-cheeked while 1 am brown. 1 breathe the open spaces vast. Fill full my lungs with air, Nor care that she may come at last To walk with gaunt despair. I talk of knowing your own place, I say God called us there, I prate of sisters all but she Knows well 1 do not care. she tolls through long gold summer days. Where wheels of commerce turn Her youth Into a golden stream My Summer joys to earn, s,i In the whirling factory, l’ale-cheeked while 1 am brown, Her pain buys joy o’ life for me— / bind her to the town. Tired little girl of the tenement, Climbing into the gloom; Bringing the sleeping baby Back to the cheerless room. Tired little girl of the tenement, 1 Tired little girl of the tenement— Toiling through sultry days; Ah, doesn’t her mothering show What but a true Madonna, There’s a Mary-spark in all women— With her brave little mothering ways. And lucky for men it’s sol Mysteries of Science and Nature 1 he Electrical Voice of Fime—It Can Be Heard All Over Western Europe and Northern Africa, Speaking in the Language of Radio-Telegraphy From Eiffel Tower. 7 By GARRETT P. SERV1SS S INCE July 1 time signals, giv ing the exact hour as deter mined by astronomical ob servation. have been radiating through the air from the lofty Eif fel Tower, in Paris, speeding in all directions with the velocity of light, and all that people who want to keep their clocks and watches regulated in accord with the steady motion of the earth on its axis have to do is to capture these flying signals with a wireless tele graph receiver attached to a tele phone. Away off in Africa, In Algiers and Tunis, the invisible electric waves are caught with perfect ease, and ships at sea, off the French coast, can take them at will, and thus regulate their chro nometers and ascertain their po sition with an accuracy hitherto unattainable. It is Like Watch Wheels Geared to Rotating Earth. This is truly scientific magic. Just think of it! You want to know the true time to the fraction of a second, and all you have to do in order to get it is to open your electric ear to these sounds, which seem to drop out of the sky as if Old Time himself were speak ing to you! it is very much as if the wheels of your watch were geared for a moment to the rotating earth in order to correct their rate, for the whole thing is done automatically. The pendulum of a special clock in the Observatory of Paris—a clock whose running is kept accurately in accord with the rotation of the earth—periodically closes a cir cuit, which Instantly actuates the wireless apparatus in the Eiffel Tower and thus sends forth an electric voice, traveling with a speed which would suffice to carry it seven times round the earth in a single second, and which says in radiotelegraphic language, ’’10 a. m.” or "midnight,” as the ease may be. For hundreds of miles around, in every direction, this mysterious voice drops out of space and can be heard in any telephone attached to a wireless receiver. Beginning three minutes before the automatic transmission of the hour is made, a set of warning signals is sent out, by listening for which the re ceiver may be prepared to note with great accuracy the difference between the time Indicated by his watch and that given by the ob servatory clock. A practiced ob server can make the correction to the tenth of a second. Even home-made wireless re- i ceivers suffice for picking up these ( signals. Within the confines of Paris and its suburbs the signals are so distinct that an ordinary gas pipe may be employed for an an tenna to catch the electric waves and a water pipe to form the con nection with the earth, while the detector may be of the simplest form, such as any electrician can make. Persons near the Eiffel Tower may employ their own bodies as antennae, merely press ing between two fingers the ter minal of a wireless receiver. Simi larly, the wire connecting the elec tric bells in a house may be used for an antenna. On Cloudy Nights Signals Are Flashed Around by Wireless. If a cloudy night prevents astro nomical observations in Paris, cor rections for the master-clock are received by similar wireless sig nals sent out from a series of ob servatories, as at Algiers, Mar seilles, Nice and Besancon. It is almost Impossible that cloudy weather should prevail simultane ously at all these places, but even if that should happen, provision is made for keeping the clock regu lated by the aid of a number of other very accurate clocks called "time guards,” which can he de pended upon not to vary more than a small fraction of a second in the course of several days. As the means of sending out such signals improve, so that they can be transmitted across the whole breadth of all the oceans, from properly chosen central sta tions, navigation will attain a de gree of safety hitherto unknown. At present the officers of a ship at sea have to depend for the accu racy of their calculations of longi tude, or distance east or west of Greenwich, upon the more or less true running of their chronome ters. Such a System Would Definitely Locate the Titanic. They can ascertain local time and their latitude by celestial observations alone, but such ob servations do not give the longi tude unless the true Greenwich time is also known. This the new system of wireless transmission will supply with a degree of uni versality and accuracy that is truly marvelous. If such a system had been in operation at the time of the wreck of the Titanio there might have been no such uncer tainty as was actually shown in the calculations of the positions of the various ships that played a part in that terrible tragedy of the i ocean. ... . THE HOME RARER Elbert Hubbard Writes on “John Barleycorn’' As a Study in Psychology, He Asserts, Jack London’s Story Is a Classic and Will Be New a Hundred Years From Now. By ELBERT HUBBARD T HE man who strikes a new lit erary vein is like the man who invents a new dish, and is pretty nearly as unique as one who discovers a new dimension in space. Jack London has done a new thing in his treatment of J. Barley corn. Rousseau’s "Confessions” and De Quincey’s “Opium-Eater” are classics, and a classic is a thing that never grows old. “John Barleycorn” is a classic. Strong drink has cursed the race since the very dawn of history, and % to-day it is the one big blot on civil ization’s ’scutcheon. Solomon, writing on the subject a thousand years before Christ, passes out a few things that are just as true to day positively as when he uttered them: "Wine Is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Jack has written a confession. At least he would have us think so. Literature a Confession. In one sense, all literature is a confession. We confess the things we have done; also the things we might have done; and we occasion ally confess things that we have thought about, but never dared do. There must be a certain amount of truth in Jack’s fine phrases. How much, it would be indelicate to ask. Nevertheless, the whole thing has both grip and punch. If you read it you find it is on your nerves. You’re thinking about that boy of seventeen who con tracted the habit of indulging in strong drink. Now and again, as the years pass, he broke away and did not touch the stuff for days, weeks and months. But we find him going back to it. He drinks rum, beer, absinthe, whisky, cocktails. At first, one cocktail suffices to set his brain a-tingle and his thoughts a-jingle. Soon he needs more. He is at peace with the world, with himself, with the universe, with one beautiful woman. We find him living in sweet cameraderie with a worthy woman. He helps her wash the dishes. He has had one drink. That is not enough. He sneaks away from the woman, and dishonestly puts in an extra one, unknown to her. It makes you think less of the man; and yet here he is confessing it— and how. dare -you blame a man who lays his soul before you! He disarms you by his frank ness. Habit Is Upon Him. When a friend calls, in pure so ciability they have a drink to gether. And then the biographer gumshoes away to the kitchen and has a couple of drinks by himself. At first the man drinks only when his day’s work is done. But there comes a time when the morn ing opens dull, hazy, foggy, damp. Thoughts are opaque, and refuse to flow. And so he takes an eye- opener. The habit is upon him. If he breaks away from it for a few days the thought is still in his mind of the mad, sad, bad days in Hono lulu and San Francisco, when good fellows met together and youth had its fling. Jack views the subject from every standpoint He is as analyt ical as Herbert Spencer, and a thousand times more entertaining. He is so human at times that he is uncanny. This man drinks and struggles with drink, and fights John Bar leycorn—not to a finish, but to a draw. And one is tempted to the belief that if a man can drink as this man says he can, and still has the brain to analyze the situation and put the whole thing on paper and sell it for a princely sum, as this man evidently has—then how can it be that strong drink is whol ly bad? The Inference. This man is bigger than drink. Jack does not say so outright, but he leaves us to make the infer ence. He explains to you that friend ship and conviviality are the base of the drinking habit, and that were it not for saloons, banquets and meetings, with song and ban ter and wit and play and fancy and mad riding of the senses and flow of soul, John Barleycorn would be out of the game. As a study in psychology, “John Barleycorn,” by Jack London, is a book that will be new a hundred years from now. It is a book upon which an author could safely found a literary reputation. It Is a monu ment to the man who wrote It. Big things in literature have no violence of direction. This story hasn’t. Each one who reads it will read into it his own experi ences, and he will extract from it any argument that he wishes to. Each one of us imagines that he is bigger than Fate; that he fs an exception to the rule. And out of the sadDess we distill a kind of joy on account of the fact that we are alive. In the pains of others there is a certain satisfaction, and we mentally are congratulating ourselves on the fact that the trag edy is none of ours. Neither For Nor Against. Jack isn’t writing any Sunday school ’tract. He is neither for nor against. He is stating the simple facts of temptation and falling from grace; of the inward clutch of conscience, and of sin ning and repenting. If the whole thing were a tem perance tract Jack would have ex plained that he had quit the game once and forever. But instead of this he frankly explains that he is a drinking man still, and will con tlnue to drink to the day of his death. The horse is running away with him, but he maintains that he is able to keep the mad animal in the middle of the road, and thus Is master of the situation. Can he? That is the question. By MINNA IRVING. T O GET herself a bathing suit Miss Mary Miller went. But left her pocketbook at home, And did not spend a cent. She called at half-a-dozen stores, The biggest on the map, Secured the best material, But never bought a scrap. When done it was a dream of style, Of supple satin black, Adorned with gold and scarlet braid And buttoned up the back. The sleeves were short, the neck was low. The skirt was far from ample; She was no kleptomaniac, And made It from a sample.