I am so vilely prone to sin,
Vain ribald that I am;

I'd take a heinous pleasure in
Just one prodigious damn!

In its mechanism swearing is analogous to the locomotive blowing off steam. It relieves a high-pressure tension in the human engine; and often averts what might otherwise be a serious explosion. If Rip Van Winkle's wife had permitted herself a few vigorous invectives at the New England peddler who roused her ire, she might have lived to greet her devoted spouse when he returned from his nap in the Catskills.

The man who swears has a genial, open nature. The milk of human kindness has not curdled in his veins. He does not cherish resentment; but disposes of his irritation in a flash, and at once is at peace with the world. It is those who are denied this wholesome outlet for their feelings who become embittered, pessimistic, and revengeful.

How

The passions of those who will not swear sour within them and poison the very springs of their nature. The diabolical disposition of our Puritan forefathers is directly ascribable to the fact that they damned the natural channels of their feelings. Hence their gloomy faces, their crabbed outlook upon life. The stocks, the ducking stool, the whipping post-these were the devious ways through which their thwarted emotions sought expression. much kindlier to have burned a little brimstone than to have roasted witches! Honest swearing is a healthful exercise. It is tonic for irritable nerves. Doubtless much of the nagging and nervousness ascribed to the gentler sex has been due to the uncharitable convention of the past which excluded them from the benefits of this wholesome practice. One of the most human men I ever met said he loved to swear before clergymen because he knew it pleased them. They couldn't swear them

selves; but they did enjoy hearing a few good cuss words.

Real swearing is a badge of sincerity. In this world of conventions where everyone wears a mask, and where language "exists to conceal thought," it is a relief to hear an honest if forceful expression of opinion.

Some well-intentioned persons have suggested the substitution of harmless invectives in place of the recognized cuss words. For instance, when a man loses his temper, let him exclaim: "Bats and Black Beetles!" Such reasoning shows a lamentable lack of acquaintance with the underlying psychology of swearing. It is just because it is the thing forbidden that swearing is effective. Were it not taboo, it would fail to give relief.

We have run ourself out of breath only to see our train vanishing around the curve. We have dropped our watch and smashed the crystal the morning we got it from the jeweller. Our new Panama on the first day's wearing has blown into the gutter. Wrath at the inspired perversity of all animate and inanimate things surges over us. One recourse alone is left us. If we are powerless to cope with an inconsiderate world, we can at least shock it. So we swear. Out of the depths of our nature pour the comforting cuss words. We are doing the wicked thing, the forbidden thing; and we exult in our depravity. We glow with the consciousness of our iniquity until we glow with shame at our folly. The last emotion blots out the others and dies in effacing them. Love of our fellow mortals once more animates us; and we are at peace with mankind.

What harsher punishment than to be condemned to an impotent and inarticulate existence! These are the unfortunates that need our sympathy. May we not be pardoned if we shed a friendly tear and say:

Alas! for those who never swear,
But die with all their cussing in them!

E

XPERTS of the Bell Telephone Laboratories recently gave a demonstration in New York City of an improved giant loudspeaker that could be plainly heard a mile away! With its aid an orator might address a million persons at once! It is designed primarily for public addresses and, with modified power, for talking movies.

Dr. L. H. Flint, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, reports the success, in three years' experiments, of a "magic carpet" which, when spread over the soil, greatly increases the yield of garden crops. The carpet is of heavy waterproof paper. Covering all of the ground not occupied by the plant stems themselves, it increases the soil temperature, prevents loss of moisture, and smothers weeds. The lettuce crop was more than doubled, green corn trebled, and potatoes almost quadrupled.

At Forest Hills, N. Y., architects recently watched workmen erect the steel framework of a two-story dwelling in three hours and 20 minutes! It was a demonstration of a new system of house building by the use of standardized steel members similar to those used in constructing skyscrapers. Robert Tappan, architect and designer of the steel house, plans to erect dwellings of this type throughout the country. Through the economy of standardization, he declares, they will cost less than wooden houses do today. Steel framework makes the house practically indestructible, and the dwelling cannot warp or shrink.

Landing fields are automatically turned on by the hum of an approaching airplane by the use of the amazing invention of T. Spooner, of the Westinghouse E. & M. Co. In a night demonstration at McKeesport, Pa., a plane

1000 feet up actuated the sensitive microphone control and caused the entire field instantly to be illuminated by a bank of floodlights. Tuned to the continuous airplane drone, the microphone responds to no other noise.

The control mechanism of the Army's newest antiaircraft gun responds to sound waves of an airplane's drone and automatically aims the gun at the craft.

So delicate are the "mechanical ears" perfected by scientists to detect sound waves in the air, that a gun fired on the east coast of England was “heard" at Birmingham University, more than 135 miles away. The sound was not heard by human ears, but was detected by the recording instruments.

Now a phonograph can "read aloud" to you a full length novel, if you wish. An English concern has developed a process to record a whole novel on six double-faced, 12-inch phonograph records. Each record "reads" to you for 40 minutes, at normal speed. They are of greatest benefit to blind or sick persons.

A new use for the photo-electric cell -a sensitive device that transforms changes in light intensity into electric fluctuations-has been found by a Kalamazoo, Mich., paper mill. One of these cells is placed beneath the continuous roll of paper that travels through the factory, and automatically adjusts the machinery when the paper is getting too thick or too thin. The difference in the amount of light transmitted by the paper sets the device in operation.

Another use for the photo-electric cell has been found in Pittsburgh, where it is employed in a new ted device to

warn engineers when smoke from their chimneys is exceeding the density allowed by law. A beam of light is kept constantly in the chimney and pointed at a photo-electric cell, which is so sensitive that it sends to the engine room an exact record of the density of the smoke.

Green concrete "which will harmonize with the rich semitropical verdure and growing crops" is the material of which Cameron County, Texas, plans to make its new six-million-dollar system of highways. On a smaller scale, colored concrete roads have already appeared in certain parts of the country; many of those built in parks and on private estates have been tinted.

A gigantic system of auto speedways, already planned and mapped, will link France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy in a few years' time, if present plans proposed by an international conference of automobile clubs and backed by governmental authorities are fulfilled. Any speed from 40 miles an hour upward will be permitted—and loiterers will be haled into court for obstructing traffic! Towns and villages will be skirted by the new super-highways, which are expected to be 100 feet or more in width.

How came people to wear clothes? Was it because of modesty? Or immodesty, to make the body more mysterious and alluring? Or for adornment, or for protection from the elements? Each of these theories has been advanced. Now Dr. Knight Dunlap, professor of psychology in Johns Hopkins University, offers a new explanation. Primitive

men and women first took to clothes, he says, to ward off flies and similar pests. "Crawling and flying pests are with primitive man abundantly and very intimately," he says. "The most efficient protection is afforded by hanging strings, leaves, and similar articles that flap with the movements of the wearer. Clothing itself is neither modest nor immodest. Any degree of clothing, as

well as nudity, is perfectly modest when we become used to it."

Automatic safety wing slots seem to banish the flyer's most deadly peril-the wild spin of a plane that has lost the speed it needs to keep aloft. Devised by F. Handley-Page, British aircraft builder, they are considered by some engineers the most important advance in aviation history. When a plane tilts upward, the wings lose their normal lift. They are standing on edge; and the air that passed over them before in a smooth, even stream is now a boiling, swirling eddy. The ailerons, the balancing flaps at the rear of the wings, cannot take hold. The plane spins and crashes. By trapping a stream of air at this time and sending it backward over the tops of the wings, giving the ailerons something to grip, the new automatic control slots avert such a catastrophe. They are inconspicuous, miniature seven-foot wings, so hinged to the main wings' upper surface as to leave narrow slots through which the auxiliary air stream is directed to the ailerons just behind.

In St Luke's Hospital in Chicago, a few weeks ago, a woman facing a major operation for abdominal adhesions was hypnotized as she lay on the operating table. For almost an hour she rested in wide-eyed hypnotic sleep, while Dr. H. G. Jones completed the operation without the use of any drug or anesthetic. And when the patient was awakened, she declared she had suffered no pain whatever! Leading medical authorities are now discussing the possibility of reviving the scientific practice of hypnotism as a substitute for anesthetics, particularly in cases where a patient's heart might be affected by drugs. A hundred years ago hypnotism was used fairly extensively in surgery. Today it is still in more or less common use in Europe. The fact of hypnotic power is universally recognized. A skilled hypnotist can put nine out of ten persons into the mysterious half-sleep.

B

IG BILL THOMPSON should rest for a breathing spell from his pursuit of the shadow of His Britannic Majesty and take a glance into Canada. That peep might persuade him to remain taciturn for a period. He would learn that while he rants at the predatory designs of King George, statesmen in Britain's ward to the north are equally vociferous in their denunciations of the baneful influence of Uncle Sam upon their nationality. He would discern that while he belabors the historians who belittle the exalted patriotism of the Revolutionists of 1776, Dominion agitators are assailing textbook writers who depict American heroes in too favorable a light.

Blatant Bill should have attended the recent all-Dominion Conservative party convention in Winnipeg. To it came thousands of delegates, representing constituencies from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Literally, the convention "viewed" the land to the south "with alarm." It showed a fear of American cultural and economic tentacles, as they stretched forth to grip things Canadian, greater than Thompson's dread of British intrusion into the United States.

Every night several hundred thousand Canadians turn their radio dials to hear the stirring notes of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." They catch reports of Tunney-Dempsey fights, world series baseball, or lectures on American prosperity.

Canadians spend $6,000,000 a year, it has been estimated, on American publications and only $33,000 a year on British periodicals. Add to that the comic strips, Sunday scandal pages,

daily fiction, and general features of American origin in the Canadian daily newspapers, and you will understand why the flood may fashion the Provinces à la America.

Has the United States, in comparison, Mr. Thompson, anything to fear from Great Britain? How many English magazines are bought in this country?

The same effect is duplicated in the bookshops. The works of Canadian authors virtually gather dust beside the fast moving volumes of John Erskine, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Booth Tarkington, Harold Bell Wright, et al. Canada's best authors, to the grief of the homeland, respond to the lure and wider markets of the States and settle in New York, losing their identity as Canadians. Even the modern historians, Mark Sullivan, David S. Muzzey and Professor Beard have their recent books displayed prominently in the bookstores of Canada. Isn't the Dominion being literally Americanized, Mr. Thompson, to an extent that makes the Anglicizing of the Union negligible?

Drop into a motion picture theater and notice the domination of American movies. Be amazed at the magnitude of American propaganda disseminated from the silver screen. Marvel at the rarity of a British or the nonexistence of a Canadian film. Do any English "movies" get into Chicago, Mr. Thompson, and work mischief upon your citizens?

Such influences are growing year by year. How combat them? How keep intact the British ideals and traditions and mould them to the life of Canada? How restrain hundreds of thousands of Canadian youths from flocking across the border each year?

The Conservative convention appealed for determined and organized effort to fight the adulteration of Canada by the States. The Hon. Richard Bennett, the Conservative leader elected by the conclave, declared: “The radio, with its stirring patriotic American airs, and the bookshops, filled with magazines, books and newspapers, written from the American viewpoint, are a great power in moulding the thought of the masses. Are we to lose our native individuality? Are we to drop our identity as a union? Or shall we hold grimly to our traditions and make a distinct national consciousness-a true spirit of Canadianism?"

Sir George Foster, a most eloquent statesman, said: "We live side by side with the most progressive nation in the world. We live within sound of its radios which daily and nightly teach the young and the old something of that nation's history and ideals."

The Hon. J. B. M. Baxter, premier of New Brunswick, added his lugubrious note: "We are using history books in some of the schools that extol the heroes of the United States, that talk of its greatness, that give it the credit for winning the war, that depict Woodrow Wilson as one of the world's greatest arbitrators."

What are the antidotes to the poison, both subtle and overt, of America? There are several. The foremost is to glorify the heroes of Canada. That is already being done. Sir John A. MacDonald, first premier of the Confederation, dead less than three decades, is already undergoing the deification proc

ess.

A stock of legend and of lore is being built around him. A halo is being drawn about his head. He is going through exactly the same historical treatment given George Washington. His picture in colors was plastered all over Winnipeg during the assemblage. Other pioneers of Canada, still fresh in their graves, are being canonized in the same deliberate fashion.

The second antidote is to build up a national spirit, strong enough to counteract the infiltration of United States propaganda. "What we must do in this country," explained the Hon. Mr. Bennett, "is to kindle a strong Canadian consciousness. We must establish a virile Canadianism. We must take pride in the soundness of our country's institutions and in the glory of our history and our achievements." This national temper can be brought about by training the new generation.

"We want the youths of this country to realize the breadth, depth, intensity and opportunities of this country,' said the Hon. Mr. Baxter. "School textbooks should tell of the magnificence of Canada." Sir George Foster thoroughly agreed. He said, “We must visualize before young eyes the romantic history of our own country-a history more vivid than any novel."

The third antidote is to exalt Great Britain, the mother country, and to arouse an affection for her. "The Conservative party has always stood for Canada distinctive, autonomous, but within the British Empire," perorated the Hon. Hugh Guthrie, present leader of the Conservatives in Parliament. "Not only because we love the British Empire, not only because we believe it is the greatest agency for good in the world, not only because of the ideals of justice and fair play for which Britain stands, but because we find our chief security and the security for our rights guaranteed to us under our constitution in remaining in association with the British Empire."

The fourth antidote is to create an impression of great wealth, unbounded opportunities and vast resources lying untouched in Canada. "Our people must know that there is no country in the world that offers better opportunities than Canada," adjured Mr. Bennett. They should "realize the greatness of this land, the best and richest country in the world today."