The Snowflake herald., 1920-12-24
I'M FACTS STRANGER THAN
''' VIEIRDES I FICTION STORIES
.;or Of the Most Gifted Novelist Outdone by Lies Real
.@nonces-No One Could Have Imagined or Written
cocb Stupendous Tragedy as the War the
World Has Just Gone Through

NJ" lines on the news s'aiiu9 -
cd n'aSa name announces that II IS
cs Foos' ,o true stories, and a sub
5qoJsu ne attention to the good ola
gceFoo 'ilr truth in this case makes
tt'l. .ssion of trying to appear as
be r0DSs ,.,'a action as possible. But II
pHcl l,'f tbe realm of Imagination tha'
tpt u - -. look first for the yerln-
s "O,'o ;, onr ancient adage that truth
s1oD tban fiction. The news OF
sT5d sTan5 as if is turned out day Dy
BE WV" y. n veiy large extent con,
G j ~ .+b tbe strange and unusual
fns' ofrpn % para!leling fiction often
5iDs' ,arond o, it. The variety of the
olls :,o ~ combinations of circumstan-
'SiD| 60 Great as to surpass the i'm
cS D ~ 0f the most fertile fctionist,
,D' \. fSe New York Times.
" u, onr one what events chroni-
Hl :. "5 tba newspapers are or have
'~ = Stranger than fiction, ana the
htl :. .s.reT srrq will probably be the war
" ~ 'D The war certainly No one
%l. IA m one could have imagined or
y .4oo am down do such a stupendous trag-
'l"'' n.o world has just gone
..,nrb It is case where the plain
lY'' hove far outdistanced the tic-
.'' w., as well as the historians
,rl ,r,nc into the future. Old Bernardo,
''p.a9 -.,9, what the German ruling class
n mind knew that war with
ss.co and Russia was coming and
! ' world as whole had slowly been
..nsred through years for a Euro
ssp % cssh But no one foresaw 2
.,sict in which the whole world
rrrd be involved, a war which would
1T millions of lives and money run
,ng into the hundreds of billions Of
5LarS
What Stranger Than This?
yot only the war as a thing in ik
N bnt unnumbered phases and Incl
5ots Of the war passed beyond the
noenaton Of the men who wrote be-
hp 1914 Americas part in it alone
farms an almost unbelievable episode.
r1,t writer would have dared, dec
,b even ago. to have told of an
American army Of 100000 men fight
h. over the old hattlefelds of North
I'm France and Belgium?
What brilliant fcdonist could have
lenrpd the results of the war? The
rgoarion of crushed nations of Eu-
na the breakup Of old empires?
gat revolutionary genius of fiction
-ald have fancied a Russia under the
2Sheyiki for nearly three years?
Tho could have given an air Of real
.tF to a romance in 1913 dealing with
te fate Of the Gar of Russia or
Kaiser Wilhelm Of Germany?
The true stories Of the heroic deeds
d the war, the personal experiences
md tragic incidents, are in many cases
foo strange and unreal to have passed
questioned in the pages Of fiction.
4 gun with a range of seventy-five
nles drops a shell into a Paris church
n the moment it is crowded for Good
Friday mass. No wonder that fer
ags the world would not believe that
ach thing had happened The first
@ Of gas by the Germans against
ihe British in the Ipres sector was
mother fact the world could not bring
feIf to believe without great effort.
lle first air raids, the first subma-
he attack on passenger ships and
gen the announcement that the Ger
aan troops We're marching on France
through Belgium upset all the order
thinking in a supposedly sane
aofId A world which has lived
Trough the days since August, 1914.
'i have no reason to doubt that
yum is stranger than fiction.
outdoes Jules Verne.
TOT years the imaginative story of
" ,utS Verne on submarines, called
twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
oa' was a bromide among writer's
~ \ 'aIkers who wished to mention the
.ua,ncuonal and the fantastically
4's'hauye. Yet the vividness of that
'@,' contained nothing so picturesque
y y certainly nothing so true as that
- ale OF underseas suffering and
s9 @V'sll brought into this port and
a"'aepnla from Off the Delaware
1peS recently by the survivors of the
Iencan =. submarine SIS.
! '''aoled in practice crash dive,
!. ! submarine was tilted by her Com
! 'uuer so that her stern stood out
II. od,er and While cataracts swept
o .aousn her compartments as the
i, we're opened between them, Off
~ aliu men climbed to the mart of
.'ip That stood above the waves
ss moving that any part of the
II I was above the water line. Then
M -eo'iy thirty hours the crew bat
! ~ life, without drinking water,
Aos ea'y atmosphere poisoned with
oo5 "e gas, and with only scraps of
y,,as gS ripped a hole in the steel
n y the vessel, put a red shirt
N plpe and waved their signal until
qag,. tolRe- Then, each disclaiming
ona : lOr heroism by giving praise to