Iron County news. [volume] (Hurley, Wis.) 1913-1950, 1920-12-04

Nev, York.-Among the brtght-cov-
-,d MAGAZINES on the news stands is
ana whose name announces that II IS
l.votaJ 10 true stories and sub
tro caUs attention 10 the good old
rroycrh that truth is stranger thah
s.,ion 80 Truth in this case makes
All -,a concession of trying 10 appear as
,nucb like fiction as possible But II
i ror I'm the realm of imagination thaj
,na would look first for the Veriii-
,.ioo IF our ancient adage that truth
stranger than fiction. The news OF
So ~. world as ii is turned out day by
dav is TO a very large extent con
oarnad with the strange and unusual
~ ching often paralleIing fiction, often
.,ofnr beyond it. The variety of the
no.,fble combinations of circumstan-
eos +, so great as to surpass the i'm
aoinarion of the most fertile ticrionist,
says the New York Times.
Ask any one what events chroni-
s rlrd in the newspapers are or have
81 bean stranger than fiction, and the
N first answer will probably be the war
itself The war. certainly. No one
81 dfd end no one could have imagined or
nj written down such a stupendous tr0g-
VI o3v rs the world has just gone
81 through. Il is a case where The plain
81 facts have far outdistanced the tic
n toniets as wen as the historians
n looking into the future. Old Bernardo.
knowing what the German ruling class
81 had in mind, knew that war with
81 France and Russia was coming and
the world as a whole had slowly been
q prepared through years for Euro
8 pqau clash But no one foresaw
q conflict in which the whole world
n would he involved. a war which would
81 cost millions of lives and money run
ming into the hundreds of billions Of
q dollars
q What Stranger Than This?
Not only the war as thing in It
self but unnumbered phases and Incl
dents of the war passed beyond the
Il Imagination Of the men who wrote be-
q fore 1914 Americas part in 1t alone
& forms an almost unbelievable episode.
What writer would have dared, a dec
Il ade even ago, to have told of an
u American army of 100000 men fight
8 ing over the old battlefields of North
eru France and Belgium?
What brilliant fictionist could have
Il pictured the results of the war? The
q restoration of crushed nations of Eu-
rope, the breakup of old empires?
What revolutionary genius of fiction
would have fancied Russia under the
d BolSheyiki for nearly three years?
Who could have given an air of real
4 fly 10 a romance Ia 1913 dealing with
the fate Of the Gar of Russia or
4 Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany?
The true stories of the heroic deeds
4 OF the war, the personal experiences
ana tragic Incidents are In many cases
TOO strange and unreal to have passed
lnqueStioned in the pages of fiction.
gun with range of seventy-five
q miles drops shell into a Paris church
al the moment 1t is crowded for Good
Il Fnday mass. No wonder that for
uays the world would not believe that
~ch thing had happened! The first
use of gas by the Germans against
Inc British in the YpreS sector was
another fact the world could not bring
nSeI I" believe without great effort.
me brSt air raids, the first subma-
'le attack on passenger ships and
even 'oe announcement that the Ger
uIan troops were marching on France
Il through Belgium upset all the order
ulA6'ng in a supposedly sane
"orld. world which has lived
through the days since August, 1914.
VI" nave no reason to doubt that
"0U Is stranger than fiction.
outdoes Jules Verne.
s'F years the imaginative story of
sr'eS verne on submarines. called
e"eN'y thousand Leagues Under the
was a bromide among writer's
anu takers who wished to mention the
!. a'Fa-hctional and the fantosticoIlv
.naslIallYe. Yet the vivldness of that
contained nothing so picturesque
laiHiy nothing so true as that
t 'o'e OF underseas suffering and
DIN brought into this port and
""ue'Rhia from off the Delaware
i ape, recently by the survivors of the
american submarine So.
:, D'saoied in a practice crash dive
submarine was tilted by her Com
m'A'er So that her stern stood our
g. -.er and while cataracts swept
G ,o--a Der compartments as the
e We're opened between them. Off
49, ana men climbed to the part of
A.P .hal stood above the waves
l'' showing that any part Of the
e. @as above the water line Then
~ nearly thirty hours tho crew baf.
l lie without drinking water
a'g atmosphere poisoned with
~ gas and with only scraps Of
mn. l-rE -pped a hole in the steel
~ The vessel, put a red shirt
aa- i.pe and waved their signal until
,aae Then. each discIaimjng
' FIR heroism by giving praise al lll'' to
Re- ne else In the crew. thew were
S. r. ag steamship captains op wgi .
engineer g7-h+ ~