The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-06-15
T oday

Confucius' Grave.
 Playing Three-eighths.
 By ARTHUR BRISBANE
 If gold meant happiness. we might be rich and happy. in spite of every thing. by and by. Mir Harding's ad- ministration cut 0o,0Oo,o 900 from national expenses of 1921, as com pared with 1920. On Monday there came in another gold shipment, &s.5oo,Ooo. It comes from Sweden and may be Russian gold. stamped in the Swedish mint, to make 1t acceptable to our refined sense of ethics.
 We refuse Russian gold on the ground that It might be stolen from the Czar. as though all the Czar's gold had not been stolen from some one.
 With the worlds gold gradually accommodating here and other nations hungry for 1t. this would be good time for Europe to do away with the golc standard. or at least estab- lish silver at some low ratio. But Mr. Bryan, who usually looks after silver. is too busy with Darwin and his monkeys. And to make nations abandon the gold standard would be as hard as making them all change religion.
 
 This country Is shutting out i'm migration, refusing to admit mon and women of the kind that have built up the United States during years past. During nine months un- der the new law. arrivals in thls country were 624.47S and departures 4ss,5ss. The increase was only sS.- seo.
 with millions of acres uncultivateJ, room for hundreds of millions more, this country shuts outa the only real wealth--human intelligence and am bition. The ignorant say the big ger population would mean lower wages. But when the nations popu- Iation was less than 100000 wages averaged less than 50 cents a day
 About 551 years before Christ, Shu Cliang. huge Chinese soldier. with nine daughters. but no son, married a young. second wife and found In his garden precious stone. On 1t was written:
 "A cow Is about to born, pure As the crystal wave. He shall be a king. but without any domain"
 Ki-Lin, supernatural being. had left the message. Sure enough. Con- fucious was born, and now 2,473 years later, the Chinese are quarreiing about the care of his grave. The guardian of the tomb wants money for decorations from the estate of the two-year- Duke Kung, who Is dnnt of Confucius. living in a city peopled almost entirely by descen- dants of tho great philosopher.
 That is an interesting point. Seven ty-seyen short generations take you back to 555 B. c. Five times as many generations take you to the Neolithic period, late Stone age.
 IL is d young human ra,e. What will 1t have accomplished after two or three millions of generations7
 Edison now asks young men hunt ing jobs this question. among others:
 How would you play three eights against pat hand?" You could study character in the answer. One answer would be: "The same as you would play deuces;" another: Not at all. if I believed a pat hand out against me-"
 The wise answer, in these days of Y. M c. A. Red Cross sanctimonious- ness. would be: Sir. I don't know what you mean. What is a pat hand" But that answer would not suit Edison. He, by the way, thirty-eight years ago. used to play three-eights as though they were four kings.
 
 Not all victims of the Lusitania are yet dead. The others-many fish. will die in a few days when civers explode quantities of nitro glycerine on the deck of the sunken ship. After blasting and cutting through three decks, the divers will find s5.o0o.0oo gold in the Lusitania's strong room. also s1.o00,0o0 in jewels and gold in tho pursers safe. The divers will wear shells of steel to keep the waters weight from crushing them. working 275 feet down.
 We do not understand the wonders around us, living as we do at the bottom of our air ocean and what we don't understand we often deny. The fish will see strange steel clad creatures drop down, fasten some- thing to the ship, then go away, and by electric current from above ex- plode the dynamite, blow open the ship and kill the fish. The oldest. wisest fish, if he escaped. would say: Don't talk to me about thinking, superior beings coming down here and creating that racket. I've been in this ocean, minnow and fish, more than one hundred years and I know. That's just an accident"