Douglas daily dispatch., 1927-12-18
BY JAMES J. MONTAGUE


I'm not convinced that sage brush
heroes are the only red-blooded men,
any more. I admit that a chap who
rides right straight through "a Mexi-
can village in broad daylight, with all
the inhabitants, including the women,
sniping at him, is taking chance.
And the fellow who will jump a horse
over a precipice and then swim him
across the river at the bottom of it.
isn't exactly coward But I built
my opinion of the surprising intrep-
idity of the characters that Bill Hart
interprets SO accurately, before I'd
been in Switzerland. Before I'd been
there by way of the movies, 1 mean.
That's all the travelling l have an op-
portunity to do nowadays, and it's
lot cheaper and just nbout as salts
factory as that, judging from the
howls that my friends make about so
many Americans being in Europe that
you can't get any contacts with the
local sights and populations.
But to return to the hero business.
And, by heroes, I don't mean the
goody-goody boys who never do any,
thing wrong and are always kind to
L QSCO UllC WOIO Ill O1lC
Homeric sense. Homer's heroes were
all killers. The more men they killed,
and the meaner they acted while they
were killing them, the bigger heroes
they were. Achilles and Hector and
Menalaus and the rest of the crowd
would still be on the waiting list if
they had put in their applications for
Carnegie hero medals. Their idea of
heroes wasn't to save life, but to take
it, and to take lot while they were
taking.
And now I am going to prove that
Switzerland is the place where men
are men, and where half their man
hood isn't put in their horses name.
The movie, by means Of which I Wis
tied the roof of Europe, was a movie
about a mountain climber. Over here,
mountain climber is a middle-aged
gentlemnn, who is one of string Of
people of his own age, who are tied to
guide by means of rope, and make
the ascent of some peak or other once
a season. There are so many in every
party that if one Of them started to
fall, the others would only need to-
clamp their ice axes in@o the snow,
VI dCC Ul1CIl1SClVCO iIl1A PUN lllIll DdCk
into place. The guide picks out the
easiest going and cuts all the steps in
the steep places. And he is safe from
falling, because you can't fall past a
dozen people, all held in line by
rope, without one or two of them
grabbing you as you go past, and stop
ping your downward cMreer Noun
tain climbing on this side of the sea
is about as dangerous as riding around
Lincoln, Nebraska in sightseeing
bus.
1t is different in Switzerland. This
mountain climber, who was the hero,
used to walk down to the hotel at
night to watch his girl do cabaret
turn, walk out on the porch to kiss
his mother and then scramble right
straight up the face of a thousand
foot cliff to sleep in a shack he had
there.
While he was climbing up that rock,
you could see the ibexes and cham
discs gather in little groups on adjoin-
ing peaks and look at him with what
appeared to be envy. But sometimes
they would shake. their heads as if
to say, "Well, there's one born every
minute" Which seemed to be a sage
observation, for why a man who had a
good bed in warm hotel should go
clamering up cliffs at midnight, when
he practically had to feel his way
from rock to rock, must have been a.
problem that no four-footed creature
could solve with any degree of sat
isfaction.
However, let me get on with my
story. One day this mountain climber
came home unexpectedly and found