Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-07

Secretary Melons customs officials
may be interested in knowing that Ger
many, which has given us the fastest
ships. has now evolved the fastest
method of getting us off of them. Her
revenue authorities are experimenting
with system of having inspectors
board incoming German liners at Cher
bourg and examine passengers baggage
during the voyage to Hamburg or
Bremen-some 10 or IL hours before ar
rival there. The purpose is to permit
passengers to entrain for their destina-
lions practically as soon as ships reach
the docks instead of waiting and vast
ing weary hours at customs houses
ashore. Every Yankee globe trotter will
hope and pray that the Treasury au-
thorities will see something in the Ger
man scheme worth initiating. Irritating
as customs formalities are abroad, they're
almost pleasantries compared to the
agony that has to be endured when an
some port here in Gods country"
Sometimes it makes him wish he hadn't
gone abroad-or had stayed there.
y X X
Still another American girl, Miss
Constance r. Harvey of Buffalo, N. Y,
has won distinguished honors In the
United States Foreign Service. As a re-
suit Of unusually high standing in
competitive examinations at the State
Department. Miss Harvey has been
named a vice consul at Ottawa, Can
ada. The department is now trying out
plan of having those who pass the
exams sent at once to posts in the
field, instead of entering the Foreign
Service School at Washington. The
theory is that they tackle the school
curriculum with better understanding
after a little experience with the real
thing. Miss Harvey, who is in her
early twenties took her bachelors de-
gree at Smith College, where she
achieved distinction in languages, espe-
cially Italian. Later she embarked upon
a course of international law at Co
lunbia, under Charles Cheney Hyde,
former solicitor at the State Depart
ment, and is about TO be given a mas
Miss Harvey one of the most billliant
students who ever came under his eye.
X X
Ambassador Paul Claudel, now in
Germany for the premiere production
Of his Biographical opera" entitled
christopher Columbus" Invested him
self of an aphorism about statesmen on
the eve OF his departure for Europe.
Most statesmen" observed the cul-
tured envoy of France in Washington,
"have long noses. That is well. be-
cause as rule they cannot see further
than the ends of them"
Miss Jeanette Rankin of Montana,
who was the first woman elected to
Congress when she was sent to Wash
ington as Representative at large in
1916, is again resident of the Capital.
She is associated with the National
Council for Prevention of War, the
spearhead of the pacif1st movement in
the United States. Miss Rankin
achieved fame by her fearful refusal
to vote for war in 1917. She doesn't
think much of the London naval treaty.
Having achieved parity with Great
Britain. it is her view that the United
States ought magnanimously and as a
noble gesture for peace, decline to
avail itself of it. Miss Rankin is a Re-
publican. She is now handsome, pre-
maturely white haired woman who will
be so years old in, June and doesn't
look it.
During the -drawn-out Senate
debate over Judge Parker's nomina-
ton to the Supreme Court, Senator
Henrik Shipstead, Farmer-Labor, of
Minnesota interviewed with a learned
legal argument. When somebody but
tonholed him and asked "how come"
that the Scandinavian giant, a dentist
by profession, knows so much law, he
sprang surprise. He revealed that at
the end of all the days he used to
manipulate molars in Minnesota, and
for many years, he burned Inc mid
night oil porting over law books.
Though Shipstead never took a degree,
his colleagues find that he knows his
Blackstonian onions as well as most
of the lawyers In the Senate.
X X y
It won't be long now before thousands
Of vacation tourists wiz be motoring