Henderson daily dispatch., 1938-02-28
Today is the Day
I By CLARK KJINNAIRD
Copyright, 1888, for this Newspaper
by King Features Syndicate. Inc.

there was no means of avoiding
steep descent on one side and an as
cent on the other.
Blondin made his first trip across
without any preliminary tests, On his
second trip he carried a man strap
ped to his back! This was a young
artist, Henry A. Colcord, who risked
his life to earn a small fee.
News of the coming stunt had
brought 100000 sightseers from all
over the East. The crossing took
more than half an hour Three times
Colcord had to descend from Blondin's
back to the swaying, declining or ris-
ing cable to rest his strained limbs.
The parting of a guy rope forced
Blondin to run part of the way to re-
cover his stride and he was as breath
less as the crowd when he stepped off
the rope on the Canadian side.
A contemporary account says: "Wo-
men tainted by scores. Men cried out
and uttered oaths at the weirdest
sight that ever disturbed the majesty
of the Niagara -. Men grabbed the
adventures from the rope, wild with
suppressed excitement. One man
dragged Colcord to the solid ground,
saying, with tears in his eyes, I would
not look at anything like that again
for a million dollars"
Colcord said: Don't ask me to de-
scribe how I felt" =
Blondin found another volunteer
; willing to be trundled across the Falls
in a wheelbarrow! He performed
even more breath-taking stunts, on
the cable, until they came to be ac-f
cepted as commonplace. No one per-
son can continue to excite and hold.
the interest of the public for long.
Are the readers of this column @in~
terested in reading more about Blon-''
din and what happened to him later?.
AMERICA AT WAR DAY-BY-DAY
20 Years Ago Today-Japanese mil
itary operations in Siberia were pro-
posed to save vast quantities of war
stores in Siberia, shipped across the
Pacific from America, from falling
into BolShevik hands. It was O.. K.
with Britain, U. S., ct al, for Japan
to invade the continent then!
Same day, U. S. Minister Morris
cabled from Stockholm a significant
message that was kept from the Ame--
rican people until long after the war:
a German government spokesman had
told him the contemplated great Of
fensive on the Western front was be-
ing held in allegiance to see what re-
suit would be obtained from this
speech of Hertling's affirming that
the German government accepted on
principle President Wilson's enuncia-
ton of peace terms.
A few days earlier, U. S. Consul Nc
Nally at Zurich had cabled that the
Kaiser was holding back the German
offensive, arguing that Lloyd George
was the only person preventing peace
and that slaughter should be avoided
as long as there was a chance Lloyd
George would be deposed.
The war could have been ended in
February 1918 and thousands of Anne
rican lives saved if London had not
been dominant in allied affairs.
President Wilson was declaring that
America was united to a man in the
belief that the war should go on until
Germany had been overwh elmingly de-
feated. But that day it became known
that Maj. Gen. Charles c. Treat, com
handing the 37th Division (National
Guard), had asked the War Depart
ment to impose the death penalty to
check assertions, which, in his own
command, had reached large totals.
Secretary of War Baker disapproved
of the recommendation