Evening star., 1939-05-14

philosophy ex-Pvt. Mcdonald has i'm
bibed from the stars as he walked sentry
post in the Civil War.
Thus endeth-and one feels inclined to
biblical language-the second chapter
A little more than 20 years ago there
was great revolution in Russia. Many
of the foremost brains of the country
were driven into exile. Under the pro-
lection of the Cars the study of the
heavens had flourished. Its great center
had been the Pultowa Observatory. sec
ond largest in the world for nearly
half century. Prominent in Russian
astronomy had been the Struve family
grandfather and father
For the dedication of the new Nc
tempt was made to get in touch with
the present director of the Pultowa
Observatory. They wanted to invite him
to Texas, 1t was impossible to get into
communication with him.
"Purged,' was the comment of emf
net astronomers. Somehow the director
had been unable to make the stars agree
with Karl Marx or support the thesis of
communistic mass production. They are
embarrassingly unconcerned with world
politics and the ideas of dictators-these
spiral nebulae hundred billion times
the size of the sun. And the firing squad
or chopping block sometimes is the re-
ward for disagreement with Stain or
Hitler
But years before Stain or Hitler were
heard of in the world a scion of the
real Russian aristocracy was seated on
park bench in New York, victim of
the Communist revolution, his interest
in the stars subservient to his interest
in where the next bacon and-eggs was
coming from. His name was Otto
Struve.
He became attached to the University
of Chicago generous host of the victims
of lost cauSes-Witness late President
Benes. Today he finds himself in this
weird bowl in the Texas mountains di-
rector of the Mcdonald Observatory.
And Stain and Hitler can go jump in
cares, since he is concerned with affairs
a million light years beyond the COM
pass of their earth-bound spirits
Ex-Pvt. Mcdonald told his colored
barber that some day men would build
a telescope big enough to see the golden
streets of New jerusalem
But still the New Jerusalem is beyond.
Ex-Russian Exile Strive on a starry
highland all nights are starry on this
high plateau-can look beyond the great
sweep of the planets and the sun. He
can look beyond red Mars, planet of
Hitler, and golden cloudveiled Venus,
planet of dead loves and live ones
He can look, through the medium of
Photographic plates, beyond the local
system of stars which his confrere, the
great Swedish astronomer Lindblac calls
an illusion. He can look beyond the
Milky Way with its 100000 900, 900 stars
averaging as large as the sun.
Below DIR. Struve his eyes fastened
on the revelations of the telescope, the
coyotes howl. The prong horned ante
lope jump over barbed-wire fences. The
baby cattle suckle their mothers-and
in few months they will be in the
Chicago stockyards. In Fort Davis and
Alpine and Maria, little Texas cattle
towns, good folks sing Rock of Ages
and evil folks-white and Mexican-go
their evil ways.
And DR.. Struve does not see, when he
develops his plates, the golden streets of
the New Jerusalem.
He sees, instead, the vast reaches Of
nothing. He can see the ittleness Of
all mans dreams of the New Jerusalem
in the infinitely vast expanses Of moth
ingness.