NOTES FROM AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 132, 30 November 1935, Page 15

NOTES FROM AMERICA

EXPORTS TO ITALY

THE FUTURE OF OPERA

BABY BORN IN A WELL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, November 6. President Roosevelt is annoyed at the discovery that a heavy volume qt American goods went to Italy last month, despite his efforts to discourage such trade. Among thex exports were 234 motor-trucks, compared with two in the same month last year. Over 60,000 .parrels of petroleum were shipped, as against ;none in October, 1934. The steel and iron scrap, exports doubled. At the President's direction Customs offices at all ports are keeping a . continuous tally on- goods shipped to 1ta1y...... ; . A vigorous controversy is raging in regard, to the future of opera in. this country. .Lawrence Tibbett, baritone of -the Metropolitan' Opera, says it is dying on its feet. Tito Schipa and Fortune iGallo have, each wagered 10,000 dollars that this is not so. Tibbett says the manner of presenting opera, is behind the times; it should be produced as entertainment, on: Broadway lines. 'The pUbUc at large have been educated to regard opera as.culture," He. says. "After a dose of opera, for culture's sake, the public go the next night to a musical comedy for enjoyment.'. We should translate the best operas into English^ It is curious to sing comic roles, many of them with good old low humour, and see no one in the audience as much as cracking a smile, because they cannot understand the language in which they are presented." ' STUPIDITY OF GEESE. For three anxious days the whole of the . .United States and Canada watched the telegraphic dispatches from Niagara Falls, where 10,000 Arctic geese, heading south on their winter' migration, alighted on the river, some miles above the falls, and were gradually drawn by the current towards the edge of the cataract. Game laws were suspended in the hope that gunfire might scare them sufficiently to take wing and continue their flight. The Maid of the Mist, an excursion steamer that takes tourists to the base of the falls, waited-below to succour those that went over. After making several flights backward from the lip of the gorge, the flock, frightened by the guns, eventually resumed its flight. About two thousand went over the cataract to their death. A young woman, wife of a farmer in North Carolina, went to the well to draw water. Overcome by sudden fainlness, she fell 40ft into the water, which was about 9ft deep. Giving birth to a child, she held it up above water while she swam around, clutching the walls of the well. Nearly an hour after her husband, who was working in a nearby field, was attracted by her cries, and, with the aid of two farm hands, rescued the woman and child. A country doctor took them in a small car over twelve miles of difficult road to* hospital, where both " are recovering. The baby, which is normal, was fortunate, he said, in that it did not commence to breathe until an hour after its birth. The infant is now the recipient of countless gifts from this country and Canada. No. 1 PUBLIC ENEMY. No. 1 Public Enemy, Arthur Flegenheimer, better known as "Dutch Schultz," who succeeded Al Capone in the liquor racket, was shot and killed, with three of his lieutenants, while they sat in a downtown cafe. Schultz, although questioned .by police, 'refused to disclose the identity of his slayers, who are understood to be members of a rival gang. Reputed to have handled twenty million dollars in five years, he left a million in cash in a Boston bank to' his third wife. The authorities say that, whereas Capone only employed Italians, Schultz and his associates were Jews. The control of the New York rackets has again passed; into the hands of an Italian gang. Schultz, although mortally "wounded., walked into a telephone booth in the cafe and, calling police headquarters, said in a calm voice, "This is Dutch Schultz. They've got me. You'd better hurry, as it is the end ol fhe road for me*