EDISON OUT TO BEAT THE KAISER.

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 September 1917, Page 2

EDISON OUT TO BEAT THE KAISER.

BATTLE OF WITS BEING SILENTLY

FOUGHT OUT.

ORANGE, N.J., August 9. Thomas A. Edison versus Germany.— This is the battle that is being silently fought here to-day. A little red brick building, covered with ivy is the famous inventor’s laboratory.

“I have no right to talk about it—ask the Secretary of the Navy,” was the message that came from the closely guarded sanctum to-day, in response to an enquiry on Edison’s work. Edison is guarded like the President. An iron fence, crowned with barbed wire, separates his laboratory from the guarded sanctum. When Edison appears a secret service agent dogs him. “The old man,” as he is known to his associates, has started out to beat ' the Kaiser just as methodically as he started out to perfect electric lights and phonographs. To-day when he-climbed from his dusty “flivver” and punched his time card it registered 8.30 a.m. Yesterday he plunged in at 8.45 and out at 12.30 a.m. —nearly 16 hours later. , War seemed distant from the little red brick building to-day. It is surrounded by fifty modern industrial structures, crowded with 5400 men and women, making such peaceful devices as motion picture machines and storage hatteiies. But quiet men with sharp eyes stood in every doorway. Signs glared from every side' warning employees against “leakins;.” Inside, the barbed rail with Edison were a few men with deep lined fqces. Outsiders had fleeting glimpses of them as they darted past windows, all in a tearing hurry. The Kaiser would probably give an army division for what these men know. , ' „ Edison was in the greatest rnsli or all. Tim detective at bis heels bad to half trot at times to keep pace with the man ho was set to watch.