§ b Se I have just seen the movie version of Abe Lincoln in Illinois and if you haven't seen it you are in for a rare treat. do the same play in the stage but I was not as impressed as I was with It was the same play, the same words were there, the same sequence of events, and the same man acting the leading part but something happened to Raymond Massey on the screen. individuality as Raymond Massey, a distinguished and honored actor of the stage, completely disappeared and before the eyes of the small audi- ence in the theatre where I saw the pieture, Abraham Lincoln came to life and not for a single moment did one member of that audience doubt that Honest Abe lived and breathed. As we sat in the darkened theatre, even though most of us have been raised on stories of Lincoln, and I wouldn’t doubt if more has been written about him than any other man in our history, we seemed to meet Lincoln for the first time when he came to the moving picture version. New Salem on a flat boat filled with pigs. We looked into that homely face and realized that there was a man we had been hearing a lot about and reading about for some time, but a man we had never really known. Before our eyes was a long- legged, bashful young man who pos- sessed above all a warm heart and a courage very few men are capable of. We watched him in the village of New Salem. We saw him become postmaster and could readily under- stand why the people became so at- tached to him, and we could under- stand why Ann Rutledge must have learned to love a man she said “could fill any woman’s heart.” We witnessed his growth as a pol- © itician and it wasn’t difficult to see why the people of New Salem want- ed a backwoodsman to represent them in the Legislature. He wasn’t the usual politician, and he certainly wasn’t very comfortable in his “store clothes”, and he didn’t carry himself with the assured air of a man of the government. But the people believed in him. They liked him for the truth he spoke and they liked him because he was a man’s man. They liked him for his gentle ways and his dry and salty humor. Slowly we saw the gangling young man become an adult and Abraham Lincoln of the stove pipe hat and the ill fitting frock coat becomes a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. We see him with Billy Herndon, the boy who became Lincoln’s law partner and his best friend. Billy Herndon know that Lincoln was a great man and he tried to help steer his course. He had been in Lincoln’s office as a very young man and he realized what a rare person this long-legged, sad-eyed man really was. Herndon didn’t want Lincoln to marry Mary Todd. He knew what she would do to such a simple man. He knew she was of a different class and that she was overly am- bitious and that there was no real love between them. Lincoln knew that Herndon was right, and he did try to get out of marrying Mary Todd, but he couldn’t forget what a fool he had made of her by re- fusing to appear at the first wed- ding, so he came back from a trip through the West and married the woman who was to make his life so miserable. The picture goes on and we learn about the man Lincoln. . We see him as a father, and as the husband of the woman who gave him three sons but very little comfort or | Lewis G. Hines announces the in- peace. He understood her and was | stallation of a recently developed tolerant with her, and he submit- | photographic system of record main- ted humbly to her nagging ways. tenance which will save untold Only once did he really cross her and that was on the night he was running for the Presidency and the votes were being counted and ev- erything was in a state of feverish excitement. She was sick of his THE SENTIMENTAL SIDE By EDITH BIEZ—————————— I saw Raymond Massey His | indifference, and his general atti- | tude. She didn’t understand that her husband was to have added worries and responsibilities if the people decided he was to be Pres- ident. She thought only of herself and her small warped soul cried out in .despair. Lincoln turned to her, after his friends had left the room, ! and told her it was excusable for her to worry and fuss in the priv- acy of their own home but he would not have her make a fool of him in public. She looked at him in ut- ter amazement and told him it was the first time he had ever taken such a tone with her. She went home, on the eve of her husband’s triumph, home to sit and weep be- cause she felt sorry for herself and still could not realize what a great and simple soul she had married. As Abraham Lincoln stood on the platform of the train which was to take him to Washington, and away from his friends and neighbors in Springfield, he was asked to speak a few words of farewell. I don’t know just how moved the “other people in the audience were but I know I felt that I was part of that great crowd at the station and as I looked up into that careworn face 1, too, believed in Abraham Lin- coln! I believed that there above me was a friend, a man of the peo- ple, a man who understood the people, and on his face was written his sympathy and understanding. I was not conscious of the words he spoke but I felt the strength of that tall, homely man, and as the train pulled out of the station, I felt that I had seen and heard a great man and that my life had be- come richer by contact with him, and I am telling you I was quite surprised to find myself on Chest- nut Street in Philadelphia in 1940. FREEDOM The columnists and con- tributors on this page are allowed great latitude in expressing their own opin- ions, even when their opinions are at variance with those of The Post. Fos THE LOW DOWN FROM HICKORY GROVE If I was starting out to fool somebody and trying to put over a quick deal, like maybe selling a horse with the heaves or some- thing, I would steer clear of old Yankeeland. And the reason I am thinking of the Yanks is on account of this Mr. Tobey. Those old boys with the whang in the wvoice, there be- tween the Penobscot and the Connecticut, they don’t buy wooden nut- megs, they sell em. And this new idea of asking exerybody 83 ques- tions, and looking down our gullet, and under the house when they are tak- ing the census and just supposed to count us, has riled up Mr. Tobey. His forefathers dodged tomahawks down around Plymouth Rock, so a few palefaces circling him now, there on the Poto- mac, don’t curdle his blood. Cal Coolidge would be proud of him. Peekin’ around im bath- rooms to see who washes his feet or meck, and how about behind our ears and we prove it, 1s a bit nosey. Myr. Tobey say so. With 95 per cent of all the bathtubs in the world in the U. S., that old boy could be our mext Presi- dent Yours, with the low down, JO SERRA. HARRISBURG | WHIRLICIC Secretary of Labor and Industry thousands of feet of storage space. Approximately 3,000,000 workers are covered by the State Unemploy- ment Compensation Law, for which records must be maintained. Original records are photographed on reels of film and when reference is necessary are projected on a screen. One million ledger pages, requiring 1,500 square feet of floor space are now filed in film form in an ordinary letter-size filing cabi- net three feet in height. Application has been made to the Federal Works Projects Administra- tion by Governor Arthur H, James for an emergency appropriation of $2,000,000 for use in the borough of Shenandoah and the surrounding region, to avert the danger to life, property or health and to facilitate the resumption of normal commun- ity activities which have been dis- rupted by the recent surface subsi- dence caused by mining operations under the borough. In the first two and one-half months of 1940, the State Highway Department awarded contracts call- ing for the improvement of 59.22 miles of highway at a cost of $4,- 259,926. THE SAFETY VALVE This column is open to everyone. Letters should be plainly written and signed. Editor: I wonder just what Wilkes-Barre and Wyoming Valley looked like on All Fools’ Day. Wyoming Valley needs a flood of dollars, not water. I suppose I should need one of the planes we are now building to. get to Dallas if I decided to go home and keep my feet dry. The census enumerator asked me “Where do you live?” 1 said “I am like a chain store—all over.” Chesapeake Bay is well confined, but the Wyoming Valley flood seems endless. : ww NON NN SS NS RY \ \ NN uh \ R ay 7 \ \ 4 os N > : 7 Z \ a \\ 2 ES NS 17. al Wy - — TL IGE GIL SHINGTON, D. C.