Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

  Now Prof. E. N. daC. Andrade (until I know what the “daC.” in the professor’s name stands for, I shall be tossing and turning all night) suggests that, in order to break up these atoms and nuclei (hot dickity), we shall have to use some very powerful projectile to smash into them at a tremendous rate of speed. Just who is going to pick up what is left after this projectile has hit the atom and make the pieces look like anything at all, is something I, personally, am not going to worry about.

  In fact, I have lost a great deal of interest in the whole subject since starting to write this article, and I am sure that you have, too, my great big Audience of Rodeo Land. Suppose we let the whole matter drop for a while and just give ourselves over to fun and frolic?

  It seems there were three Irishmen, whom we will call three Hungarians because that was not their name. Well, these three chaps were walking along the street when one of them turned to the other two (he being on the outside) and said: “Stop your pushing!” You can imagine the hubbub which resulted from this remark. Fists flew like hot cakes and in no time at all, the only one left was the man who had made the original remark, the other two having been Scotsmen, and, being Scotsmen, had saved their strength for six per cent. This more or less makes a bum out of the original story which, if you will consult your notes, was to have been about three Irishmen. It just seems as if nothing held together these days. I think there was even more to the story than the tantalizing bit I have given you, but it is too late now. We are back again on the atom.

  We now come to the fascinating part of our paper. According to Professor You-Know, “the gun which fires the projectiles is the nucleus of atoms of radioactive substances, such as the element called ‘Radium C; the projectiles are the so-called ‘alpha’ particles (Editor’s note: ‘So-called’ by whom?), which are themselves small nuclei, and consist of four protons and two electrons welded together.”

  This makes it all a little clearer. All that we have to do in order to split an atom is to go to the nearest druggist and ask him for a small package of Radium C. Radium A and Radium B are for the big boys and can be had only by presenting an order from the Headmaster.

  I am not kidding when I tell you that Dr. Ernest Rutherford has succeeded in directing a stream of alpha particles from radioactive substances on to certain light elements and has knocked several representative atoms into a cocked hat. The cocked hat has then been taken, covered with the American flag, and, when uncovered, has been found to contain an old rabbit and sixty yards of red tissue paper. The applause which greeted this trick of Dr. Rutherford’s was nothing short of deafening.

  “It has long been my ambition” (it is Dr. Rutherford speaking) “to have available a copious supply of atoms and electrons which have an individual energy far transcending that of the alpha and beta particles from radioactive bodies.”

  Now here is where the surprise comes in! A few of us are getting together, unbeknownst to Dr. Rutherford, of whom we are very fond, and are going to chip in and help him fulfull this ambition of his. We are going to get him a whole case of the atoms and electrons that he has been longing for and are going around to his laboratory some day and leave them on his doorstep, with a note reading: “Dear Doc: A little bird told us that you wanted some of these. Don’t open them until your birthday. Then go to it, and split those atoms!”

  Perhaps this is making a great deal of to-do about nothing. But if somebody thinks that he can fix it so that none of us will ever have to work again, I think that we ought to help him. It probably will come too late to be of much use to us of the present generation, but, from the looks of things now, our children are going to have to work awfully hard unless something like this comes along to save them. In the meantime, I am more or less resting on my oars and waiting. It may come sooner than we think.

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  A Brief Course

  in World Politics

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  There used to be a time when anyone could keep in touch with the world’s history (if anyone was fool enough to want to) by consulting Rand, McNally’s map or by remembering that, no matter what country it was, there were only two things that could happen: either the king could have some people beheaded, or some people could have the king beheaded. It was all very simple and cozy.

  But the Great War, in addition to making the old Rand, McNally’s map look like an early American sampler with “God Bless Our Home” sewn on it, and in addition to making the average man’s income look like what you find in the pocket of last winter’s suit, also made it a great deal more difficult to follow subsequent changes in political parties throughout the world. It has become so complicated that it is hardly worth the trouble. Beyond a certain point the thing loses interest.

  For example, we read one day in the newspapers that Germany has gone over from the control of the Workers National Peoples Socialist Centrist Party (with 256 seats) to the Bavarian Naitonalist Optimist Fascist Unreinigung Party (with 396 seats), which means that trouble is brewing all over the map of Europe. Now, try as you will, it is difficult to understand this. Especially as the next day you read that the election which hurled the Workers Nationalist Optimist Centrist, etc., people into office was a preliminary election or Wahl, and that the finals have shown that the balance of power resides in the hands of the Christian Hanoverian Revalorization Gesellschaft Party (with fifteen seats and a bicycle), which means that Europe is on the verge of a conflagration, beginning with a definite rupture with the Slovenes (the Extreme Left Slovenes, that is, not to be confused with the Conservative Radical Slovenes).

  Republicans and Democrats I can understand, but I don’t care. Liberals and Conservatives are an open book to me; one is liberal, the other conservative, or vice versa. But when you get twenty-four parties, all beginning with “W,” on each one of which the future peace of Europe depends, then I am sorry but I shall have to let Europe figure it out for itself and let me know when it is going to have another war. That is, if it can find me. I still can run pretty fast.

  I try to keep up with the political parties of Germany because I am very partial to German food and whatever that stuff is they serve with it. But keeping track of China is something that I can’t, and won’t, do. Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing the skin off his left ear from twirling around on it. The only way to follow the various revolutions and army maneuvers in China is to throw yourself on your face on the floor and kick and scream until some Chinese expert comes and explains them to you. Not a Chinese expert really, but an American expert on China. A Chinese expert would only serve to confuse you the more.

  You simply can’t get anything out of China by reading the newspapers or the weeklies. I doubt very much if the newspapers and weeklies can get anything out of China themselves. For, in China, not only do they change parties every twelve minutes, but the parties themselves keep changing. The Northern Army, under Wu Wing Chang, will suddenly, without warning, became the Southern Army under Li Hung Chu. You may follow the Peiping forces, in their victorious march up the left bank of the Yangtze-Kiang and then, on Tuesday morning, read that somebody has blown a whistle, that the soldiers have pulled little strings in their uniforms, changing them from red to robin’s-egg blue, and that Wu Wing Chang has turned into somebody named Arthur McKeever Chamison of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts. The last man I knew who tried to follow the Chinese armies ended up by picking little spots of light off walls and putting them in a basket.

  Then there is South America. Or perhaps we should say, there was South America. A lot of jokes have been made about South American revolutions and their frequency, but it isn’t the frequency so much that is disturbing as it is their going around all sounding alike. It really makes very little difference to me whether the cabinet of Dr. Huijos or the cabinet of General Yrobarja is in power, but I don’t like to pick up the paper and find that Dr. Huijos is General Yrobarja. That, frankly, does confuse me, and I resent being c
onfused, especially after I have been following a thing very carefully from one day to another. There must be a lot of activity going on during the night in those South American revolutions, activity that never gets into the papers. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for one party to be in power right after the salad course at dinner and another one in power, without so much as a word to the referee, before breakfast the next day. Something goes on during the night – they change hats, or something – and I personally don’t like the looks of the thing at all.

  Of course, I did get a little needlessly confused over a revolution they had down there some months ago, and I am perfectly willing to admit that it was my fault. I forgot for the minute and thought that Peru was the capital of the Argentine. You can see how that would tie things up a bit in my mind. One day the revolution in the Argentine was settled and the next day it was at its peak in Peru, with no mention (naturally enough, as I later realized) of what I had read the day before about Argentina. “What is this?” was the way I phrased it to myself. One day President Leguia was thrown out and the next day President Irigoyen (who, up to this time, had taken no part in the conversation) was thrown out. And all through it ran someone named President Uriburu. “Maybe I missed the papers one day,” I thought. “Maybe I slept through Friday.” It was in checking up on this end of it that I came across some items which recalled to my mind that Peru is one country and the Argentine is another, and that cleared up the whole ugly mess for me. When I say “cleared up” I mean nothing of the sort.

  It is this sort of thing going on all over the world which makes it so difficult for a sincere student of Weltpolitik. The country I like best is Sweden. They have a nice king, who shows up every once in a while in the news reels, so you can keep an eye on him. They may have Centrist and Double-Centrist parties, and, in their own quiet way, they may fight out certain issues among themselves, but there is none of this “Overthrow of Cabinet Upsets World’s Balance of Power” or “New Alignment in Ingeborg Menaces Europe’s Peace.” I would like to bet that they have two parties, the Harvards and the Yales, or the Blue and the Gray, and that when one party is in power the other is making snowballs to throw. That is the way the whole world should be, if you will pardon my making a suggestion.

  As it stands now, I am likely to throw the whole thing up and go in for contract bridge. There, at least, you know who your partner is. You may not act as if you knew, and your partner may have grave doubts about you ever knowing, but, in your own mind, the issues are very clearly defined. And that is a lot more than you can say of the world today. (A list of what you can say for the world today will be found tucked away in a stamp box in the upper left-hand drawer of my desk. It may be stuck to the under side of one of the stamps, but it should be there.)

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  Our News-Reel Life

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  Whenever we want to find out what life was like in the days of the Pharaohs (when I say “we,” I mean people who go in for that sort of thing. Me, I can take it or leave it alone), we have to go all the way to Egypt and dig and dig and dig. And even then, what do we get? A truckload of old signet rings and scarabs, some shawls, and maybe three very unhealthy-looking mummies.

  We of the twentieth century are making it lots easier for archaeologists of the future to find out what we were like. Whenever they want to rummage around in the past, all they have to do will be to go to the vault, pull out a dozen tins of news-reels for 1930, and run them off in a cozy projection room. Then they will know all about what we were doing in the days of the Hoover dynasty, what we wore, and how we talked. The only trouble will be that, if they go entirely by the movie news-reels, they may get an impression like the following:

  Report on the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants of America previous to the Great Glacier of 1942-8. Read at a Meeting of the Royal Society of Ultra- Violet Engineers by Prof. Henry Six-Hundred-and-Twelve, custodian of the Motion Picture News-Reels of the British Museum, what there is left of it. Double-April 114th 3738 A.D.

  “From the motion-picture news-reels on file in the Museum, it is plain that inhabitants of America in the early decades of the twentieth century were most peculiarly constructed as far as their organs of speech went. Although they moved their lips in talking, as we of today do, the sound cavity or apparatus of articulation seemed to be located somewhere in the region of the collar bone or even as low as the hip. There was a variation of between two and five seconds from the time the words were formed by the lips until the sound issued from the torso, and then it came with great resonance, as if the megaphone were being used.

  “This is all very puzzling, for, in the mummies of that period, we are unable to locate any such misplaced speaking apparatus. We have looked everywhere, under the arms, between the ribs, and even in the joints of the elbow, but so far have been able to discover traces of nothing but arms, ribs, and elbows.

  “From the news-reels (and other sound pictures) we are able to gather that inanimate objects of that period had distinctive sounds of their own, now happily toned down through ages of refinement. For example, a small piece of paper, on being folded, gave off a sound comparable to the crashing of one of our giant redwoods. A door, no matter how easily closed, banged like a trench mortar. A button dropping on the floor sounded as if a large wet seal had flopped in its tracks. Nothing was too small to make a loud noise.

  “The people who inhabited North America at the time we are studying seemed always to be diving from springboards, doubtless because of the intense heat of the world at that particular period of its incubation. Practically every newsreel shows us one or more unclad citizens leaping from a board into the water, a maneuver which also gave off a horrendous sound much louder than our modern water. A feature of this diving was the stationing of off-stage characters to shout what must have then been considered witty remarks at the divers, such as, ‘How’s the water. Bill?’ One hears the voices but seldom sees the speakers – which is probably just as well.

  “Public speakers of that time were not particularly proficient in the art of oratory, or, at any rate, not before the microphone, for they always seem to be confined to notes which were held just out of view of the camera, somewhere in the vicinity of the speaker’s instep. Reading under these difficulties made it necessary for the orator to keep his head down and his eyes lowered, with the result that usually the bald spot on the top of his head was all that was visible. And even then he quite often forgot what he was about to say, or lost his place, making a highly unsatisfactory event of the thing. We would deplore this inaccuracy more if it were not for the fact that the speakers, when they could be understood, rarely seemed to be saying anything worth hearing. As historical evidence they are practically worthless.

  “While we are on the subject of public speakers of that era, it might be well to point out that, almost without exception, they wore a type of linen collar which, even in 1930, was old-fashioned. The curator of our Collar Department has identified it as a turnover collar of the 1908 – 10 age, which comes together in a straight up-and-down line in front and gives every indication of choking the wearer. Nobody as late as 1930, except politicians, ever wore them, but, as President Weaver (or Hoever), the Chief Executive at that time, had a penchant for these affairs, it is possible that the rest wore them as a mark of allegiance to the Republican (or Democratic, as it was sometimes called) party.

  “For a country as provincial as the United States was at this time, the news-reel displayed a remarkable interest in Japanese and Korean school children. Almost every film that we have in our possession shows Japanese and Korean school children in some form of intellectual activity, such as reciting in unison, ‘Out of the window you must go!’ or grouping themselves to form the letters of the word, ‘Walcome.’

  “We are also at a loss to understand just how the world’s supply of petroleum was ever garnered, for every oil tank or oil well in America was always on fire. There must have been some whic
h did not send out great volumes of black smoke at all times, but we have no record of them in the movies. It is barely possible that the quality of oil drawn from the ground in that era was of such a specific gravity that a certain boiling or toasting was necessary before it could be used, but it would seem that this great period of oil conflagration was the prelude to the final exhaustion of the oil supply in the southern part of the country and its discovery under the surface of what was then the island of Manhattan, now happily given over to oil wells.

  “The 1930 news-reels are a splendid source of information for the present-day tacticians in their supply of pictures showing the ‘floating fort’ or ‘battleship’ of the day. There seems to have been little use for these cumbersome engines of warfare except to shoot off guns in front of movie cameras. There would be a puff of smoke, followed some seconds later by a vague booming sound, with a concurrent blare of band music playing a tune which research leads us to believe was known as ‘Sail, Navy, Down the Field.’ The crews of these ships trained for warfare by sitting astride the large guns and swaying back and forth in time to the music.

  “The games of that age were evidently concerned more with running in all directions than our present-day games of intensive manual skill. Almost every shred of evidence which we have shows more or less shadowy men dashing back and forth in front of the camera, either after striking in the air with a stick or catching an object about the size of a man’s head. At times, two men would get together under brilliant lights and hold each other’s shoulders, rocking back and forth until one or the other had smothered his opponent, but this sort of thing may very well have been a form of folk dancing and not a sport. The pictures are very hazy at best, and we are unable to form any accurate judgment of just what the technique of all these games was.