Monday, May 4, 1964
University Daily Kansan
Page 3
World Tension Reflects on 1939 World's Fair
By Myron Feinsilber
United Press International
NEW YORK — (UPI) — Chancellor Adolf Hitler had just made new demands on Poland, young Joe Di-Maggio was in the hospital with a torn muscle and in Detroit Father Coughlin was on the radio, saying democracy had failed.
This was the way the world behaved on April 30,1939,the sunny Sunday on which Flushing Meadows' first World's Fair opened.
The New York Times, devoting nearly 10 of its 42 pages the next day to coverage of the fair, found it "a spectacle of surprising beauty and magnificence, especially last night when the whole fair and the heavens above it were bathed in soft, glowing colors with the most modern lighting effects and when fireworks combined with flame, water and color displays on the lagoon of nations, the pools in constitution mall and the surface of fountain lake."
The speechmakers, the Times noted, emphasized "the message of peaceful progress that the fair brings to mankind in an era when the whole world is troubled by war and threats of war."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his seventh year of office, came to
open the fair and the photographers caught him in a characteristic pose: riding in the back seat of an open touring car, his head thrown back in jolly laughter.
THE PEACE WAS THREATENED, and those who hoped FDR would deliver democracy's reply to Hitler's Polish ultimatum were disappointed that day. He chose generalities. "Often, I think," the President said, "we Americans offer up the silent prayer that on the continent of Europe, from which the American hemisphere was principally colonized, the years to come will break down many barriers to intercourse between nations — barriers which may be historic but which so greatly through the centuries have led to strife and hindered friendship and normal intercourse."
Hitler had just rejected a plan offered by FDR which would, he said, have guaranteed peace for 10 years. War was to come to Europe that year.
The war clouds were not to be observed at the fair. Six-year-old Allen Jarisson of Great Neck, Long Island, N.Y., had the distinction of becoming the fair's first lost tot. He was wearing a white uniform with a stripe of orange and white along his
long trousers. Many boys, still in knickers, were not so lucky. Allen's mother claimed him later that afternoon.
There was a new device to open the eyes wide at the fair—television. FDR became the first President to go before the "tele-camera" and "reports from receiving outposts scattered throughout a 50-mile radius of New York indicated that the spectacle by television was highly successful and that a new industry had been launched into the World of Tomorrow."
"Overemphasis, keynote of World's Fair publicity, bore bitter fruit yesterday," he wrote. "The prediction that opening day would bring out more than 1,000,000 persons kept away hundreds of thousands of ticket holders. Even by official estimate, attendance yesterday did not come within whooping distance of 1,000,-000."
Meyer Berger of the Times, later to become one of journalism's legendary figures, took a poke at the fair's press agents.
THE DEPRESSION from which America was emerging was not forgotten. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), which had a $250-.
000 exhibition hall at the fair, disclosed that it had asked for cut admission rates for relief workers.
To get to the fair, the Long Island railroad offered a bargain ride: "10 minutes, 10 cents," its advertisements said.
And American Airlines proudly announced non-stop flights to Detroit taking only three hours, 29 minutes for $32.70 in a "giant 21-passenger flagship."
were offered at $1.240.
For motorists, LaSallez, "the only distinctive car on the road today."
Time magazine, a fledging teenager seeking subscribers, took out a rare full-page ad to tell why it was vital in "these news-jammed days of 1939." Its ad portrayed a fashionable woman saying, "I'm a banker's wife and judging from our friends, people aren't just talking of cabbages and kings these days. We all seem to think about real problems too—like revising or repealing the Neutrality Act—or will there be a coal strike—or what to do about relief."
Red Cross Senior Lifesaving Course Will Be Offered.
All those interested report to room 203 Robinson at 4:30 Tuesday, May 5. The course will be open to boys and girls.
Philippines Fight Piracy
MANILA — (UPI) — Philippine police and civilian authorities have formed task forces to stamp out piracy in Manila Bay.
The piracy problem came into national focus when some so-called "bay pirates" pounced on a boat carrying constabulary soldiers disguised as fishermen two miles off nearby Cavite City.
THESE ARE THE same bay waters where Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish Armada in 1898 and Gen. Douglas A. McArthur pledged, "I shall return."
Four pirates, armed with pistols and carbines, were killed in the 40-minute gunbattle.
The dawn encounter took place just after the pirates stripped two fishing boats of an inboard motor, fishing lamps and the fishermen's catch.
After robbing their second victim, the pirates turned on a third boat, not knowing that the "fishermen" were soldiers.
QUESTIONINGS OF captured
Their area of operation extends from Batangas Province north to Bataan Peninsula, which border on Manila Bay.
pirates disclosed that most of these modern-day blackbeards are from the city's slum districts.
Lt. Col. Diosdado Garcia, constabulary commander of Pampanga Province, said the pirates not only prey on fishermen, but occasionally raid coastal villages.
GARCIA SAID the pirates pounce on the milkfish motorboats, using submachine guns to terrorize fishpond owners and crew members. They impound the boat, sell the fish and then steal the marine engine for resale in Manila, he said.
The pirates' method, according to Garcia, shows they have their own intelligence network. They know when fishpond owners are harvesting a heavy "bangus" (milkfish) crop for sale in Manila and suburbs and at what time the crop is shipped out to Manila, he said.
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