While the apprentices were having a vaudeville show in their theater at the station, they sang the chorus of “Tipperary,� while a vaudeville actor led the singing, so Lieutenant Commander Evans stepped in and issued the order that “Tipperary� was not to be played or sung by the men.
All that the executive officer would say to-night was that the song came under the president’s neutrality order.
Canada Finds a Gun Base.
The Canadian military authorities are investigating a report that there is a secret store of arms and ammunition on the Isle of Orleans, in the St. Lawrence River, opposite Quebec. A concrete base, upon which a siege gun could be mounted, was found there and destroyed.
A German two years ago bought a tract of land on the Isle of Orleans and established a plant for the manufacture of concrete blocks. It is upon this property that the concrete foundation was found. It commanded the defenses of Quebec and of the St. Lawrence Channel.
A moving-picture company, the leading officials of which were Germans, spent last summer on the Isle of Orleans reproducing the battle of the Plains of Abraham and making films of it. They employed several young men of Quebec, uniformed them, and provided them with arms which they borrowed from local military authorities. They had both cannon and rifles, and fired a large amount of blank ammunition in their operations. The firearms which they borrowed were returned to the authorities, but it is now reported that they took advantage of the opportunity to land guns and secrete them in pits, which they covered carefully.
The Canadian military authorities have regarded the[Pg 62] information they have received as serious enough to warrant an investigation. Excavations have been made in search for buried guns. So far none has been found, and as the island is twenty miles long and seven miles wide, the search is likely to prove tedious. At its nearest point the island is four miles from Quebec. As far as the Canadian military authorities have been able to learn, the films made last summer were never exhibited.
War Upsets Artist’s Mind.
Albert S. Cox, a magazine artist of Grantwood, four miles from Hackensack, N. J., offered the government a cloth of his invention two years ago, saying uniforms made of it would render the wearers invisible, and he told his friends the government was overlooking a great opportunity when it declined to deal with him. His friends sympathized and weren’t particularly worried about Cox, for he didn’t invent anything else until lately, when he confided to some that he had made a paint which, applied to a military fort, would make it disappear.
Still, nobody minded much until the other day, when Cox announced that his house was a fort and was being attacked. He appeared at the windows and discharged bullets at foes, who apparently were wrapped in his invisible cloth so far as the neighbors were concerned, but when bullets began to fly promiscuously around Grantwood, Sheriff Heath was notified.