From Beyond the Styx: English Gardener Tells of Experience While Heart Stopped

During a serious operation, John Puckering's heart stopped beating, and he was "dead' four and a half minutes. In that brief interval, he said, his soul slipped away, and joined a heavenly company. It was as tho he were "looking into a great place, something like a hall."

"There was a good light," as the Associated Press carried the English gardener's account, "and I saw crowds of people. So many were there that they seemed like a multitude at a football match. The people stood in a circle, and I noticed that there were no children among them. They looked natural, with healthy faces, and they appeared to be dressed as on earth. I was deeply impressed by the happiness which shone in their faces, and which was so intense that I felt as tho I should not have minded joining them."

Among the happy company were some friends. One had died seven years before. This "old friend" nodded to the visitor. The happiness he saw "thrilled" the gardener, and he "lost all fear of death." The scene was "as realistic as my own back garden," he said after his "return."

While Mr. Puckering was sojourning on the other side of the Styx, Dr. G. Percival Mills slipped his hand under the diaphragm of the apparently lifeless body, massaged the heart, and injected adrenalin. Artificial respiration had been started, and Puckering's heart beat again.

After convalescing, Puckering returned to work, carrying the memory with him. Tho he was apparently unaware of it, his account was published in the press on both sides of the Atlantic, and a controversy ensued. Sir Oliver Lodge, famous physicist and spiritualist, is reported to have dismissed the story gruffly.

Lady Doyle, widow of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, said the revelations "entirely corroborated" what she and her eldest son, Denis, and "millions of others have known for years." The fact that Puckering is "an unimaginative fellow who had taken no interest in spiritualism, and couldn't have known he was giving exactly the same description we have been given of first impressions after death," said Mr. Doyle, "leaves no doubt in my mind."

On the other hand, Dr. J. B. S. Haldane, famous British scientist, who had recently returned form the United States, was not impressed. There is nothing unusual in the stopping of a heart for five minutes, he said. He thought it probable that Mr. Puckering had a "revelation." "People," he said, "often do under an anesthetic."

Experiences similar to Mr. Puckering's have been reported before and with as much detail. Whether people who have been resuscitated ever actually were dead is for medical science to determine. People apparently drowned often have been revived.

From The Literary Digest, February 23, 1935

Gregor Strasser, Big Hitlerite

Hitler was hard hit when Gregor Strasser, one of his ablest and oldest supporters, broke from him. It happened in one of the fights between rival factions in the Hitlerite movement which followed losses sustained in the November Reichstag elections.

The crisis between Hitler and Strasser arose, explains the Berlin Socialist Vorwaerts, because of Hitler's failure to break into the "working-class front." The "working class," instead, this newspaper claims, broke into Hitler's front.

But now the gains of the Nazis in the Diet election on January 14 in the small State of Lippe-Detmold in northwestern Germany has revived their drooping spirits, it is said, and strengthened the "all-or-nothing" element in the party.

The little State of Lippe-Detmold, according to press cables, gave the National Socialists or Nazis 38,840 votes out of a total of 98,500, which is an increase of 5,800 over their poll in the Reichstag election. They obtained about 40 per cent of the total vote.

This Nazi triumph brings Gregor Strasser again to the fore. He, according to some Berlin correspondents, was to be used as a chisel to split the Hitlerites by being taken into the Cabinet of Chancellor Lieut.-Gen. Kurt von Schleicher as Vice-Chancellor.

The Lippe election, however, has lowered his political stock, and the Deutsche Allgencine Zeitung avers that if Strasser were to accept the Chancellor's invitation he would be expelled from the National Socialist party.

At the same time, Captain Goering, the Richstag Nazi whip, is quoted as having said in a political speech during the Lippe campaign that Strasser is really one of the most violent haters of von Schleicher, and that he once confided to Goering that the General is "almost the most inefficient man ever to sit in the Chancellor's chair."

With new interest attached to Gregor Strasser the Berlin independent Democratic Berliner Tageblatt gives a close-up picture of him:

"This peasant-like, heavy, broad-shouldered Gregor Strasser, with the 'lower' Bavarian rounded cranium, emphasized chin, and under lip, the man with stimulating eyes and impulsive ways, sprang from an old family of apothecaries long settled in his native place. He, too, was originally an apothecary, and he conducted his business for a long time with diligence.

"Then came the war in which he took part with distinction—a thing that can not be said by any means of every man in Hitler's immediate following.

"Gregor Strasser joined the Hitler movement very early in its history. During Hitler's first putsch, or revolutionary attempt, which was nipt in the bud on May 1, 1923, Strasser sought him out in a motor-truck, with some machine-guns and about 140-odd weapons. Strasser was halted by the police and arrived at Munich too late.

'Then it was that an affair involving a word of honor occurred, which Strasser later, in the Reichstag session of October 19, 1931, sought to dispose of with his famous remark: 'In dealing with this system, I know no word of honor!'

"Gregor Strasser has courage and, at any rate, whatever else may be urged against him, he is no hypocrite. He is rather prone to a massive and unequivocal sort of speech which corresponds to the temperament of the type of Bavarian which he happens to be. After the luckless November putsch and during Hitler's durance in jail, it was Strasser who kept the remnants of the party together."

Profound gratitude is due to Strasser from Hitler, thinks this Berlin daily, because when Hitler was released from jail, there was at least a nucleus of his party left, so that its reconstruction "did not have to begin in a void." Gratitude was exprest on Hitler's part, it admits, for he made Strasser chief of his propaganda work, and we read:

"The rapid growth of the party in the following years is due mainly to the unexampled methods of Strasser in conducting the agitation for recruits—the fanatical obstinacy with which he hammered the party slogans into all heads, even those least endowed with comprehension, the cool calculation with which he built up the gigantic technical apparatus for the spread of the party creed, and the perfect ruthlessness with which every social class, every region of the country and every calling were permeated with seductive promises of good things to come even when those promises were often in mutual contradiction.

"There can be no doubt that Strasser's methods of conducting the party agitation were very much like those of the Bolsheviki."

The latter fact, proceed the Berliner Tageblatt, is due to the "Eastern slant" of Strasser's policy for the party of Hitler. This is said to be a contradiction of Hitler's own intent and purpose. Hitler seems to seek a rather unintelligible and vague Middle and Western European combination, including England, Italy, and Germany, but this newspaper points out:

"Strasser, on the other hand, seems to be clear in his own mind that the National Socialists or Nazis, if they attain power, can hold it only if they fulfil the aspirations of the majority of their followers—the newly proletariauized former middle-class masses.

"At any rate, the capitalistic patrons of the Nazis are prone to declare that Gregor Strasser is the only man in the whole leadership of the party who can think clearly about economic relations and events, and with whom it is possible to talk coherently.

"Gregor Strasser has dreams—or so it is alleged—of being in the Government of the Nazis, once formed, the German Stalin or all-powerful general secretary of the party while Hitler fills the more decorative paternal seat of Kalinin in the Soviet Republic."

Strasser is biding his time, adds this Berlin commentator, and feels he will be called back to the party to guide it in the Bolshevik direction. But to the Socialist Vienna Arbeiter Zeituug, such a remark is ridiculous, for it holds that:

"The backbone of the Nazi Fascist movement is the small business man, the small trader, the little individual in trade.

"In every country in every decisive stage of modern development this petty burger class of little people, once set in movement, must either subordinate itself to the proletarian working class or else return to the domination of capitalism.

"This is the deeper underlying meaning of the strife between Strasser and Hitler. At the critical hour the 'German Socialism' of the little man in revolt drops away from him and Hitler's 'tendency to capitalism' gains the upper hand. The shock troops of the German Fascism rebel. The Brown Battalions mutiny.

"But Hitler, who holds the key to the strong-box, holds on to power. And he himself remains in the hands of those who put money into the strong-box—the capitalists."

From The Literary Digest, January 28, 1933

France Extols Lindbergh's Education

Praise for Lindbergh runs like a silver thread through the entire French press of the present time. A typical comment is that of Le Progresès Civique, of Paris, whose editor recalls a certain cartoon showing an air-plane poised high above the sea. "Is it a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an American?" one spectator is asking. And the other replies: "It is a man." Taking this as his text, the editor continues: "Glory to Lindbergh, who has made us proud of being men! The whole world has felt his greatness. For the notable thing is the unanimity of the welcome given to this youth. Truly, not one false note. An admiration without reticences, without jealousy, without vulgar nationalism!"

The American system of education which helped to shape this heroic youth's character is the them of an article by Raymond Gérard in L'Echo des Sports, of Paris, in which he says:

"The marvelous exploit achieved by Charles Lindbergh was due to exceptional qualities of courage and cool judgment. But one can say also that it is a product of the advantages of American education. Lindbergh, in physique and in morale, is a representative type of the younger generation of Americans.

"There is a world of difference between the shaping of minds in France and the preparation for life in America. French education is an affair of classes, of lessons, of studies, during which we pitchfork into the mind of the student the innumerable matters of school curriculums. The brain of a French high-school pupil is like a steamer trunk into which one packs a lot of widely different articles without regard to the destination of the tourist.

"American education is not at all like that. Before setting a big pile of books before the pupil, the teacher asks himself: 'Where are we going? What is the ideal to be attained?' The Greeks sought happiness through beauty. Modern nations seek to dominate by force. All right! Force is not obtained through books. For one sage we have ten men of action. Science can help, but the source of energy lies in character."

Let a nation forge souls, says M. Gérard, and success shall be its reward. He holds that the four bases of ideal character are vitality, courage, sensibility, and intelligence, and after defining the first two, he continues:

"Sensibility tempers the impetuosities of courage, it gives to a man the nobility of heart which surpasses all other virtues. Think of Lindbergh, and of how, a few minutes after his fantastic whirl of activities, when he was nearing the limit of his strength, he had only one thought: 'I want to visit the house where Nungesser lived before his last fight, and I want to go and pay homage at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.'

"Finally, intelligence. It permits the superior utilization of the three other qualities, vitality, courage, and sensibility. We no longer live in those primitive times when the victory went to the strongest and boldest. Lindbergh has all the energetic qualities, but he adds to these the technical training indispensable to the aviator. This 'Flying Fool,' as he has been called, is like Hamlet: he has only the appearance of insanity. The passion for sport is too deeply anchored in him for him to go and risk in one mad adventure the chance of living through others.

"He sets out for Paris in an airplane which he knows perfectly, upon which he has practised, in which he has traversed in twenty-one hours the 4,500 kilometers which separate San Diego from New York. Speed being a prime element of success in his flight, he places his seat very far back in order to reduce the resistance of the wind. He keeps his landing wheels and carries three days' provisions and a little life-boat. All these precautions show a well-poised intelligence in this Flying Fool. The union of good judgment and extreme audacity is one of the characteristic traits of the American spirit."

What clearly distinguishes American from European education, in the opinion of this discerning French critic, is something that can be summed up in three points, namely: Constant care for the health of the child and the training of his muscles; respect for his personality and the development of his particular aptitudes; encouragement of the child's tendencies, even if these are marked by some eccentricity. Then he goes on to give this example:

"Three or four years ago the students of a university took it into their heads to construct a theater in order to act their plays there, for dramatic art is very much in favor among the young people. The ambitious scheme is organized. A special train with as many sleeping-berths as travelers, forty actors and musicians to transport every day, managers, scene shifters, etc. They play in a different city every night, thirty nights in succession, and go to banquets, receptions, and balls besides. They break the record for energy. The undergraduates come home worn out but happy. They have done something. In America, in England, they do not rest from intellectual work with the going down of the sun. They find diversion in struggling against material difficulties. The motor is always left running.

"In vacation camps the young girls amuse themselves by reenacting the life of the red Indians. They dash through the country on horseback and dance around camp-fires singing songs of the Blackfeet and Sioux.

"Lindbergh, the big blond boy with blue eyes, is the product of an education that teaches how to apply all the known sciences, how to be inventive, ingenious, able to solve enigmas. His name is henceforth engraved upon all memories. In America his flight will be commented upon in the schools and his portrait will be hung on the wall beside that of Longfellow. And why not? All the poets are not confined to literature. There is a poetry of action. Those who achieve its rhythms deserve to be placed beside the masters of rime. In our age, to achieve means even more than to sing."

From The Literary Digest, June 25, 1927

The Literary Digest Articles - 1922

May

Now It Can Be Told, But Isn't

What are European children being taught about the Great War? The answer to that question, if we could find an answer, has seemed to Mr. William G. Shepherd more than likely to show "whether there will ever be another war." Hence an investigation, whose results he gives us in an article in Our World. Says Mr. Shepherd:

In Germany school children in various districts have different history books. In one district the book will contain all the old allusions to the Kaiser and the greatness of his family. In another district all of this has been cut out. There is such a discrepancy between the various books that the explanations of the school officials are highly entertaining. I sought out Dr. Becker, secretary of the Prussian ministry of education. He is an avowed Republican.

"There are two things that we are not teaching our children," he said. "One subject that is forbidden is the Kaiser and his dynasty. The other is the war."

"But there are history books that tell of the Kaiser," I said.

"Yes," he smiled, "but let me explain. You see, books cost a great deal of money. The old histories used to glorify the Kaiser. We still have many copies of these old books on hand. We can not afford to throw them away. But we have issued orders to all teachers that they must not ask the children to study the Kaiser and his dynasty. That part of the book is skipt over in every school in Prussia. But we have gone further than this. Whenever a publisher issues a new edition of a school-book, he cuts out every reference to the old dynasty. We have given orders to all the publishers of school-books that this must be done. The editing is carefully done, and whenever a child is given a new history book in the Prussian schools, you may be sure that every bit of Kaiser-worship and king-worship has been cut out of it."

"Has anything new been put in its place?"

"No. Editing does not cost so much, but the addition of material is a difficult thing."

"But are the children being taught nothing about the war?"

"Not a single word," said Dr. Becker. "The teachers are not allowed to discuss the war. Their history books do not contain a single word about the war."

"Is this done purposely?" I asked.

"WASN'T THERE ANY WAR?"

German school-books avoid all mention of the World War, but they
can't fool these Berlin school children.

"Yes," he explained. "It's politics. You see there are six different parties in Prussia. Each different party has a different idea about the causes of war, the events and the mistakes. As soon as the ministries of education start to prepare a story of the war for the school children, some leader of a party arises and says that the story is wrong, in some detail. Then we have to drop the whole thing and start over again. We must find some story that will suit all the parties, including the Socialists and the extremists on both sides. It is an impossible thing to do, and we have quit trying.

"Our latest plan is to have a chronology of the war appear in the school-books so that the children may learn the dates of various important events. We have four experts working on this now but while they agree on dates, they can not agree in describing what happened on those dates. Something about the inwardness of the war is bound to creep into any arrangement of dates, and so we are in as much trouble with our new plan as we were with our previous efforts. We must try to satisfy the parents of the children as well as the party leaders," continued Dr. Becker. "Parents are giving their version of the war to their children at home, and if our school-books give a different explanation from that believed by the parents, we will be in trouble.

"The schools are not as they used to be in the Kaiser's time. Then, the government decided what the children should be taught, and that was the end of it. To-day, in every school, the children have their own organization, with a spokesman, who has a right to criticize the teacher on any occasion, or even go over the teacher's head, if necessary, to higher authorities. The parents have taken an interest in the schools and in what their children are being taught, and a parent may go either to a leader of the party in his district and make a complaint, which will reach us with a roar in due time, or he may complain to the school officials themselves."

I suggested that it must have been necessary to tell the children something about the revolution which changed the form of government in Germany.

"Well," hesitated Dr. Becker, "whenever that question comes up, we find it possible to refer to the attempted revolution of 1848. There is a great deal in common in both revolutions, and sometimes we are able to show how the 1918 revolution in which the grandparents of our pupils were engaged.

"Certain democratic principles that caused the 1848 affair also produced the revolution of two years ago. The war gave these principles a chance to manifest themselves. That is as far as we can go in telling the children about the recent affairs in Germany."

***

What, meanwhile, are French school children being taught about the war? For an answer to this question, Mr. Shepherd went to Paris and sought out the minister of Public Instruction, who, tho too cautious to make a statement, himself, detailed a subordinate to talk:

"When peace came," said this official, "the school-teachers everywhere in France felt free to ignore the old military regulations and to tell their pupils in the class-rooms just what had happened during the previous four years. There were not text-books with which the teachers could work; so many of them began giving little lectures to their pupils.

"But the department of education found itself in trouble immediately. Parents deluged us with complaints. They said their children were being taught lies about the war. Socialist workmen said their children were being instructed in imperialism. Caillaux's followers said that teachers were lying about the origin and purpose of the war. Parents of the upper classes said their children were being taught Socialism in their study of the war. It was a trying time for us. We saw that something must be done; so we issued orders that teachers were not to try to teach their pupils about the war until proper text-books had been issued.

"Ever since then we have been looking for proper text-books. But we can not find them. The text-book writers tell as many different stories as the teachers used to tell.

"You see," he continued, "the whole difficulty lies in the fact that we have seven influential parties in France.

"It was necessary for us to find text-books that would contain versions of the war that would satisfy members of all these parties. Well, that is impossible. We can not do it. Parents belong to one or another of these parties and they raise so much trouble when their own version of the war is not told to their children that we have finally decided that the fathers and mothers of France must be the modern history teachers of France until the war has become more distant and party feelings lie down."

He explained how text-books are selected in France. A superior council of the ministry of education passes on all books which are submitted by text-book writers. The books which are approved are put on a list which is sent to all the schools of France. From this list the school officials in the various districts of France may choose the books which they consider best adapted for the local schools.

"At first," continued the official, "the text-book writers deluged the superior council with books about the war. The members of the council found themselves disagreeing about the facts stated in these books. Very soon the complaints of the parents began to pour in on us, and we decided that, if the council itself could not agree, neither could teachers or parents."

"When do you think you will be able to begin studying the history of the war in your schools?" I asked.

"Not until this generation dies," he answered. "You see everybody is in politics or has some political learning. No text-book writer or school-teacher is free of political bias. He sees everything through the eyes of his own politics and beliefs. Whatever he wants to believe looks like the truth to him; whatever he doesn't want to believe looks false. And there we have the difficulty."

***

Leaving Paris, Mr. Shepherd went to London, where he called upon Mr. Richards, who has charge of the English school inspectors, and asked him what English school children were being taught about the war.

"We have an Anglo-Saxon dread," he said, "of permitting the government to control the schools. All school government in England is local. The government does not control the publication of school text-books. Any schoolmaster or member of a school board may go to any publisher and purchase any book he wishes and introduces it into the local school.

"The only thing the national government does is to inspect and advise. Our inspectors move about among all the schools constantly, and, if they find anything amiss—subjects being wrongly considered or improper books being used—they make recommendations which, in time reach the local authorities. And then the proper changes are usually made. The local authorities rarely disagree with the national school inspectors."

In a glass case in Mr. Richard's office were rows of text-books. He went to this case and took out a dozen or more small books.

"I won't say that text-books on the Great War are not being written and even put into the schools in some localities," he said. "But the inspectors have an infallible test for these books. If the books do not meet the test they are usually withdrawn from the school."

"What is the test?" I asked.

"You see, al these books are written anonymously. No reliable and well-known text-book writers have attempted to write any text-book of the war. All the school histories that have appeared, with a very few exceptions, have been thrown together for greedy publishers, by hack writers. The paper is poor, as you will notice, the illustrations are unspeakably poor, and the statements of facts are absolutely unreliable.

"Every one of these unsigned anonymous text-books found by our inspectors in use in the schoolrooms is immediately thrown out. The result is that children in England are not learning the history of the war in our schools."

"What about geography?" I asked.

"Well, the teachers are presenting geography in a hit-or-miss way. The map-makers are not taking any chances on making maps for schoolroom use which may be right to-day but wrong to-morrow.

"As a usual thing the teachers use colored crayons and draw the new borders and the new countries in the old maps."

***

"And there you are!" gasps Mr. Shepherd. Altho in Germany, France and England every child must learn to read, "the printing-press is paralyzed and the historian is palsied when it comes to the task of telling the new generation about the war."

From The Literary Digest, May 6, 1922