"Worse Than Warfare"

U. S. Coast Guard Cutter C-209, patrolling the U. S. shore of Lake Erie for rumrunners last week, sighted a trim yacht. Blam! went the C-209's one-pounder. Blam! Blam!

Five "spouts near the yacht's bow and stern showed how close the shells had flown. Good work. The yacht was heaving to. Acting Commander S. P. Johnson bade his men cease firing. The C-209 bore fleetly down on her suspect.

But something akin to dismay must have filled Commander Johnson's official bosom when he discerned that the yacht was flying the ensign of the Buffalo Yacht Club; that it had ladies aboard; that its male passengers, vociferously innocent, were irate. Dismay must have become consternation foi Commander Johnson when the yacht's owner told the U. S. press how the C-209 had given no warning, offered no apology. Worst of all, the outraged owner was Frank G. Raichle of Buffalo, law partner of Col. William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, who is Assistant to the U. S. Attorney General.

Bad enough to have stirred up the citizens of western New York with another "mistaken" Coast Guard shooting, after the recent blinding of Jacob D. Hanson of Niagara Falls (TIME, May 21). Worse to have shot so close to officialdom. Yachtsman Raichle, who may well have been returning from a legal visit to Wet Canada, foreboded a hard time for the C-209 in his ejaculation: "It's worse than warfare!"