All's Well That Ends Well

For a few years the most celebrated animal in the world was one whose existence was doubted. There were people who believed that the Loch Ness Monster was real; there were people who believed it was not. The number of skeptics diminished after the late Rt. Rev. Sir David Hunter-Blair, onetime abbot of a monastery on the Scottish lakeside, announced: "I have been investigating its presence quietly for many years, having a natural hesitance in letting my friends know that I believed in the existence of a fresh-water parallel of the sea serpent." After all, the Rt. Rev. Sir David was once chamberlain to Pope Pius IX.

Photographs were taken, some showing commotions in the ordinarily placid waters of the loch, others showing part or parts of what seemed to be a large animal protruding above the surface. It was variously guessed that the monster might be: 1) an elephant seal; 2) a giant squid; 3) a hippopotamus; 4) a basking shark; 5) a crocodile; 6) the wreckage of a World War I Zeppelin. If it was a seal or a shark, it might have blundered into the loch, when young and confused.

A movie, The Secret of the Loch, provided four weeks' work for 20 unemployed men. Captain D. J. Munro,R.N. (retired), proposed to form a Loch Ness Monster Co., Ltd., to sell shares for a shilling each, and to put up watchtowers on the loch shore staffed by Navy men equipped with telescopic cameras, powerful binoculars, range finders, stop watches. In Germany, the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung announced that the monster had been captured, was on view in Edinburgh.

When war came, with human monsters flying through the air, Britain forgot the monster in the lake. The Italians remembered, though. They lent a touch of color and realism to one of their famed communiques by announcing that the monster had been bombed and sunk during an Italian raid on Scotland. To this calumny the monster retorted by merrily roiling, once more, the waters of Loch Ness.

No monster can live forever. Last week it was revealed that two Scottish foresters had found on the shore of the loch a huge dead thing. It was identified by experts as a basking shark, 24 ft. long. This was obviously the Loch Ness Monster, and this was obviously the monster's end. Since there were no signs of injury, it seemed most likely that it had died of old age.

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