The Colonel Takes a Trip

During the war the Government cramped Bertie McCormick's traveling style by using his private plane. Last week the Chicago Tribune's publisher climbed into his new Lockheed Lodestar, accompanied by his wife, stepdaughter, secretary and butler, and told his pilot to head south. From an A.P. meeting in New Orleans (the Colonel is a director), he went on to Texas and Mexico City. After that: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama. The traveler, first of all a newspaperman, let Tribune readers share his sightseeing and its attendant reflections:

"We flew here [Houston, Tex.] from New Orleans in an hour and a half, but we might as well have crossed into another country as indeed it was less than 100 years ago. Gone were the French physiognomies, gone were the narrow, one-way streets. People walk twice as fast.

"Near here is the battlefield of San Jacinto, the decisive battle of the war for Texas independence. ... As a permanent memorial of the Texas Yorktown there has been erected the most beautiful monument in the world.

"At its base is a building housing rooms showing the primitive Spanish, the Mexican and English periods of Texas, for the English worked very hard, if not to annex it, at least to control it, as shall we say, she now controls the United States.

"I wonder what kind of monument we have at Yorktown, Va.* I do not suppose there is any in Tory New York.

"Houston calls itself the Chicago of the South, and indeed there are resemblances. It has the unlimited elbow room of the flat country. It also has a canal which looks and smells much like ours. It has that unbounded energy and confidence in the future that used to characterize Chicago. It is remarkable for the newness of its ... buildings. Traffic is well regulated, but the drivers make more noise than I have ever heard.' . . .

"One of the city planners told me that he believed in the future Los Angeles would be the largest city in the country; New York second, Chicago third and Houston fourth. He may be right, if New York and Chicago, in particular, continue to be dead from the neck up."

*An elaborate 95 ft. shaft of white marble, topped by a figure of Liberty with arms outstretched. Near by: the remains of Cornwallis' fortifications, and the carefully reconstructed French and American battle line of Rochambeau and Washington.

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