DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 20, 14 April 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

/ SOUVENIR HUNTERS (Copyright, 1327.) THE NorgQ, the famous dirigible which flew across the North Pole.came aown the coast from Alaska on board a vessel, securely packed and crated. According to Press reports, when it was landed at the Seattle harbour, armed guards were forced to watch the crates every minute. This precaution T as necessary to prevent the army of souvenir hunters from wrecking the aircraft in its mad desire to carry off parts of the equipment as mementoes of the famous flight. When the Shenandoah, the navy’s monster airship, crashed into the fields near Ava, Ohio, fourteen men were killed. The bodies of these victims of the catastrophe had hardly been removed before souvenir hunting ghouls began stripping the remains of the wreck. They even broke pieces from the motors and stole the log book and the barometers before a guard could be thrown around the wreckage. When the mournful Harding special was bearing the body of the deaa president back to Washington, at some stops along the route the train had hardly begun to pull out of the station before there was a scrambling rush to get pennies which had been put on the tracks to be kept as souvenirs. Plymouth Rock, famous in America’s history, has to have a steel railing around it to keep the patriotic visitors from chipping off pieces aa souvenirs. The sordid side of public interest is seen in the souvenir huntiDg madness, especially in times of great catastrophe. Being interested in celebrities and great events is ° valuable human attribute. But when this interest is uncontrolled by finer sensiuiii --s J 1 amok and turns otherwise respectable citizens into hoodlunio aud vandal^