NBC Rupert Hughes Commentary

A new broadcasting company presents Rupert Hughes, soldier, novelist, historian, and humorist. In his commentary, he praises present-day history in his own entertaining style. The views expressed, however, are those of Mr. Hughes and do not necessarily represent the views of MDC.

Now, Mr. Rupert Hughes. The word hero means a great deal to us today. Practically every family has its own. In a wild alternation of those who are welcoming home, they're luckily still living, or grieving for their sacred dead or both.

There are other heroes in the public worship. Some of them don't face or use any deadlier weapons than words. That chief bravery consists in daring to promise us all salvation from the evils of these times and of the most ancient evils of all time.

In desperate days like these, it's an easy way to win worshippers. Many of those who are most revered by those whom they are deluding are no better than the old traveling quacks who used to sell swamp fruit and kick-a-pool Indian herbs, guaranteed to cure everything from a broken leg to a broken contract.

The word hero means various things to us, but to the Egyptians of 130 years before Christ, he wrote with a great scientist, the inventor at least the describer of the steam engine. We usually thought that James Watt invented the steam engine and got his idea as a boy, from noticing that if he held a spoon over the spot of a teacatle,

as steam would finally push the way. But the original steam engines date back in what, at least, 1800 years. We have the text in which hero of Alexandraya in Egypt describes exactly how a steam engine worked in 130 BC.