Frog v. Eagle

Last week, the day before the first anniversary of Gertrude Ederle's brass-band-accompanied swim across the English Channel, one Edward Harry Temme, 22-year-old London insurance "clark" (clerk), inserted his strong body (length, 6 ft. 2 in.; weight, 205 Ibs.) into the bitterly cold waves off Cape Gris-Nez, France, and commenced a steady trudgeon stroke toward England.

The English Channel grew smooth. Mr. Temme swallowed chocolate, tea, coffee, lemonade. A "giant" dogfish waggled itself alongside Mr. Temme in friendly fashion. Mr. Temme trudgeoned on, reaching Lydden Spout, under the Dover chalk cliffs, in 14 hr. 29 min.--two minutes less than Miss Ederle had taken; but three hours, 24 minutes longer than George Michel, the plump, record-holding French baker. Thomas W. Burgess, bronzed Nestor of English natation, and second-- man to swim the Channel (in 1911), clapped his pupil heartily on a greasy shoulder. Evelyn Pettipiere, Mr. Temme's fiancee, rushed forward for a wet embrace.

A crowd cheered for the eleventh Channel swim in history and the first attempt this season. In London, the feat was signalized at Lloyd's (insurance exchange) by a clanging of the Lutine Bell and the loud voice of a public crier. Headlines ejaculated decorously all over Britain. The U. S. Press took the news more calmly. Only 364 days before, the Ederle performance had called forth some of the biggest typefaces in the composing room, for front page screamers. Now no room at all could be found for Mr. Temme on the front pages of leading U. S. newspapers.

The New York Times gave him slightly over a half-column on an inside page (but not a sport page).

The New York World gave five inches on its second sport page, without so much as mentioning his name in headlines. The Atlanta Constitution gave four inches on its second sport page using the headline: LOOK WHO'S HERE! ANOTHER OP THOSE CHANNEL SWIMMERS. The Boston Herald gave five inches on its third sport page.

U. S. newspaper-readers were thus assured that Channel-swimming would not be a headline craze again this summer. Miss Ederle, now appearing in "small-time" U. S. vaudeville, and other swimmers may have felt vexed at the "fickleness" of public interest. But beside scientific travel over a whole ocean, for example, muscular travel across a 20-mile tide race seemed to have shrunk to the proportions of a frog beside an eagle.

--Captain Matthew Webb, also of England, was first, in 1875.