Subject: an old paper of Eilenberg? From: "Ronnie Brown" Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 11:33:34 +0100 I would be grateful for help in finding a reference, if I have remembered it correctly! The background is as follows. A paper on `Groupoids, the Phragmen-Brouwer Property, and the Jordan Curve Theorem' (preprint 06.01 on http://www.bangor.ac.uk/~mas010/brownpr.html). has been accepted for JHRS subject to a few modifications, and the referee reminds me that some results are kind of `known', but that the paper gives short proofs. One result used is that if X is the union of two path connected subspaces whose intersection has n+1 components, then \pi_1(X,x) contains the free group on n elements as a retract (with the usual local conditions). I now recall that I saw this in a prewar paper of Eilenberg, in Fench I think. But in contracting office due to retirement, the offprint got lost. I canot find this on MathSciNet. Can any one help? (I like to be accurate in historical matters, if possible.) Ronnie www.bangor.ac.uk/r.brown