Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 28

JUNE 29, .. C, 1930—PART TWO. PLEASURES OF RUSSIA HAVE POLITICAL AIMS Fun for Fun’s Sake No.More—Everything Has Overpowering Flavor of Red Propaganda. (Continued From First Page.) fo the innumerable restaurants scat- 4ered through the towns to do their arinking. Vodka, peevah—the world’s worst beer—and Crimean wine are the * fgvorites, in the order named. Vodka, & colorless, highly alcoholic liquor that is usually made from rye, but in case of a rye shortage can be distilled from a mash of either barley or potatoes, is the national drink today, as it was under the empire. If aged, vodka has & fine flavor and an aroma of old brandy. But all that is to be had in public cafes today is raw and new and suggestive of synthetic gin. For the stores of old vodka were consumed dur- hibited its manufacture as a war meas- ure and while the Soviet government was attempting to retain the regulation. ‘When the government found it was an easier task to destroy a monarchy and set up a new social order than it was to curb the appetites of the people arbitrarily, they abandoned the anti- vodka law. Instead of using their energies to suppress the universal illicit manufacture and illegal sale of the drink the state took over the manu- facture of it themselves, and simul- tanesusly begin an intensive education- al campaign against its use. Hanging in the provision shops and cafes where the worker buys a green labled bottle of vodka from his government for 1 ruble are threatening posters, issued by the same government, describing the dire fates that will overtake him if he drinks the stuff. Middle-Aged Are Drinkers. Tn spite of the war on aleohol, drink- {ng is general throughout the country and in some cities there is an amazing amount of intoxication. But the exces- sive drinking is done largely by people bevond middle age. The youth of the land, having been affected by the anti. lcohol propaganda correlated with heir educational works, seems less rested in drink than the young generation in Western countries. In Leningrad I saw more drunkenness than in any other city of Europe or the Far East. Whether one went into the sordid, reeking eating houses of the old slums, where the derelicts of a poor man's world gather around dirt-in- crusted pine benches and imbibe cheap flaming vodka, or visited the better cafes on and near Nevesky Prospect and found the workers sitting at tables covered with red and white checked linen, sipping their favorite drink, there was a startling number of drunken men and women. It is in the more sanitary atmosphere of workers’ clubs, peasants’ clubs and village and city reading and lecture rooms that the proletariat find a great part of their amusements. There is little opportunity in the crowded cities for. the home becoming a center of social life. In Moscow there is an average of 4.2 persons to every room. Such cramped quarters do not en- courage the worker to spend his play- time with his family and friends around the samovar at home. And there i5 little incentive to try adjusting one's self to a stuffy, chaotic room when the club houses offer more space, com- panionship and entertainment. This is as the government would have it, for the home and family is regarded by the Communist as a smugly bourgeoisie and individualistic social unit which they seek to destroy and supplant with the larger community group. By bring- ing the worker from his fireside to the clubs for social activity the hcme ties are weakened and his play can be supervised and directed as a medium af educating the masses in the habits and skills profitable to the state. Learn Gun Nomenciature, Though the games played at the clubs are not always exciting, they are as loaded with motives as play in a kindergarten., A favorite type of con- test is one that involves knowledge of a special sort valuable to the nation. One popular game of this kind requires elaborate equipment. A complete pic- ture of a machine gun and all of its divisions is painted on a huge board. The separate parts of the gun are marked with metal buttons, and along the side in a column are listed the names of every segment, with a metal button after each word. Across the top of the plaque are two rows of elec- tric lights. ‘Teams made up of both men and! women are chosen. A leader with an | electrically wired pointer touches the button on a particular segment of the | gun. The player tries to point to the| correct name of the part indicated ll'.h‘ another wired rod. If he succeeds, & circuit is established. and as a reward | a light flashes on for his side. Upon| failing to identify an item, another member of the team has an opportunity | to test his knowledge. When one lld!l has set burning all the lights it can, the | opposite group then goes through the same routine, and the team having the Jargest number of lighted bulbs wins. As the correctness is recorded electri- cally, no expert is needed to conduct the contest. There are other devices of this sort where a rifie, a gasoline motor or & dy- name is employed as subject matter. In this fashion the proletariat are amused and painlessly trained in tech- nical knowledge of practical value to the army and industry, while at the same time the ever-present ideal of col- | lective accomplishment is set out as compensation for individual ability. Clubs Have Libraries. In addition to games, basket ball courts, radios and lecture halls, the av- erage clubhouse is equipped with a li- brary of some ceseription. For the new Russia finds great amusement in books. ‘The Soviet government's reports for 1929 show more books bought in Russia, de- spite the high rate of illiteracy, than in the United States. And a survey of the workers' libraries points out interesting facts concerning the type of books on the crest of current popularity. There is almost equal demand for translations Y from foreign languages and 8 for Russian | 818 literature. American is more widely read than that of any other foreign country. Jack London ranks first as having the most general appeal to the workers. James Oliver Curwood comes second. and Upton Sinclair third in- favor among the American story tellers. Among the clerical and in- »tellectual workers Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos. O. Henry MD\IE&II‘: Maxim Gorky is the most popular con- temporary writer, and Tolstoy the most popular of all. In the fields of eco- given a Communist inf teen per cent of all teciinical subjects. Posters Confront Workers. his hour of rant wiii .o ve wasted, for sbn!:!eu on every side by the educati effor of his iuvernmlnt. As he dozes he may amuse himself 8 haif-ciosed the of Len that adorn wall and the epigrams of the master inscribed beneath them. ‘Then there are the 3 ive healthy posture for the new worker to assume while walking and standing and “lmnll:i And ’mthm ure':lhlu ummd:l‘; pla; WX ages Of uman ) mdv livers and stomachs that have suf- m tragedies from overindulgence in Oftentimes when the worker walks in the park he will come across small wan- dering bands that play popular selec- tions with no propaganda value. The workers gather in a little group around the musicians for a bit of entertain- ment free of educative stigma. But once a suitable number are listening. the music stops, a speaker hops upon a box and those who came for song find ch uj some subject related to their welfare. I have heard such lec- turers talk on keeping windows open in the bed room, the necessity of bath- ing at least once a week, the health advantages of drinking 10 glasses of water daily and weird tales of capital- ist oppressions in the Far East, where Russia fights to hold the railroad that exploits Northern Manchuria. The speech done, the band moves on. If the worker wants more music he must hear more speeches. Athletic Games Stressed. Sports make up an essential part of the amusement life of the young people. The goVernment takes particular inter- est in the development of athletics and correlates the work with army training. Both men and women participate in all sports. A Moscow slogan reads, “Not a Single Working Lass Must Be Left Without Physical Culture.” Foot ball (introduced into Russia at the time of the Czars with some difficulty, since the police could see no sense to the game unless it was to train young men to throw bombs) is now one of the most popular sports. Basket ball is another leading game. Since both of these games give ample chance for the mwork so essential to the develop- ment of collectivist psychology and fur- nish excellent physical conditioning, | they are encouraged more than tennis, | which brings two people into a direct competition and threatens to establish individualistic viewpoints. Though prize fighting smacks strongly | of individualism, it is made an orthodox Red sport by a metaphysical interpfe- | tation. Important bouts project a stir- | ring scene on one of Communism's many anomalies. The scuff of fighters’ feet on the blood-stained canvas ring, the thud of blows pounded with leather gloves against sweaty bodies and the heavy breathing of the battlers carry throughout the stiliness of the crowded Moscow stadium, where a swarthy giant from the Caucasus and a rangy Lenin- grad man are deciding the fistic cham- pionship of the Communist world, The spectators, husky, sport-conscious young men and women of Soviet Russia, are tense. but despite the fury of the fight absolutely silent. Glaring white lights pour over the ringside. There are no dinner jackets worn by the holders of the favored seats. that cost but 10 ko- pecks, nor are there jewels on silken women. The nuur linen shirts of the | men and the flaming cotton bandanas of round-faced, unrouged girls give color to the roughly dressed throng. Excitement is at white heat, for the match ends a five-day boxing tourna- ment_during which the contenders in .g’le finals have fought at least three uts. Demonstration of Condition. ‘The intensely individualistic activity | is interpreted in terms of -a collectivist ideology. For In theory the Caucasian | raging in the ting is not an angry in- | dividual battling a dangerous personal opponent for personal glory. The ter- rific jabs he sends to the northerner’s ribs are but a demonstration of the heights of physical condition and mus- |cular control which his sports club in | the south has attained. And, too, the | notion is presumed to prevail that the Leningrad battler cuts open the Cau- casian’s eye only by way of indicating the preciseness, strength and general fbod health of his associates at home. f he wins, the group, not he, will be| | victorious. 8o any cheering by the audience is out of order. Such a demonstration might inflate the fightef's ego, causing it to soar dangerously far above the mass and so dull the joy of collective accomplishment. But though the stim- ulation of the match is copstrued by metaphysical reasoning as the thrill of groyp achievement, the fury of the battle is lessened not an fota. 1 The Caucasish is driving his oppo- nent into a corner, raining blows on his head and bodv. A young Communist | near me loses his mncert of the fight as an impersonal exhibition of skill and strength developed through co-opera- tive sports clubs. -He jumps to his ket“ and in the quiet of the amphitheater| cries out the Russian equivalent of “Sock him! Let him have it! Men on either side of the enthusiast so grossly betrayed by his age-old in- stincts jerk the excitec youth to his seat and lecture him as the bout rages. “Comrade, stay in your place! Be uiet! Don't be a ‘bourjul’” says one our fellow. Not Gladiatorial Game. “Remember, comrade, this is a sport and not a gladiatorial game,” expounds & second shocked zealot of the Red faith, his small eyes crackling with a distinctly personal fire as he forces his code upon the latent individualist. Shouting by the spectators when blows are struck is regarded in poor taste, because it infers the vicarious pleasure | that only bourgeoisie are presumed to| experience at witnessing a primitive combat beiween two individuals. A gong sounds the end of the round. Animated convetsation and the smoking of long, rancid cigarettes turn the bowi into a sputtering, steaming cauldron of | suppressed emotions. in the gong clm‘g and the heavyweights are lam- basting one another. ere is little boxing skill, but an abundance of slug- . The Caucasian rushes into a savage attack. A small man in gigantic boots to the left of my companion and me stands up excitedly to better his view over the tall shoulders of the spectators ahead of him. Although he does not shout nor in any way obstruct our vision, my ardent Communist inter- preter taps the anxious little fellow severely on the arm, motions him into his seat, and delivers him an extended ! harangue upon the duties one comrade owes another comrade. “It is better that see a little less than to make themselves listening to a four-minute |- ing the period in which the Czar pro- |s) ]eue holds aloft the bloody arm of the |a Communist. doctrine pertaining to it. | YOUNG professional man took me to a country town to call on his parents. The old couple have raised eight children, of whom six are living and doing well. The father runs a small store. “I wanted you to meet my’ people,” my friend said later. “They are poor, but I'm very proud of them. When any one talks pessimistically about marriage or human life in gen- eral, I like to remember the record of those two old folks.” On my way from a Summer hotel to a near-by golf course I Caucasian. So even in this most personal of sports there is an effort to cloak it in & theory making it, hypothetically at least, compatible with’ Communist philosophy and of some use in the tremendous job of forcing a new mental and emouoml‘ background upcn 150,000,000 people. But despite the odd significance given the fight and the fact that a crowd brought together for amusement is con- verted into a laboratory to remake their habits, prize fighting is least affected of all divertissements by the social use to which it is put. - ‘The nation is anxious to learn all games and the government dispatches athletes into the provinces to instruct teachers in the rules and methods of coaching the sports. In a remote Sibe- rian town I met an American sailor who | was in great demand throughout the| countryside as a basket ball coach. Track meets held between the teams of the various trade unions attract great crowds and show the fine physical condition of both the men and the women. During the Communist games | in 1928 30,000 athletes. of both sexes| ers drilled with the precision and e; thusiasm of the Red army, and di tinctly set out the success of the plan to make every citizen a potential and fundamentally trained soldier by in structing him under the guise of amuse ment. Movies' Burden Heavy. The “movies” have taken up a heavy burden of entertainment and propa- ganda. As the great bulk of the Rus- sian people are still illiterate, this pow- erful means of bringing before them the virtues of the new regime, its goals and | | | | |its methods is utilized to the fullest| MUSCUMS. extent. | From the sedate old concert halls of | Moscow that have been. converted into trackless Siberian forest visited by a traveling motion picture outfit, the cinema has stretched its celiuloid trail of amusement and propeganda over | Russia’s ast land. No other form of entertainment is so carefully adapted to the uses of propaganda as the motion picture. It has bee. carried to such extremes in this direction that loyal workers’ councils have petitioned for a let-up of pictures with a purpose, not on the grounds that they object to the doctrines taught, but that educational ! motives have been heaped on so heavily that the amusement value of the film is reaching the zero point, Most of the pictures have to do with glorifying the lot of the worker and the peasant under the new regime by con- trasting the present with the past. Di- rectors never tire of making pictures showing the merclless oppressions of the czars and the harsh lot of the people under the autocrats, and endin, the film with the flashes of the fateful October when their chains were broken. | “Ten Days That Shook the World" and | Gorky's “Mother,” both shown in this| country, are mild examples of the sort| of film upon which the emotional and | illiterate Russian is fed. - Doctrines in Blackground. In keeping with the Soviets’ confused notions of the place of sex in the eosmic scene, the love interest in Russian pic- tures may take many different slants, | but it is always subordinated to thei character’s obligation to the state and | his trade union. When an amorous sit- | uation is made the main theme of a| photoplay it is always set out to teach| I saw only one picture that was built completely around a love interest. It was “The Birth of a Man,” shown ex- tensively throughout Russia, and told the story of a unist party member who still harbored what the BSoviets term “bourjui ideas” concerning his wife's obligations to him., When he learns he'is not the father of her child he sulks and chides her until she at- tempts suicide, from which he saves her. He asks her forgiveness for his petty viewpoint, and the picture comes to a happy Cr mmunist ending, with the child gurgling in a public nursery while the mother and her husband return to the whirling steel wheels of industry. happy at serving their state by efficient labor and untroubled by trivial con- ceg}; of personal relations. e cinema theaters are increasing in number in the rural districts every month, having shown an increase of 503 per cent in three years, Only 1 per cent of them are owned by private en- it difficult for many comrades behind you to witness the show.” ask my guide why he takes it upon ks | himsell to correct the comrade, whe is! in no way inconveniencing us. Caucasian Is Vietor. As left snd right hooks to the jaw are being exchanged the tiny man is once more on his feet, and my com- resumes admonif As| tempo until he once more fell exhaust- terprise, -the department of education operating 35 per cent, trade unions 40 per cent and the various other govern- ment agencies and joint stock com- pani remainder. movements, First he whirled for sev- eral minutes, in and ac- tion until he slumped to stage. He rose again and continued at & faster ed. A third time he revived and spun ith greatest fury until he and was carried from the stage. per- !mrmmm-mulumh&f muhmdm mmml A juggler 2 picked up a. caddy, a bright- eyed youngster of 13. “Are you staying he asked. I nodded. “Have you met the night en- gineer?” I said that unfortunately my contacts had been entirely with the day staff. “You should meet him,” the youngster said proudly. “That’s my father.” It is assumdd by those who view the social structure with disfavor that men work from only two motives—money or reputation. at the inh?” I venture to say that after one has laid by a few extra dollars and has seen his name in print a dozen times these two motives very rapidly lose their power. Far stronger and more en- during motives, I take it, are the calm, appraising eyes of one’s children. They are our judges; their opinion 'counts more than that of all the rest of the worid. Samuel Butler thought it was a great mistake that the generations overlap He point- ed with approval to the exam- ple of the moths and beetles which spir their cocoons, sur- (Copyright, 1930.) 'BOSTON, 3 CENTURIES OLD, IS CITY OF TRADITIONS 'How'to Preserve Them in Face of Mod- « .ern Tendencies Is One of the Problems of the Day. (Continued Prom Third Page?) land Antiquities. The latter would be even more flourishing if more people wrote a small enough hand to get their for non-payment. The soclety has pur- chagl and preserved fine old houses, par%ularly of the very early colonial period, all over New England, and in Boston itself has as its headquarters | the beautiful Harrison Grey Otis house on Cambridge street (down in a poor neigtborhood now), which is fitted up as a museum. Close beside it, now a branch of the Public Library, is a fine Asher Benjamin building, once a church, and these two designs of red brick, set a bit back from and above the street, -are beautiful examples of | the value of 'such historical preserya- tion. Bulldings Works of Art. It is all very well to have museums with “American wings,” but the origi- nal buildings of & fine period are works of art which can never be exhibited In They must be preserved, if at all, as and where they stand, Here the city has saved. from the days of the early republic, two works of art in | motion picture theaters to the thatch-| brick and mortar, and the museum is | Toofed peasants’ clubs on the edge of a | & city street. A second Otis mansion, bullt some yesrs later and designed by Charles Bulfinch, may be seen on the north side of Mount Vernon street just above Loulsburg Square. Here is still a residential neighborhood to’compare with such a mansion; the house still is a private residence. ‘The Athenaeum would have de- lighted the soul of William Blaxton, he who loved books (did he not have a vast library of 160 volumes in the wil- derness of the New World, where most folks were content with the Bible?) and who loved quiet. The Athenaeum is a library—a large and very fine library— and if you are a real dyed-in-the-wool Bostonian you own a share in it and are a proprietor. If you aren't, you'll have to go to the Public Library, which is full of Sargent murals and visitors trying to understand them by looking at printed cards instead of the pic- tures, not to mention smells, which are | the same in public libraries the world over, The Athenaeum is on Beacon street, on the hill close to the State House, It is a mournful looking pile of stone, as solid as a prison, entered by a dark and gloomy doorway. You step into & large, mournful, dim vestibule pre- sided over by a couple of classic casts and dim pertraits. Then you push on into the delivery room—and lo, the place is flooded with sunshine, which pour in through huge windows that open on the Park Street Burying Ground. Across this cheerful little park, full of elms, maples, gray squirrels and the tombs of the Colonial great, rises the lovely Wren spire of the Prk Street Church, and there drifts in, when the windows are open, the sub- dued roar of traffic on Tremont street Rk ere are five floors of reullng rooms with their sunny exposure an countless mezzanines and galleries and rooms on the north side where the stacks are, and a pet cat named Chris. tabel, and gold-fish bowls, and Gai pieces on his head for several minyjes and then letting them tumble in & ciia- otic heap as, he stated, capitalism would fall. It is always bracing thought for the worker of Russia to be assured that laborers in America who, it is ru- mored, go-to work in automobiles, are only catching a last frantic ride before the debacle, 3 ‘Radio Has Possibilities. The radio is recognized by the gov- ernment as another amusement that possesses infinite possibilities as a con- veyance fml’owlnaA And with this m mind, radio ih Russia is growing by leaps and bounds. From one broadcast= ing station in 1924, they have expanded to 67. Last year there were 326,000 radio receiving sets in the land—an in-~ significant number compared to the “It is the duty of a party member to A:ld h"‘“h" Ot She-thienter Wrv e | X el u:ocu:mnst‘:l;u}egg the nmhe 'v: r’wm d fz Y0 Sevouty e the we number of hearers, as most sets are in- X aims of From | 5¢ a and to oxpl";h.u: ;ueltly'v}::l i h:"a‘: dancer, the of eco- | of the ';“.:nl eount.r’y m‘"‘: :é rule. en it becomes a part of the|Nomics and soclal problems are of fore- | Moscow' ice. By P e comrade’s behavior.” he declares fer-| Most i In a .;-udnfll: . o= "W"lfa;o fallyeach coa lmd!'mu AP Neh 1o Sy rioe eeine)in grl 1 saw an ecoentric dancer who in- | dren—the word of the government- | terpreted his antics in terms of world | controlled will the huge press a of illiterates who once were be- yond s pal e, So the new Russians play more in- tensely than any other le, but from much of their fun the old spirit is gone. t is often approached allel Bradford writing a biography in | one corner and Prof. Morison writing a history in another, and a little old | |lady with:a bonnet selecting the Itest | novel, and a handsome gentleman with | names on checks for their annual dues. |8 green bag making up his mind be- | They try it once, and then are dropped | tween “The Yale Review” and “Vanity | Fair,” and an editorial writer becom- | | ing an expert wwith the aid of a young | lady attendant who brings him’ piles | of books, and everywhere discreet si- pleasant hush, old poreraits | books, sunshine and people not only| | well read but well bred. A flat in | | the Athenaeum would crawl inte a cor- | | mer and die of loneliness without thv | consolation of hope that it could be| | interred in the Park Street Burying| Ground. | to An Aspirin Wasted. There once was a Boston blue stock- | ing who was on the top floor during| an earthquake. When she came down | | somebody asked her if she felt the| tremblor. “Was that what it was>” | she sald. “And I took aspirin for it!" | But we must hasten from this fasci- | | hating place lest we consume all our | space therein—as once we consumed days upon end of our time. | A dozen strides from the door of the | Athenaeum bring you in front of St | | Gaudens’ famous bronze memorial to| Robert Gould Shaw, which, with its back to the Common, faces the steps which lead up to the main portal of the State House. Here William Vaughn | Moody stood and concelved his “Ode | in Time of Hesitation” And here yo | may stand today and wish, perhaps, that Massachusetts had hesitated much longer than it did before adding those two marble wings on either side of Bull- | finch's beautiful building with its golden | dome, which so gracefully yet so finely and strongly illustrate the tastes and aspirations of the early Republic. After the wings were added the old State House was painted white, and the wings seemed to be attempting to ifllp it down into the frog pond on the Common, like a strange, gigantic duck with a gold comb. Now they have sand blasted the Bullfinch building down to | its original red brick again, so that it | stands out in sharp contrast to the ad- ditions, and the original design may be clearly seen once more. It is & truly splendid building, and nce it has dominated Beacon Hill, the | Common and indeed all the surround- | Ing ity for 126 years, it is small won- der, perhaps, that it is held in affec- | tionate regard by'every citizen of Mas- sachusetts and has set the stamp of its style on much else in the Common- wealth—at any rate has been a steady- ing_influence. Charles Bulfinch, the architect, was a Harvard i;ndunz who made a Euro- pean tour complete his education, became interested in architecture and took it up as a profession. He left a | trail of interesting structures through | New England, and the new Phillips Academy at Andover today is designed in harmony with his old academy | building there. He was elected a select- man of Boston for almost 30 years. and he tried to become a city planner a century before his time. He wished to widen the Boston streets and straighten those which checked the flow of traffic. If Boston had listened to him, Its traffic | st they are—which is terrible. Little Subway Kiosks. Coming down Park street, away from the State House, to Brimstone corner, you will notice on the Common several little subway kiosks, which when they were first erected caused Philip Hale to remark that the Public Library had littered. They are the only intrusion on the sacred Common the city has ever permitted. Thousands of suburbanites dive into them, and thousands of pigeons perch above them, to swoop down upon the hands, arms, shoulders or head of anybody who displays a little bag of grain. It was amid these innocent and cooing doves that H. L. Mencken stood and sold his copy of the American Mercury with the “Hat- rack” story to the pepresentative of the Watch and Ward Soclety—and then bit the 50-cent plece to see if 1t were gen=- ::ne. Henry lacks the confidence of a love, cutthuwdnwn now through Bromfield street to Washington, we are confronted by the Old South Meeting House; also sand blasted to its original red brick. This simple but dignified and charmin structure was erected in 1729, was use by the British for a riding academy (as every chiid 'knows), and by the fourth quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury found itself useless as a church. Tts congregation had all moved out on the newly made Back Bay (once a shal- low tide basin), the expandis commercial town around it threatens its destruction, for the land was worth $400,000, and the congregation wanted that money much more than they wanted to preserve a landmark. And %“;uw charac - rallied rescue—not, mind you, out of any respect for its archil but from timent. It mn tm\muw. of mtx old city meeting mustn’t L in Memor! in Cam- bered by any acquaintanceship with parents or relations. just about as much progress as past 10,000 years. for money or fame, but in the hope that our kids can say with pride, “That’s my father.” | trance, problems today would not be =o bad as | be By Bruce Barton round the new life with enough food to start it successfully in the world, and then quietly die and get out of the way. It would be much better, he said, if each one of us could come into the world wrapped in $20,000, which woulg, see us through' to maturity, unencum- Buch a world would make the beetles have made in the We keep going, not so much bridge—one of the ugliest buildings in the world!—James Russell Lowell de- clared that the Old South had no ar- tistic or esthetic interest in any way comparable to the beautiful structure they were now meeting in, but should saved for Massachusetts history! Structure Kept Intaci. And saved ‘it was. In spite of the terrible architectural taste of the '70s and '80s, not a brick was removed from the fine old Colonial structure, and now there is a sepond-hand book store in the basement and a public forum in the auditorfum, and the Meeting House of 1729 stands just as it has siood for 200 years, with®ihe steel- framed city piled up beside and behind it. That's Boston. An even more interesting relic is the head of State street, with its second- story east-end balcony still looking down on the scene of the Boston massacre, and beyond, to the Stock Exchange. It is terribly in the way. Part of the basement has been made a subway en- and a sidewalk has been cut through under one end. Traffic would be greatly facilitated in movement if it were remov ! entirely. But there she stands! It was built in 1748 and re- constructed carefully in 1802. From its balcony the royal proclamations used be read, and from it was read the Declaration of Independence. After that ceremony, on July 15.{115. the exicted populace ripped down {he lion and uni- corn which adorned the top of the east facade and burned them up. But in its connecion I'lthl ACTS OF CLEMENCEAU AND FOCH REAL GAUGE Confidence in Each Other Shown Many Times, Despite Their Heated Words. (Continued Prom First Page.) what the government's view of the peace terms would be, The generalissimo, in consequence, suggested the possibility of the perma- nent presence et his headquarters of an officlal from the French foreign office who might act as liaison between him and the government. A week later Clemenceau and M. Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, replied. Clemenceau did not mince matters. The general- issimo was oniy the military adviser cf the government and his advice need not always be acted upon. In consequence, Marshal Foch was to be informed of the political developments only in so far as they depended upon military action. So the change suggested by Foch did not become effective, and the armistice was & purely military affair. As for the peace negotiations, they on the contrary, were ' purely ecivilian. Foch, in spite of repeated efforts, could only get admission to the conference on April 25 and May 6, 1919. The “Me- morial” narrates this failure in the tone of one who knows he has done his duty, but a dispusted sniff every now and then throws e light on the mar- shal's innermost feelings. Visibly the long delays between November, 1918, | and May, 1919, wvere harder to bear | than M. Recouly is willing to admit, for on April 17, 1919, the marshal posi- | tively refused to follow Clemenceau in | an imporiant matter and the Tiger | deeply resented the disobedience. | Clemenceau wanted the generalissimo to advise Gen. Nudant by telegram that he was to take proper measures to receive the German delegates and escort them to Paris, where they were to be given information regarding the main lines of the treaty. Foch realized that his oft-repeated wish had been disregarded and the treaty must be virtually complete wllhout\ his having been consulted about it. ‘The disap- pointment was too hard to bear, and Foch refused to send the telegram. “Send it yourself,” he said. ‘“Besides," | he added, “there are things in it which | 11 do not understand, and I have never | signed anything that was not imme- diately intelligible.” Foch Faces Stipulations. | A week later the generalissimo #as | | at last allowed to state his views about | | the future safety of Prance as it was to | | be safeguarded in the treaty, but Cle- | menceau atipulated that Foch would not be admitted to any debate and that | {all he was expected to do would be | to have his say and immediately retire. The “Memorial” makes it clear that M. Poincare did not favor this restric- | tion, as in his heart he entirely sided with the generalissimo. As for the | do not suppose that I can be the only | person to whom Senator Lodge con- | fided his idea of the treaty—"pure and | | simple annexation of the left bank of | | the Rhine.” Foch retranslated this into { military language: “There is only one | possible precaution against the danger of another German inv n, and it is occupation of the Rhine. There was no discussion of this | formula which the marshal read out to a perfectly silent circle. Only President | Poincare asked a question: “Do you | think,” he said, “that a protective pact | | signed by the United States and by | | Great Britain would not be as much | protection as the military occupation | | You suggest?” “No,” the marshal said. And he proceeded .to recount that it | had taken Great Britain two years and | 1882 they were recarved in wood, painted and gilded and set in their original places. But by 1882 a consid- erable part of the population of Boston was not Anglo-Saxon. It hailed from an emerald isle never noted for its Anglomania—and there was a rumres. Indeed, dire vengeance was threatened both on the sculptor and the lion and unicorn. But there they stand! A compromise, however, was effected by installing a gilt esgle on top of the west facade. What would happen in’ New York if it were proposed to restore the lead statue of George III in Bowling Green? robably nothing. Nobody would know the proposition had been made. The interior of the old State House, | with its heavy early Georgian trim, is another one of those museu England antiquities you are al ‘In pon in the Bay Colony. It is many years since the writer has been ‘inside, but he has a recollection of toby jugs | which in his boyhood used to fill him with delight. It is only a step from the old State House to Faneuil Hall, which visitors pronounce Fan-u-el and Bostonians pro- | nounce any way from Fan-u-il to nel. - This famous “eradle of L was originally designed by an Englith | portrait painter, Smibert, who came to America with Dean Berkley, and, of course, it was the scene of all the early Boston “town meetings,” those charac- teristic manifestations of Puritan de- mocracy. After the Revolution it was enlarged and remodeled by Charles Bul- finch, who had the tact to preserve, however, the essential design. In Delightful Setting. Quite apart from its sentimental in- terest, Faneuil Hall is an interesting | structure, and its setting is delightful. The streets of this ancient portion of the town radiate from it like the spokes and seed houses. These streets are full of trucks unloading produce. The side- walks are blocked with wheel hoes, cul- tivators, boxes of pansies and celery plants and raspberries, and the air is pungent with a thousand pleasant smells. Just east of Faneuil Hall is a Doric temple devoted to meat—the Quincy Market, built by Josiah Quincy of Quincy granite (naturally), and in Gil- 'rt_Stuart's portrait of Josiah, in the Art Museum. you see the old aistocrrat sitting with his market in the back- ground. Over both buildings looms the tall tower of the customs house, and up from the nearby water front, when the wind is east, come sea fog and the smell bullt, however, in the 1820's, the docks were immediately at its east end. The top floor of Faneuil Hall has long been the “armory” of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, which used to entertain and be enter- talned on alternate years by the Old Guard of New York, to their mutual enjoyment and the enjoyment of all readers of the New York Sun. The Sun put its best reporter (1. e., its most humorous) on the job for these occa- sions and Frank O'Malley's story of the trip of the Ancient and Honorables down the Hudson in the battleship was a classic of the ,past generation. Alas! Those happy days are no more. The lord-brethren of America have rob- bed both the Ancient and Honorables and the Old Guard of their ammuni- tion, Suppose now you set out from Féneuil Hall to find the Old North Church and the House of Paul Revere —and the Lord helgoy'ou, Nobody else can—least of all a tonian, except the little - muffins who throng the streets of the North End (Boston’s East Side), can spot a sightseer a mile away and cling around you offering to guide you for a dime, or to recite “Paul Revere's Ride” for a nickel. To give you a tasie of thelr ability, they begin in high gear— “Seventeenhundrednseventy-fivehard- lyamanisnowalive"—And you ever expect to find Revere's house, a real seventeenth century bullding, you'd bet- ter cling to one of these urchins like a brnzhnh e o;h"mt your !flfllfll' v;fll ave to send out a searc party for m. ‘While in the Nflnhl:ngd to old Copp's Hill Burying Ground. It crowns what was once one of the tri- At 8| mounts of Boston and over its ancient or a bit of tombs you lock to the harbor and across of a drunken wheel, lined with markets | of brine. When the Quincy Market was | {the United States more than three | | years fo give any worth-while assist- | { ance to French defense. ‘The final impression left by the “Me- morial” is that Wilson and Lloyd | George, not Clemenceau, led the con- ference, and that Clemenceau, “at heart | still an old Jacobin,” acted partly from | | some unsuppressed remnants of anti- | militarism. “Contemptuous Science” Fruitless. The aforesaid Jacobin was 87 when this “Memorial” was published. Since his retirement he had said little. But Fcch was an opponent who could not be disposed of by mere contemptuous | | silence. Clemenceau retired to his place |in Vendee, ran a race with death and| won, finishing “Grandeurs et Miseres l'une Victoire” several weeks before the final attack. “Grandeurs et Miseres l'une Victoire” !is not an old man's book. No remi- | | niscing, only arguing: no pleading, only | fighting. Frequently the writer apos- | trophizes as if he were still on the | rostrum of the chamber. There is no, | invective, because Clemenceau always| ‘bflleves in his argu nts, but many a| sentence is charged to exploding with ! disgust or contempt. You can skip ; When you read the “Memorial” because of M. Revouly, a journalist, and not Foch, the tersest and most condensed of writers, composed it; but you cannot skip a line of “Grandeurs et Miseres.” If it really possessed the serenity which Clemenceau honestly thought he dis- playved in every chapter, it would be one of the great books. As it is, his- torians will never consult it without| feeling the contagion of its passion. | Precisely as the “Memorial” devotes | most of its space to Clemenceau and to the Versailles treaty, “Grandeurs et | Miseres” is first an analysis of the rela-| tions between the author and the gen-{ eralissimo, while its second part dnll‘ | with what Clemenceau regarded as the | sabotage of thc treaty. Foch disliked Clemenceau more than to Charlestown and Bunker Hill Monu- ment, and possibly you may see the ghost of one of those grand clipper ships which used to be launches South Boston while the steeples rocked and guns boomed and the roofs were black with people. Low Sky-Line Retained. Moderately new Boston 1s the Back Bay, but even that in spite of a few jugglings with the building code, keeps its low skyline. Residences, however, are yielding to trade, and across Boyls- ton street to the south a new section of hotels and offices and stores is rising. But actually the growth of Boston has been suburban. Swing an arc from the State House equal to the arc required to take in the boundaries of New York and Boston would have 2,000,000 in- habitants. Classic Cambridge is sprout- ing apartment houses like a field of mushrooms, and a score of other sur- rounding towns are now solid city, pain- fully like any other city anywhere— “movie” houses, filling stations, chain groceries and all the rest. But that isn't Boston. It is something which in the slow process of years has got to be made Boston if the spirit of the ancient town endures. The difficulties of combating both the lord bishops and the lord brethren have not diminished with the years, Once Boston threw British tea into the harbor, but later the lord bishops and lord brethren “together threw the Bacchante out of the Public Library, and only a year ago threw “Strange Interlude” out of the theater. Free speech, as Wendell Phillips practiced it in Faneull Hall, is no longer permit- ted in that famous cradle. ‘The fight to save the traditions of independence as well as the physical monuments of the past and to bulld the new city on the style of the old in spirit as well as material structure is Boston’s peculiar problem. There are many in the battle line, and no visitor to the old Puritan capitsl this Summer can wish them lny&l.n( but success. ‘They stand, like the Spartans of Ther- m an e ible uniformity. laxtons or th, mg;um are, anyl of are Wi | ment he interferes. in | Soldiers, economized with eivilis Clemenceau disliked Foch. There is & §00d deal more appreciation of Foch in “Crandeurs et Miseres” than thee i or Clemenceau (possibly M. Recouly's fault) in the “Memorial” On several occasions the old Tiger positively warms up in admiration of Foch, mon bon Foch, who combined genius and humor and could nudge one in such a funny way at just the right moment. ,Yet most. people think Clemenceau has treated the great soldier unfairly. Situation Under Review. I do ot share in that opinjon. Clemenceau may have been wrong in attaching too much importance to con- versations which Foch would never have 14 countersigned. He might have saved himself a good deal af irritation by re- memberi; that the editor of the “Memorial” was pre-eminently a jour- nalist. He might have sacrificed the Joy of writing a final volume in a vein which had been more familiar to him when he spoke than when he wrote. But people are not fair when they call him unjust. His psychology may be, and no doubt is, faulty, but his accu- racy is unimpeachable. It is a fact that the beginning of Foch's career dates from 1908. when Clemenceau, prime minister for the first time, placed the comparatively obseure colonel in command of the Ecole de Guerre. Foch showed a proper spirit. The decrees against the refigious or- ders had recently been issued. Foch's Jesuit brother had had to exile him- self to Spain, and radical newspapers might allude to the fact. Foch said so, “D—— the Jesuit brother,” Clemen- ceau replied. “I want you.” Ii is also a fact that it was to Cle- menceau, then chairman of the army commission in the Senate, that Foch sent one of his aides in 1915 with his own bust as a present and some mili- tary disclosures tending to prove that Foch, as he well might,"knew his pos- sibilities as a generalissimo. It was &ls0 to the same Clemenceau that he came in 1916 when, after the failure of the offensive on the Somme, he was sent to Senlls to help in the prepara- tion of the Saloniki campal that is to say, when he was purely and simply “canned.” It was also the old Jacobin who got him the unity of command &t the famous Doullens conference, and it was the same Clemenceau who in May. 1918, saved him from the anger of the Chamber after the still unex- plained capture of the Chemin des Dames. Clemenceau’s Estimate of Foch. There can be no doubt that it was Clemenceau. and none other, who di- vined and, 1 “‘arious emergencies, went on believing in Foch's genfus. Foch, ! ! old State House, which stands at the | latter’s view, it was perfectly simple. I |being conscious of his unique gift, may thought that Clemenceau was just a fairly wise man among fools, but Clemenceau wanted more than a mini- mum of gratitude. “Grandeur et Miseres” quotes the letter written by the generalissimo when Clemenceau appointed him first marshal of France, It is not a very warm letter. Not pleasant reading. either, are the accounts given by Clemenceau—in a spirit_of retaliation, undoubtedly—of how Foch let him down in the matter of the British attack on Constantinople (October, 1918) and sided with Lloyd George: how Foch had to apologize after the Nudant telegram incident: how he was set right by King Albert of Belgium on an important incident of the Yser battle; how, finally, he be. trayed Clemenceau in two interviews given, one to the Dally Mail and the other to the New York Tribune. Pain- ful, pairful. But as all this is now in print, it also has to be taken into ac- count—which many people prefer not doing. Clemenceau was too much of a pow- erful egotist to be a subtle psycholo- gist. He admires Foch, but does not understand him: he had only to be a quarter of an hour with the generalis- ! simo to be conscious of the rare, beau- tifully childlike charm which emanated along with genius from every word he said. Foch, like most soldiers, had more ruse than prudence, and within certain limits would say anything in the honest belief that it did not mat- ter. Bring him the accurate report on , paper of what he had just said and he would refuse to sign it, only adnit- ting that it came somewhat near his meaning. Telk and action with him were separated by a gulf. Tt is absurd to saddle on such a man the responsi- bility of what newspaper men represent him’as having said. Noted General's Soldier Traits, Another trait of the soldier is visible in Foch. However civilians may resent it, soldiers regard civilians as nitisances. The civilian does not know the soldier’s craft, he does not even know his lan- guage, He makes mistakes the mo- He may no doubt beé useful in democracies given up to politicians, and as such he cannot be ignored, must be flattered by presents of busts, but he remains a danger all the time and has to be handled as an irresponsible person in possession of an arm or a torch, Analyze Foch's attitude with regard to the Chemin des Dames annoyance and contrast it with the civilian's view on the same subject. To Foch the inei- dent was a mere nothing in the superb development of the campaign. To Clem- enceau it remained a black note of in- terrogation. Or remember the attitude of naval experts sitting in judgment on a brother officer after a disaster at sea. The facts are there, but the great fact is the environing presence of an ocean of landlubber ignorance. Clemenceau realized it, there would be ) over “Grandeurs et Miseres” a beautiful light which we miss. It would be useless to say more than & word about what Clemenceau had in mind when he used ‘‘Miseres l'une Vic- tolre” as the second part of his title Foch's view of the treaty was: “We should have occupied the Rhine, as the Dutch once occupled Belgium; instead of soldiers we have the Geneva Assem- bly and the Locarno serap of paper.” Outcome of Parley Analyzed. Clemenceau’s view of the same is: “T wanted peace and not a mere treaty; 1 nbjected to an occupation .which, in the iong run, would have resulted in furious revenge, Instead of that I sug- gested a protective pact which Mr W. son and Mr Lloyd George promisc What happened? Americans would ratify and the British slunk out of the agreement. I have been vilely taken in, and what people have made of my treaty does not bear the least resem blance to what I wanted it to be. course, Gen is only pape: another war, butchered my work bear the respon- !lbllll{l." Foch would no doubt reply: “It wi your job to foresee that Jn American Senate would not ratify and act in con- Sequence. But the matter is not one of right or wrong; it is one comprehension or incomprehension. At first sight it looks as if Foch'bad misjudged Clemenceau. All that the “Memorhld‘; l"lkya .lbomdtvl?e aldh states- man soun e niggar e, But Foch's real opinion of Ulz:l:ncelu is not to be gathered from wnac he said about him, but from the way he acted toward him. Now, all his actions re- vealed that he regarded him as the only man‘on whom his genius could rely. Asg to Clemenceau's impression of Foch, it is not to be looked for in a book, but in the series of acts of faith in the gen- eralissimo which 20 years of the old man’s political career evidence 5o clear- historians . To the will merely be & chance of reading meulouyoft'omtm ’ I « {