Evening Star Newspaper, April 7, 1935, Page 60

F—4 VIEWS AND REVIEWS OF LITERATURE AND ART IN A LIFE OF GREAT VARIETY Autobiography of John Hays Hammond Is Issued on Eightieth Birthday of the Mining Engineer—Gen. Johnson's New Book—Some Good Spring Fiction. By Sarah Bowerman. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN HAYS HAMMOND. Iiustrated with Photographs. Two Volumes. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. UBLISHED con his 80th birth- day, the autobiography of John Hays Hammond is & record of a life of great variety. Born in California in 1855, Mr. Hammond became a ploneer mining engineer and through the practice of his chosen profession had a part in some of the greatest engineering developments of his period end became internationally known emong business men and statesmen. ¥He was taken as a boy to the White House to meet Grant and has known all the Presidents since, with the ex- ception of Arthur, many of them inti- mately. Taft, who appointed him spe- | eial Ambassador to the coronation of | George V. was his collegemate and close friend. But his friendships have | not been limited to the great. Early | pioneers in mining, fellow students at Freiburg University, where he com- pleted his mining education; the old fishermen of Gloucester, where his | Summer home now is, have all been | his friends. One of the most striking episodes of Mr. Hammond's career was in con- | nection with the spectacular activities | of his close friend and associate, Cecil Rhodes. In 1892 he went to South Africa, where he supervised Rhodes’ mining interests and became chair- man of the Reform Committee of Eng- lish and Americans in the Dutch ‘Transvaal, whose object was adjust- ment of conditions imposed on for- eigners by the Boer President, Kruger. ‘When Kruger remained obstinate, Mr. Hammond and his committee or-| ganized a movement which he thinks | might have prevented the Boer War, if their accomplice, Dr. Jameson, had not rashly acted on his own initiative and carried out his famous raid, which caused the trial of the whole col mittee for high treason. Death sen- tences were imposed, which were afterward commuted to life imprisun-i ment and later still to a fine. This episode was the final tragedy of| Rhodes’ short life and is related with much detail in Sarah Gertrude Mil- | 1lin’s recent blography of Cecil Rhodes. | Mr. Hammond seems always to have been a stormy petrel, with a taste for revolts, since his college days at Yale, when he participated in the “town and gown” riot of 1875. Mr. Hammond's predilection for ad- | venture, pioneer life and politics dur- | ing his active days has been supple- | mented in his later years by many | active recreations. Though a quiet! man, his tastes have not been those of a recluse. He has found pleasure in boating, golf, and especially fly- ing. He is a friend of Charles A. Lindbergh and retains as his consult- ing physician one who told him he could safely fly to an altitude of 10,000 feet. His autobiography has all the qualities an interesting autobiography should have—a full, frank, but un- egotistic account of achievement, abundance of episode and anecdote, and revelation of personality. The achievement has led him to all parts of our own country, to South Africa, Mexico and most of the countries of Europe and South America and has included many contributions to the science of mining engineering. In 1908 Mr. Hammond retired from ac- tive work, but retained his private staff of engineers and has since directed his | own organization. Recently his en- gineers have, in New Guinea, flown | in specially constructed airplanes four | 20,000-ton dredges over jungle and | mountains to a river, where they are now operating them successfully. As for anecdote, Mr. Hammond's book is full of the most entertaining stories of his own experiences and of people he has known. Incidentally, he con- siders that the three greatest men he has known were Cecil Rhodes, Count ‘Witte and Porfirio Diaz. THE BLUE EAGLE FROM EGG TO EARTH. By Hugh 8. Johnson. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. ELIEVING that the public has a right to know the qualifications of any man chosen for the steward- ship of such a revolutionary organi- | zation as the N. R. A, Gen. Johnson devotes the first 15 chapters of his book to autobiographical material, and those chapters make it clear that Hugh 8. Johnson was from the be- ginning a fighter. After the pre- liminary chapters, the remainder of the book is about the period during which he was chief of the N. R. A. People all over the country who have | read of N. R. A. policies, changing from time to time, and have seen | hints from newspaper columnists that Quaker harmony did not reign among N. R. A. officials, will read this frank account of the inside of things with avidity, but Washingtonians, who have been closest to facts and rumors, will perhaps find it most entertain- ing. They will look with curiosity to see just how frank the zestful, pug- naclous N. R. A. chief has been and they will not be disappointed. That Gen. Johnson did not agree with certain other members of the administration and that disagreement sometimes reached the stage of quar- | rels have been no secrets. He here | tells of being called into “the tail end | of a cabinet meeting,” when “one or two of them had the expression of the cat which has just swallowed a canary,” and being told, contrary to | his previous understanding, that he was to report, not to the President, but to a cabinet board. Much of the gossip about his disagreements with | Richberg Gen. Johnson denies, saying that he “never lost an opportunity to praise him (Richberg) or to ad- vance his interests.” He also asserts with definiteness that he had de- termined, on account of health and financfal considerations, to sever his connection with N. R. A. some time before the resignation came. Only a small part of the history of the Blue Eagle is, however, given to the bird’s domestic quarrels. Gen. Johnson outlines the scheme and practical accomplishments of the N. R. A. organization and points out its flaws in theory and mistakes in practice. He suggests many improve- ments and makes some observations wabout general recovery measures. That success has thus far attended the New Deal he seems to doubt. *There is something about this de- pression that doesn't speak well for what we call our common sense. We have suffered for five years. And for what? The fields are just as green and fruitful, the skies are just as blue as they were in the 1929 boom, when everybody was going to get rich and poverty was to be no more in the land.” Of taxation he says: “Everybody pays taxes. It makes lit- [ 'quo of material inequality.” Because | training their men for war. | Keep the Peace?” and “Can America | favored nations will work out a plan 'and will thus pay the price of peace. ‘ | PROVENCE. From Minstrels to the | the Cassiterides ran up and through tle difference who gets the receipt, the consumer pays it all. The as- sertion that you can take it all out of the corporate income or of indi- vidual income in the higher brackets is blatant demagogy.” “The Blue Eagle” is so full of quotable passages that a reviewer could 'keep on in- definitely, but most people will want to read the whole book. THE PRICE OF PEACE. The Chal- lenge of Economic Nationalism. By Frank H. Simonds, Litt. D., and Brooks Emeny, Ph. D. New York: Harper & Bros. R. SIMONDS has long since established his reputation as an almost unerring diagnostician of in- ternational ills, and the period during which he has been writing has been an unusually sick period. The text of this book was written by Mr. Simonds in consultation with Mr. Emeny, in- | structor in history at Yale, who fur- nished economic background, maps | and charts, Using the compartive | method of reference to past history as an aid in the interpretation of the present, the only method capable of producing sound results, the authors show that just as, a century ago, “European peace was impermanent because of political inequalities ex- THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D, C., APRIL 7, 1935—PART FOUR. L4 Madox Ford especially loves France and its culture and has said that he sometimes thinks out his novels in French before writing them in English. NEW PATHWAYS IN SCIENCE. By 8ir Arthur Eddington. New York: The Macmillan Co. ‘HE Messenger lectures delivered at Cornell University in April and May, 1934, by Sir Arthur Eddington are collected in this volume. In his preface the author reviews the subject matter better than any non-scientific reviewer could do it. He says that the different lectures, each on a separate theme, cover his scientific thought of the past six years, since the publica- tion of his three books, “Stars and Atoms,” “The Nature of the Physical World” and “Science and the Unseen World.” In the opening lecture he explains the philosophical outlook of modern science as he understands it. ‘The second gives a summary of ex- isting knowledge of atomic physics. The next four are concerned with the | “consequences of the statistical type of law * * * which has in recent years completely driven out the older casual type of law from the founda- tions of physics.” There is then a change of subject and the next four lectures are de- voted to astrophysics, the subject John Hays Hammond, whose autobiography has just been published. ~—Copyright by Harris & isting between the nationalities of the continent, so today world peace is | similarly precarious because of the economic disparities existing between | nations.” They argue that Fascism and National Sociallsm are “expres- sions of great peoples in revolt against | the limitations placed upon their na- tional prosperity by their poverty in natural resources.” The inevitability of new and more disastrous wars is becoming recog- nized by thinking people. Mr. Si- monds and Mr. Emeny show that no | “system of organized peace can be founded upon the contemporary status of these disparities in material re- | sources, states are collapsing into Communism and other states are ‘The “price of peace,” then, is the finding of some peaceful means to abolish in- equalities. Experiments in the poste war period have not been directed to | this end, but to the preservation of the economic status quo. The League of Nations has failed to play the miraculous role for world peace hoped and prophesied by its proponents. As little hope is offered by Mr. Simonds as in his previeus books, “Can Europe Stay at Home?” that the economically for the satisfaction of the less favored, Machine. By Ford Madox Ford. Illustrations by Biala. Philadel- phia: J. B. Lippincott Co. THE life of Provence has always been romantic, in the days when the great trade route from Cathay to Provence, in the days of the trouba- dours and the courts of love, in the days of Daudet's Tartarin, and even today when automobiles dash through Tarascon, Carcassonne, Mentone and Marseilles. Mr. Ford speaks of “my Provence” as the place where “I have | lived for nearly all my spiritual as well as a great part of my physical life.” He hopes that after commun- ism and fascism have done their worst to the world, poor, jaded and experimented - upon human beings may go back and lead the life of the Provencals. What he tells us about Provence is mostly from his own reminiscences, with bits of its most glowing history interspersed. With the charm and informality which are inseparable from anything Mr. Ford writes, he discusses Proven- cal cookery, the etiquettes of restau- rants and cafes and how to find good ones, the luck of Provence in the French lottery, the nightingales of ‘Tarascon, bull fights, the mistral wind and Mistral the poet, Provencal grape- fruit or pamplemousse, and his warm but delightful working in his own garden. Being an epicure, he returns again and again to menus and wines and gives some recipes which could be utilized outside Provence, even though the goose fat so essential to the old Provencal cookery might be difficult to obtain. When one turns away from gastronomic satisfactions. Provence is full of literary and artistic memories, of Peire Vidal, Bertran de Born, Daudet, Zola, Mistral, Gauguin and Van Gogh, and in history good King R:n;.: ut‘h: subject of much anecdote. [ and o-rrn descent, Ford treated in Sir Arthur's recent book, “The Expanding Universe.” “Starting with the sun and familiar stars, we advance tu greater distances till we reach the system of milliards of gal- axies which constitutes the universe.” Chapter 11, “The Constants of Na ture,” he characterizes as “too sev for this kind of book,” but says that the subject has occupied him for the past five years almost to the exclusion of other research. Chapter 12, “The Theory of Groups,” he speaks of as touching “the keynote of scientific philosophy.” The final chapter before the “Epilogue,” “Criticisms and Con- troversies,” does not, as the title might indicate, attempt to answer all the points raised by critics and re- viewers in connection with his former writings, but does deal with some of thenr. Eddington is one of the most famous of twentieth century astrono- mers and physicists. He is also will- ing and able to write clearly about abstruse scientific subjects for the benefit of non-scientific but intelli- gent persons who wish to know what is going on in the universe as well as in our small world. AVOWALS AND DENIALS. By G. K. Chesterton. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. THE essays in this book first ap- peared in the Illustrated London News and cover almost as varied sub- Jects as those of Addison and Steele’s “Spectator.” “On Monsters &and Logic” opens the volume and “On the Next Hundred Years” closes it. Mr. Chesterton, whose conservatism is as well recognized as his inconsistencies and absurdities, writes of women who vote (he does not approve of them), of the fallacy of eugenics, in which his argument is weak and his asser- tion strong; of return to the land, which he thinks would be & very good thing for other people; of books for pessimists, for whom he finds littie excuse; of “the prison of jazz,” which has replaced the old popular tune with its freedom and lyrical quality. Dreams, atheists, prudery, cranks and cads, fanatics, Prussian paganism, <o- | clology, the one-party system, free verse, Wordsworth, William Blake and Bernard Shaw are the subjects of other essays. One of the foremost of modern essayists, Mr. Chesterton knows a few things about the art of the essay and practices them—brev- ity, informality, terseness, original viewpoint, humor. SPANISH RAGGLE-TAGGLE. Ad- ventures With a Fiddle in North Spain. By Walter Starkle, Litt. D. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. AFTER happily fddling his way through Hungary and writing about it in “Raggle-Taggle,” Walter Starkie, professor of Spanish fn Dub- lin University, took his fiddle to Spain and was equally happy in his experi- ences there. Not every country is an appropriate haunt for an intellec-/ tual vagabond fiddler. Prof. Starkie would never have thought of fiddling through Russia or Germany, though he might have considered Italy, and Spain he found ideal. As he entered Spain he proudly assumed the title of “knight-errant of fiddlers,” admit- ted his madness and called Master Francis Rabelals to witness that he held it an honor “4o be called and = “St. Francis,” a painting by John R. reputed a Merry-Walter and a Robin Goodfellow,” with also a touch of Don Quixote. He shunned fashionable re- sorts like San Sebastian, which are “too blase for a minstrel,” and and fiddling for his dinner in the small towns. When he smelled the tantalizing odor of roasting meat and onions issulng from some peasant home he dropped in and offered to share the meal, which he always fol- lowed with the toothpick and the slesta. He considers that refined aver- sion to the toothpick is altogether un- Justifiable and that if the inhabitants | of Northern nations indulged in sies- | tas they would have less dyspepsia. | As in his Hungarian wanderings, | Dr. Starkie occasionally abandoned | his tramp’s garb and became for a | brief space an intellectual, while he | visited some literary friends or col-{ leagues, but when he went to see the | painter Zuloaga in his home at Zu-| maya, he went hot, dusty and un- | shaven from the road, because “Zulo- aga is the great friend of the gypsies.” | Once, from Bilbao to Miranda, he traveled by train, third class, because the best way to see the common life of Spain is on a kilometric ticket. But he was glad to get back to the road. He was entertained often and lav- ishly by the gypsies, saw a Basque | sword dance and a bullfight at Villa- | franca, took part in a musical contest | between Celtic and Galiclan music with Tio Anselmo at Bilbao, visited & witch, serenaded Paquita, visited the | house of Ignatius Loyola and talked | | with & sad young Jesuit about the | fate of the monastic orders in Spain of today, and joined a pilgrimage to | Ezquioga, where thousands were going to see the apparitions of the Virgin. | “Spanish Raggle-Taggle” is an un- | usually delightful book of travel, with none of the conventional descriptions, | full of the fresh experiences of an enthusiast. |HE SENT FORTH A RAVEN. By| Elizabeth Madox Roberts, New | York: The Viking Press. T IS difficult to believe that in the years immediately preceding the World War such a man as Stoner | | Drake could have existed in the | United States, even in an isolated rural community. Yet from time to| | time authentic stories of murders| | caused by a belief in witchcraft, in| sections not far removed from busy, | centers of modern life, appear in the | | press, so perhaps Stone Drake's vow | | was not impossible. When his second | wife, to whom he had been briefly but happily married, lay at the point of death he vowed that if she died ! he “would never set his foot on God's earth again,” as if he would revenge | himself on God. Joan died. He was 45 at the time and he kept his vow | until his death, long after his memory |had grown dim about the circum- stances, and he sometimes thought that he had taken the vow on the death of his first wife, Helen. From |an upper porch of his house and a bridge which he had built between | the house and the barn he directed all the work of his large farm, calling the members of his family and his servants by means of blasts on a horn, and making himself, of course, a trial to every one. L) The mania of Stoner Drake's vow is | the obvious theme of Miss Roberts’ | very subtle story, but other implica- tions are many and deep. Two women shared Drake’s life, his daughter Martha, whose incipient happiness he shattered and left her a blighted | human being, and his granddaughter | Jocelle," who won from him as much |affection as he had to give any one, and. with her husband, & county | farm expert, remained to reconstruct | the diminished farm after the war.| | Drake's nephew Walter, who tar- | nished Jocelle’s youth, illustrates the brutalizing effect of war fear, even before actual experience. Two minor characters, both eccentrics, are vig- orously drawn: Dickon, the literary carpenter, author of “The Cosmo- graph,” a book in which he reduced man to an infinitesimal nothing in the universe; and Briggs, the itiner- ant preacher, who enjoyed Drake's bountiful meals and timidly tried to show him the error of his ways. The scene of “He Sent Forth a Raven” is, as in her other novels, Miss Roherts' own Kentucky. It will rank with “The Great Meadow,” “My Heart and My Flesh” and “The Time of Man” as fiction of unusual depth of meaning | |and delicacy of style. | THE SON OF RICHARD CARDEN. By Neil Bell. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. ALIS’I'ER. the son of Richard Car- den, is not born until page 149, and, like Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, is ‘not then the principal character of the book named for him. Alister, in fact, remains slight and shadowy, the object of his father’s fantastic, but by no means self-sacrificing, de- votion, and one medium employed by Richard Carden for demonstrating himself. “The Son of Richard Car- den” is, then, the autobiography of Richard Carden himself, in which he conceals nothing to his own detri- ment and makes no attempt to prove himself & fine fellow. As a character study, it is Neil Bell's finest plece of work, so masterly in its realism that we despise Richard Carden as if we knew him in flesh and blood. The rotten spot that is in Richard in youth, when he feels only distaste for his dying father and, later, his dying mother, spreads until in mid- die life, as we gladly take leave of him, he has becoms callous Corcoran Gallery from bienni tramped the country roads, stopping | pi L d Conner, purchased last week by the 1 exhibition. in his selfishness and a drunkard and gross sensualist in addition. Through- out his life nearly every one is too considerate of him, perhaps because of his handsome exterior—the em- loyers whom he insults on his de- parture, his Uncle Fred, who makes his life’s path smooth for him; his MUCH ACTIVITY IN ART FIELD Unusual Interest at This Season of the Year in the Capital. Corcoran’s Great Exhibition Draws Attention. Other Shows of Special Interest. By Lelia Mechlin. ESPITE the allure of Spring out of doors — blossoming cherry trees and magnolias, the songs of birds—the in- terest in art keeps up with- out abatement, exhibitions multiply, the zeal of enthusiasts increases. Never before has the local art season been so lively at this season. In part, this is due to theCorcoran Gallery's biennial exhibition, with its 14 or 15 galleries of contemporary American paintings, much discussed, and in part to the announced development of plans for the first annual Greater ‘Washington independent exhibition, to consist _exclusively of the works of local artists, which will open April 22, simultaneously in nine department stores, under distinguished patronage. But this is not all. The exhibition habit has been formed and the ery is for more and still more. - Whether taste and judgment keep pace with in- terest is a different matter, but there is no doubt that in this new era art is keeping step with the current move- ment, and that at least is well. Gallery of Art since the opening of the fourteenth biennial exhibition has been exceptionally large and much interest has been shown this week in the works purchased by the gallery and others. As announced Wednes- day, the Corcoran Gallery of Art has bought five of the paintings on dis- wife May, whom he has never loved, | play for its permanent collection, no who understands all about him, but | one of which was a prize winner. Joves him to the end; his son, Alister, affection for the father, who never makes an effort to guide him through example or precept in any nobllity of purpose. The citizens of the Suffolk coast town of Storhaven, where he and May run & book d stationery shop for some years, until he sets fire to the place in order to collect insurance and save further losses, understand him, after he has gone out of his way to make enemies of most of them, and hate him cordially. His daugh- ter Tessa is the only one, however, who ever tells him exactly what every one thinks of him. “You've never cared for anybody but yourself, you beast,” she says. “Yes, beast, beast, drunken beast and lecher; d'you think I don’t know? You've ruined your own life and every one's you've had any dealings with.” No humiliation, no regret disturbs the mind of Rich- ard Carden, though he realizes per- fectly what he is and what people think of him. He is proud to be impervious to hurts from any one. The lifelong sentimental love which he nurses for Barbara Grey, the girl who in his youth sensibly jilted him for another man, seems out of har- mony with the rest of his character. | If his love for his son had been a real love, not the egotistic creation of his own imagination, it might have saved him. The most unpleasant of all Neil Bell's books, “The Son of Richard Carden” is probably his best. Non-Fiction. STATE LAW INDEX. An Index and Digest to the Legislation of the States of the United States En- acted During the Biennjum. 1831- | 'HE attendance at the Corcoran | out-of-town buyers. Edward Bruce's blossoming “Apple Tree” was bought for the Art Association of Macon, Ga., and Jonas Lie's “The Inner Harbor,” which hangs at the left of Mrs. Rand’s portrait of the President, was acquired by Mrs, Mell Kirby of New York. UCH admiration has been ex- pressed for the painting, “Lady With a Pan” by Ellen Day Hale, which hangs in Gallery I in the Cor- coran blennial. This bears the date 1885, and was therefore not eligible for award. It is a self-portrait of the artist and represents her in her late 20s with banged hair and youthful courage—a feminine Galahad mas- querading in the fashion of the day— all aglow with ardor yet submitting to no one of whom can compete or 8- cept for himself a commission. Other buildings to be decorated are post offices in Pittsburgh, New London, Conn.; Hempstead, N. Y.; New Bern, N. C.; Stockton, Calif.; Chattanooga, Tenn., and elsewhere—a pretty wide distribution. The amounts appropri- ated for these vary from something under $1,000 to over $10,000. In each region there is an expert adviser and supervisor. It would all seem to be admirably planned with the purpose of getting the best result and stimu- lating the best effort. N THE National Museum, under the I auspices of the National Gallery of Art and with distinguished patron- age, opened last Thursday to continue traditional restriction. She is in black, the fan is black, the background a dark green, baldly figured, out of which shines the face in whiteness only offset by the no less characterful white hand and arm. When this was painted Miss Hale was but lately re- turned from Parls, and the ideals of the French school, inherited from the great masters of the past, were her goal. This is an outstanding work and should sooner or later find place in a public collection. Oddy enougn a second portrait of Miss Hale is to be seen in this exhibi- tion. It is she who graciously served Mr. Kroll as model for the elderly lady in his large group entitled “Interior.* Leon Kroll is a neighbor of Miss Hale and her colleague, Miss Clements, at | Folly Cove, Cape Ann, and he has for In fact, four of the five are by artists of | who struggles to keep alive his early no great reputation. This is as it 'suaded her to o AP 720 T her, as have all her friends, great ad- | miration. Thus it was that he per- let him paint her head through the 30th, an exhibition of | paintings by two Hungarian artists sisters, Bertha and Elena de Helle- branth. Each shows 26 exhibits. The latter are arranged in opposite alcoves on the first floor of the museum build- ing, with entrance at Tenth stieet and Constitution avenue, Miss Elena dr Hellebranth's on the right and Miss Bertha de Hellebranth’s on the left This gives opportunity to study the | individual style of each and also to make comparison. It is the habit of these sisters t6 paint the same sub- | jects, and thus the difference in style |is marked. Both show paintings of Leopold IIT, King of the Belgians; {of Nicholas Horthy, regent of Hun- | gary; Senator William E. Borah and | others. Miss Elena shows with her | group a number of portraits in water | color, strongly and swiftly painted, as masks,. among which mention Ishould be made, because of excei- i “The Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry,” a painting by Garnet Jex. In exhibition at the Southeastern Branch Library. 1932. No. 4. Washington, D. C.: United States Government Print- ing Office. ANGLING SUCCESS. By leading outdoor writers. mer Norton. New York: The Mac- millan Co. THE FUTURE OF GOLD. By Paul Einzig. New York: The Macmil- lan Co. PLAYS. By Henrik Ibsen. With an introduction by Frank Wadleigh Chandler, deen of the College of Liberal Arts in the University of Cincinnati. The Modern Readers’ Series. New York: The Mac- millan Co. Includes “A Doll's House,” “The Wild Duck,” “Hedda Gabler” and “The Master Builder.” EUROPE: WAR OR PEACE? By Walter Duranty. New York: For- eign Policy Assoclation. THE JUDICIAL AFTERMATH OF A POLITICAL PARADOX. Or the New Deal in Court By Harry Frease. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co. CONVICTIONS AND CONTROVER- SIES. By Ralph Adams Cram. Boston: Marshall Jones Co. BTRANGE CULTS AND SECRET SOCIETIES OF MODERN LON- DON. By Elliott O'Donnell. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Fiction. THE EMERALD BUDDHA. By Eliz- abeth Morse. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. DAVID AND MARY ALICE GO TO WASHINGTON. (Juvenile.) By Beatrice Henning Shaw. Draw- ings by Arthur Rodman Bowker. New York: The Grafton Press. MOSCOW YANKEE. By Myra Page. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. THE SPANISH CAPE MYSTERY. By Ellery Queen. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. THE CASE OF THE COUNTER- FEIT EYE. By Erle Stanley Gardner. New York: Morrow & Co. ‘William | SHE FELL AMONG THIEVES. By Dornford Yates. New York: Min- ton, Balch & Co. THE HIGH METTLED RACER. By Ernest Lewis. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. JANGWA. The Story of a Jungle Prince. (Juvenile.) By Walter J. Wilwerding. New York: The Mac- millan Co. DEATH IN THE AIR. By Agatha Christle. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. SPY. By Bernard Newman. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co. THE MICROBE MURDERS. By Prederick G. Eberhard. New York: The Macaulay Co. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. By Elmer Davis. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. ‘THE SECOND PRINCE. By Thomas Bell. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 3 < ALETTA LAIRD. By Barbara Webb. New York: Doubleday, Doran & 850,000 Contracts Signed. ALR!ADY farmers to the total of 850,000 have signed the corn-hog contracts for the coming season. This figure is a long step along the road to the 1934 total, which was 1,155,000 Iows, with-132, the ceasion. L2 Edited by Morti- | | should be—works plrchased for in- | trinsic merit—and thus reputations | are made. Two of the paintings acquired are subject pictures, primarily illustrative. One of these is of St. Francis and was { painted by John Ramsey Conner of | Bryn Athyn, Pa., 2 former student of | the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and a medal win- ner in the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 and in the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in Phila- delphia in 1926. It is exquisitely drawn, lovely in color and significant. The artist fully commands his me- dium, is an accomnlished craftsman, | has imagination and a message. Self. expression is well enough in its way | especially when spontaneous, but no | expression is worth while uniess it is understandable, is inteiligent and has ‘clsm_v. Furthermore, a work of art | which is really fine, as in this in- stance, does not deliver its whole message at a glance, but holds much in reserve for those who linger. The other “story picture” acquired | is entitled “Choir Practice” and shows | & group of children gathered around a young woman seated at an upright | plano playing an accompaniment, leading them in singing. It is said | that this lady is the artist, Lauren Ford, but be that as it may, the scene that she has depicted is distinctly ap- pealing. This is a very little picture and the detalls are rendered with the | meticulous care which 70 years ago | such famous artists as Meissonier, | Fortuny. Alma-Tadema gave to their | paintings. And yet, strangely enough, | this tiny picture recalls the large, forceful canvases of Dutch interiors with figures painted by Gari Melchers, admired by traditionalists and mod- ernists alike. Lauren Ford is a paint- er, an etcher and an illustrator. She was represented in a previous bien- nial by a painting, “Vision of the In- nocents,” and she has published for children “The Little Book of God.” & grandmother’s story of the creation very simply told and fllustrated. Her masters were George Bridgman and | Frank Vincent Du Mond. She is a member of the American Water Color | Society and of “The Mural Painters.” The other works purchased for the | permanent collection are, first and of utmost importance, “Torso,” a nude, by Richard E. Miller, so beautifully painted that it would lend distinction to any exhibition and at the same time put to shame the coarse, vugar rendi- tions of such subjects, unfortunately so much the vogue today, when the tendency seems to be to realize the worse rather than the best in life. Richard Miller is one of our American painters who profited by the teachings of the French impressionists without surrender of his own viewpoint or in- dividuality, and has, hence, himself proved a leader. His works are never trivial, never merely of the moment. Also the gallery has acquired & painting by Ross E. Moffett of a group of fishermen, “Provincetown Wharf,” and a still life, “Rubber Plant,” by John E. Thompson, both of which are in the more modern manner, but by no means modernistic. Recurring w the fact that these paintings were not prize winners it should not be forgot- ten that the Corcoran Gallery already owns excellent and representative ex- | amples by Eugene Speicher and F. C. muke. on whom the first and sec~ | |in this picture. An excellent portrait of Miss Hale by Mrs. Bush-Brown is included in the National Gallery col- lection in this city. ‘THE painting and sculpture sec- ¥ tion, Public Works Branch, Pro- curement Division of the Treasury De- partment, has announced the selection of 11 painters and 2 sculptors to make decorative paintings and works |in sculpture for the new Post Office | Department and the Department of Justice Buildings. The peinters are Thomas H. Benton, George Biddle, | John Steuart Curry, Rockwell Kent, | Leon Kroll, Reginald Marsh, Henry Varnun Poore, Boardman Robinson, Eugene Savage, Maurice Sterne and Grant Wood. The sculptors are Paul | Manship and Willlam Zorach. Eleven other painters and eight sculptors to carry out these projects are to be chosen through a limited competition of those whose names | were sent in by members of the advis- |ory group but who did not receive | enough votes for appointment, and | others especially invited. The appoint- ments that have been made were with the consent of the architects of the | buildings—Delano & Aldrich, the Post Office; Zantzinger & Borie, the De- partment of Justice—and the chairman | of the Commission of Fine Arts, Charles | Moore. Each artist designated will be given three months to make prelim- | inary studies and sketches, which will | be submitted to expert judgment and | for the approval of the Commission of Fine Arts before acceptance. Then the work will begin. The paintings, for the most part, will be done on | canvas and attached to the walls, and therefore need not be done here. But this work will bring to Washington a group of important artists and will offer opportunities for co-operative ef- fort such as have not occurred for | years—in fact, not since the Library | of Congress was decorated, in the 90s. ‘This, in itself, is good news and big news, and although no selection could is that when responsibility is laid on artists and the door of opportunity opened wide they do not fail. The Government has set aside over $95,000 for this work, and other commissions | are to follow. In fact, all over the country this work is going on, with the employment of local artists as far as possible, and premium put on achievement and fitness. Such recog- nition of art and the ability of the artist to make contribution to life by and under the-patronage of the Gov- ernment has never been known in this country before. IT MAY be interesting to know who in the art world are acting in an advisory capacity to the Government in the selection of artists and de- signs for the decoration of the new Government buildings. Six are direc- tors of art museums and one a curator of painting. They are Robert B. Harshe, Chicago Art Institute; Walter S. Heile, De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; William Milliken, Cleveland Museum; C. Powell Minni- gerode, Corcoran Gallery of Art; Dun- can Phillips, the Phillips Memorial Gallery; Francis Taylor, Worcester Museum, and Harry Wehle, Metropoli- tan Museum, New York. Among the artists givifig their services are Anna Hyatt Huntington, Bancel La Farge, Ernest Peixotto, Eugene Speicher, ntry Schnakenberg and Jonas Lie, be universally satisfactory, the fact| | lence, of that of the late Nicholas Longworth. Miss Bertha includes in her group a three-quarter length por- | trait of Miss Elena, an excellent like- ness and sympathetically painted. Several of the paintings shown are | prize winners and a number have | been lent by private owners or public institutions, such as the Brooklyn Museum. Both artists show full- length figures of a dancer in which, in each instance, emphasis has been placed on rhythmical lines. Both are very versatile. They paint portraits, | landscapes, still life—and not in one, | but many ways. Sometimes they use | the brush alone, sometimes the palette knife, sometimes both and their ! fingers. Some of the canvases are rich in tone, and again they are in high key. Tradition seems to be struggling with modern invention in some of their works, and almost in- variably their absorbition seems to be with meaning rather than matter. In accordance with current practice, texture does not seem to concern them at all. This is particularly true of “8Still Life in White,” by Miss Bertha, to which the St. Stephen Gold Medal | was awarded last year. But after all we must remind ourselves that there is no roval road to success in art, no single right way of painting, but { many The home of the Misses de Helle- branth is Budapest, but they spend | a part of each year in this country | and- nave many friends in Washing- | ton. This exhibition was hung under their supervision and they were both in attendance at the opening. Among the patrons were the Ambassadors of Poland, Germany and Belgium, the Ministers of Hungary and Austria, the former acting as sponsor; the Sec- | retary of State and others. | PAINTINGS of Japan and of Ja- panese subjects by Lesley Jackson, Clara Saunders and other local artists will constitute a timely exhibition in celebration of the blossoming cherry trees, which came as a gift from Japan. and in the interest of intere national friendship, opening tomorrow with appropriate ceremony in the ‘Women's City Club, on Jackson place. This club has put on this season & series of charming exhibitions which have not only added to the attraction of its spacious drawing rooms, but helped to introduce some of our most capable painters to club members and demonstrate the desirability of pic~ tures on the walls. Several of these have been one-man shows, but the most recent consisted of water colors by Margaret Comeygs, Margarete Lent, Gertrude Brown and Emily Steuart, all accomplished painters with enough in common to make homogeneous showing and sufficient individuality to insure variety. O POPULAR have the exhibitions of paintings and other works of art in the Public Library and its branches proved that they have be- come an established custom, under Miss Elizabeth Lewis’ direction. Dur- ing April the progrem is especially varied and interesting. At the main library, Eighth and K streets, a col- tection of lithographs by Stow Wem- genroth is on view. Mr. Wengen- ‘(cmunu-d on Page 12, Columa 1.3