Evening Star Newspaper, September 15, 1935, Page 72

F—4 . THE SUNDAY STA NEWS AND REVIEWS NEW NOVEL OF FAMILY LIFE Francis Brett Young‘s “White Ladies” Tells the Story of the Rise of a Household of English Industrialists. Other Recent Fiction. By Mary-Carter Roberts. | WHITE LADIES. By Francis Brett Young. New York: Harper & Bros. AYS the cover jacket of this book, “A novel of a family.” But not, happily for the re- viewer's sanity, a novel of an American family or of the soil. The monotony is broken, for the moment. by a novel of a family of English industrialists. It is a relief in a way, although actually it means no more than taking one’s grievances across the Atlantic Ocean. For the presses of the country have been turning out these opuses on families at such a rate that one fears, after a time, that there will not be families enough to go around. And as for the soil, the novelists have been | overworking it in a manner to put the rashest agriculturalists to shame. No wonder that their product has been growing somewhat thin. And no! wonder that the soil is so often spoken of as “patient,” either. | However, “White Ladies” has no sturdy pioneers hewing homes out of the wilderness nor herds of cattle coming lowing through the bars at | sunset. But it does have a family fortune that rose to triumphant heights in the 80s and dwindled slowly there- after. In that respect at least it runs true to the prevailing “family novel” formula. ! It is the story of the rise of thel Tinsleys, from poor English peasants to barons of coal and iron. It is told | through the lives of three women of the tribe. than fiction. One would like to see ‘Secrets of the White Lady” on mg‘ best seller lists. Ome has a feeling | that it may appear there, too. BROTHERS THREE. By John M. Oskison. New York: The Macmil- lan Co. SAYS the publisher of this work, “This is an unusual novel of the soil and of an American family.” * * * And in all but one particular the statement is true. It is a novel of the soil, certainly. It is about an Ameri- can family also. But it is not unusual. It falls very easily into the category of the ldrge, thick, substantial books | on the same subjects that have gone | before. It is quite genuine, one feels. It is seriously intended and carefully done. And it is unremarkable. It does not interest one greatly. It does not stir one at all. The soil in question here is Okla- homa, beginning in 1873 and coming down to the present. The family is that of Francis Odell—his three sons. | They are born on the farm, they vari- ously depart from it, but in the end | they realize that it is good. Whole- some, substantial and meritorious on the whole is their story. And, like human beings of the same qualities, it must be said, a trifie dull. A HOUSE TOO OLD. By Mark Schorer. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. tive men and women of quality and the compromises and solutions which they find for the existences. All this has been done before, but usually to fit a preconceived concept. Mr. Wight writes as if his were the first book to be composed on the subject, and al- ways with a painter’s detachment. It makes one wonder whether painters should not be set to writing and writers to painting, possibly, in the interests of better art. A criticism which comes to mind, however, would seem to refute the idea, engaging though it is. And that is that a serles of pictures, without an inherently related plot, is not really a novel. “South.” The thread of connection between the pictures—that is, psychological difficulties of the hero |and his wife—runs fairly thin at times, and only the compulsion of the author’s vision carries one on. R, WASHINGTON, D. Bellows Memorial award. And that is the case with | the | But, if “South” almost falls short | of being a novel, it s, book. And books are relatively much rarer. One can hardly complain about that. THE DIPLOMACY OF THE AMER- ICAN REVOLUTION. By Samuel Flagg Bemis. New York: Pub- lished for the American Historical Association by D. Appleton-Cen- tury Co. N THIS book & well-equipped author tells of the tangled skeins of in- | trigue which, in the days of the Amer= OMING out of Wisconsin with a|ican Revolution, reached across the favorable review by Miss Zona | The first was the®one who ! Gale, this novel would ssem to be | Colonies into European politics. ocean and tied the struggle of the Al- worked in the mills herself all day!placing a heavy bid for thé attention 'though the subject has been treated and kept the accounts in the evenings. ‘The second, her daughter, serves as a link between the prosperous days and the decline: she was the romantic one who married the artist. The third was the one who came into the fortune | at its peak and whose passion for the | estate, White Ladies, finally dissipated | the family wealth | And White Ladies was the old Tudor | mansion, the beauty of which could | not be resisted. It became a cult with | the last of the Tinsley daughters. She made a loveless marriage in order to | possess it. She spent her fortune in | preserving it. She went mad when her son was killed in the World War | and she lost her ercuse for holding it. ! ‘That is the story. It seems some- what meaningless unless one supplies it with a symbolism, unless one takes the Tudor estate to be an emblem of a vanished manner of living, a manner which has thrown its spell over society even in its vanishment, which dis- appeared finally only when the war drove out all illusions. Even thus rationalized, the book is somewhat chimerical. It 1s well written, serious and sub- stantial. Its publisher has put out one novel of downright genius in recent weeks. It is too much to look for another one so soon. i SECRETS OF THE WHITE LADY.: By Capt. Henry Landau. New | York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. | 'HE author of this book is & British | army officer. During the WOrIdi War he was engaged in secret service | work. One volume, “All's Fair,” has already been published from the rec- ord of his experiences. It dealt with! the activities of the British Secret Service behind the German lines. ‘The present work tells further of spies and spy organizations in enemy terri- tory and of the German Counter Espionage Service, the duty of which was to prevent military information from reaching the allies. It is, in) some respects, a remarkable volume. " For one thing, it comes to us with impressive testimony as to its authen- ticity. Books purporting to be secret service revelations have come out from time to time ever since the war; | too many of them nave been demon- strated to be sensationalism. The story, or stories, about the supposedly glamorous Mata Hari, for example, show how difficult 1t is to deal with the subject of spying without falling into a welter of romance. Hollvywood | to the contrary, Mata Hari was well | toward 50 when she was executed, & | stout and faded Dutch woman. Simi- | larly, dozens of other fictions have ! been dissipated when they attracted | the notice of the people who are in | & position to know uhe truth. The present volume carries the pub- | lisher’s claim that 1t is authentic, but more impressive evidence than this is the style in whica it is written. Capt. Landau’s prose is innocent of any faint flush of sensationalism. He proceeds with his narrative in the | best military manner, his sentences | bristling with “sectors,” “divisions,” “codes,” ‘zones,” “couriers” and so | on, and producing nothing in the way | of heroic adventuresses who die for | the love of the officer whom they have been sent to betray—absolutely noth- ing. It is hard to believe that the plain and simple annals of this mili- tary gentleman are not strictly true. As such, the tale is one deserving 8 wide public. Every one must have ; wondered at times just what a modern | spy really does. Capt. Landau tells | it. Chiefly, it would seem, his organ- | ization watched German troop move- | ments. Then, by methods of amaz- ing intricacy, its members conveyed reports to allied headquarters. By this information, the allied staff was able to predict, with fair accuracy, the sectors chosen by the Germans for attack. The activity was by no means prosaic. Stories of escapes, arrests, executions, trialss and triumphs of quick-wittedness make up a large part of Capt. Landau’s narrative. There ‘were many women spies. There were also many nuns and priests. One particularly impressive chapter is composed of last letters written by condemned secret agents to their friends and families. Facsimilies of some of these documents are included in the volume. It 1s romantic after all, of course, but romantic in the | gritty sense that life is so. | The title, perhaps, is the only ob- | viously glamorous thing in the book. | It needs explaining. The White Lady | was the name of the spy organization, | the activities of which are being de- | scribed. Formed by a group of Bel-i gians, this organization, in a mood | attractively sinister, took the name of the legendary female ghost whose ap- pearance was said to herald the downfall of the Hohtnzollerns. I¢ was a pleasant piece of grimness which one cannot help but admire. The book is a careful piece of work. m-mmmw:umuyhm | things. | nation make a good novel, FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG At work in his study at his home, Graycombe House, in Worcestershire, England. Harper & Bros. of the intelligentsia, wherever they are | lurking. It ought, indeed, to be sure- fire stuff on a number of counts. It is a “chronicle of an American family.” It is a “saga of the soil’—the dear old | soil. It is a “tale of the rise of a| tpyical American town.” It is also an “epic of the frontier.” It is, in a manner of speaking, all of those And it is serious and well written, in the grammatical sense. But there is one thing that it is not— and that is an interesting book. Verily, it is saddening that so many experienced writers, knowing perfectly the proved ingredients that in combi- | sitting down to write with definite schemes | for suiting the components to their | individual work, should sweat with the anguish of extistic conscience and | lay words end to end for 400 pages— and produce mechanics. It is sad, it is even bitter, that knowledge should not be enough. But it is true. There must also be a flash, there must be a fire, there must be genius—alack—as well as skill. And the two have been distributed in most unfair proportion. The fault with “A House Too Old” would seem to be in this very lack of | life. The chronicle is there—the chronicle of that “typical American town” which has so caught the literary imagination. But it has no signifi- cance. It is carefully without dra- matic incident, for Mr. Schorer shows | us plainly that his town's rise was due | to the typical penny-grubbing habits | of its citizens. But that typicalness— | which ought to give it its meaning—is not pointed with the requisite irony. There is nothing, as the reader views the horrid blank insectivorous vil- lagers, to make him cry, “They are my brothers!” There is nothing, indeed, to make him feel that they belong to the same species at all. They are isolated and objective. And the book is correspondingly cold and unrelated. SOUTH. By Frederick Wight. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. FTER reading many novels which | are not bad without being par- | ticularly good, it is a distinct relief to come upon a book about which one can say something positive. That Lsg the case with “South.” It is a work | of some vision; it is not conventional- | ized in concept; its author’s mind, cbviously, has been right against his materials and not befogged by the existence of any formula between him and them. For these reasons one can regard the book with genuine respect, even if not entirely with liking. It is the story of a young artist and his wife wintering among friends in one of the Carolinas. Their adven- tures are chiefly psychological efforts to find themselves as lovers again after 18 months of happy ed life. In this the book is ‘convincing enough, but not particularly valuable: the reader, however, cannot help being A aware that these adventures are only the skeletonic structure about which an elaborate series of pictures is hung, these pictures being the real meat of | the book. The author indeed is a painter and his hero is a painter. His | novel is a painter's novel and its title is well chosen. It is his vision of the South, or a small section of it, thatehe has been setting down, rather than the adventures of any set of fictional characters. - So he writes of the town and people surrounding his young couple. We see, visually see, the cotton mills, the workers' homes, the colony of rich | does not make bad reading. in places it goes along Witk gJuite | His new novel, “White Ladies,” has just been published by of before, perhaps in no work has an author demonstrated more conclusive- ly a fact that is much neglected in the ordinary teaching of history in our own schools. Revolution was essentially a world war, or at least, a part of a world war. It is a tale of such intricacy that it is not easy to follow. Mr. Bemis, how- ever, presupposes no very great knowl- edge of his subject on the reader’s part, and it is possible, from his book, to trace the devious threads through. Casting the rosy assumption of “sym- pathy” aside, he shows the stake which each of the European nations had in the freedom or subjection of the Colonies. This involves not mere- ly France, as our elementary histories | teach, but Spain and Holland. In fact, the part which Spain played in the struggle is surprising to the reader who_has gathered his impressions from the orthodox sources. The European setting is what has concerned the author. The intrigues that took place on this side of the | vet has written so many without com- | water have not specially interested him. He deals almost entirely with | the diplomatic maneuverings that took | place in the foreign courts and takes | up the work of the American agents chiefly as they fit into those negotia- tions. It is a valuable, if a difficult work. 1t ought to command the genuine in- terest of adult readers, whether they have a special tenderness for the sub- | Ject or not. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF HAPPI- NESS. By Boris Sokoloff, M. D. New York: Simon & Shuster. N THIS not uninteresting work a medical man tells us about the therapeutic value of being happy. It} seems unlikely that it will remake the world, or even very shortly change mortality ~ statistics, although we should, we are told in® its pages, normally live 120 years. But it may have some value for people who are already hardy enough to believe that happiness can be “achieved.” And it In fact, arresting common sense. To the careful reader it would sometimes seem that the author nas a more profound idea of human har- mony than he cares to express openly, for it is an idea which, if expressed openly, would undoubtedly be subject to much interpretation. The roots of happiness, he says, lie in self- confidence, self-assertion and crea- tion. He is a Russian, a scientist and obviously something of & mystic. It makes a promising combination any- way. GREEN RUSHES. By Maurice Walsh. New York: Prederick A. Stokes Co. dealing with the sorrows and Joys of five pairs of very Irish lovers. Reading it one feels that to be Irish would be enough. No review is neces- sary. SOPHOMORES ABROAD. By Charles Macomb Flandrau. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co. STRONG men and lovely women who can remember the nineties have been said to exclaim with joy over the present volume. The true spirit of those days, it seems, is in it, that spirit which, to the unfortunate born-too-lates, seems to have been a blending of whttn coy slang of tae e Trat is that our! BOOK of romantic short stories |, 1ill very much a | Pencil sketch by Reynold Brow! C.,, SEPTEMBER 15, OF THE LATEST BO “Back Yard,” by Joseph Spencer, winner of the first prize, George n, winner of honorable mention, | period called “bubble water” with the virtuous decoction known as catnip | tea. If you like the mixture, then, or lif you are merely curious, here it is. It is a republishing of a series of articles which Mr. Flaudrau, in the vanished days, wrote for the Sat- urday Evening Post. It purports to be the adventures of two Harvard :sophomore.s on a vacation trip to France and England. The Post, ap- parently, was then, even as now, the arbiter of what was nice. It pub- lished “Sophomores Abroad,” one feels, as humor—possibly as rather daring humor. But time has cruelly erased the effects of the delicate ver- bal chiseling which brought smiles to grandfather's face, and left in its stead an undeniable flatness. At most, in the manner of the archeologist, one can laboriously detect where the funniness occured. Yet. though “Sophomores Abroad” is valuable chiefly as a relic, it is still | recommended. For Mr. Flandrau, who has written brilliantly in his time, ! has prefaced his journal of sopho- moric peregrinations with an “Apc- logia.” an essay of 39 pages, which is | sufficiently pleasant to be worth the | price of the whole. In this disquisi- | tion he contrives, gracefully as well as plausibly, to bridge the gap made by the years—the gap between two cul- tures, as expressed by their mutual phenomenon, the Saturday Evening Post. . Such a task might well place a strain on the sophistication of any writer, but Mr. Flaudrau brings it off. It gives perspective to his relic, and | will add considerably to its value— | for those who find relics congenial. | QUARRIED CRYSTALS AND OTHER POEMS. By Mary Cummings Eudy. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. THIS is a book of verse in which there are to be found some very nice poems and perhaps a low mini- mum of poor ones. In other words, the level of the volume is high. al- though lacking in outstanding peak They are verses in the modern man- ner, very brittle and with delicate | rhyme schemes and rhythms. | most part tifé poems are short, seldom | being more than a few lines. They show talent for versifying that is | plainly above the average and some- | times poetic feeling that is arrestingly genuine. The volume is 185 pages long, with a poem on each page—and that is, of course, too many poems. No one | mitting some banality. And banalities occur here. But on the whole the book can be recommended. ford. rill Co. 'OR the second time, Indianapolis: Bobbs Mer- | America's hand. The dainty energy, which made an entire Nation sway to the shaking of her golden curls, has now been turned to fiction. Miss Pickford, like many people whose lives have col on unexpected crises, has written her- self a novel. Is she a writer? The another. Was she ever an actress? She was not—although probably the most famous in the world during her hour. And 5o in her role of Our Mary of Letters it would seem that the same sort of success might follow her, al- ‘Worse books than “The Demi-Widow” certainly have been published and some of them have been successful. of the most approved form. A poor little girl (with cheek bones that are & show, is so hungry that she faints, gets the part and is a knockout. If any one but Mary Pickford had writ- trash of a certain workmanlike variety. But it is unthinkable that she should do anything with cynicism. One can- not believe that she has even given her pen a rougish nibble, Her roug- ishriess, seen in time's perspective, seems more likely to have been direc- torial genius than her own anyhow. “The Demi-Widow” is a Hollywood :wry. Miss Pickford probably admires it. THE PUBLIC UTILITY QUESTION. By Henry George Hendricks, Pub- lished by the author. out that this volume issues from | the press at a very pat time. “Public | utilities” and “holding corporations” are phrases which leap out at one from the headlines of almost every journal. But unbiased factual ma- terial on the subject is not so readily come by. Mr. Hendricks was formerly & mem- ber of the staff of the House Com- mittee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce investigating the public utility situation, and was author of several parts of the staff’s repo:ts. In his 1'-qb work he is content 2 2 For the | THE DEMI-WIDOW. By Mary Pick- | | sweetheart has taken her pen in | question can be answered by asking | though in a lesser degree of course. | She has given us a Cinderella story | “almost Slavic”) applies for a part in | ten it, you would call it commercial | T HARDLY seems necessary to point | !malnly to report, placing little em- | phasis on argument. His book, there- | fore, would seem to hold information | which will be useful and timely. ‘The principal value of the work lies in its reports of the tangle skein of the financing, ownership and con- -trol of the leading holding com- panies. Important data to this end have been included, taken from that gathered by the House committee in its investigation. There are also quo- tations from statements by the Fed- 1935—PART FOUR. ‘By Florence S. Berryman ! MERICA'S faith in the “little red school house” is as funda- mental as its faith in the Constitution of the United ‘| States, even though the school house is no longer “little,” and preferably not “red.” The public schools, both primary and secondary, continually give evidence to justify this national faith in them. Most recent proof takes the form of a great eghibition of works of art by high school stu- dents, which is to open next Thursday at the National Gallery of Art. It is held under the joint auspices of the American Federation of Arts, & national organization for the cultiva- tion of the arts, with headquarters in Washington, D. C., and the Scholastic, | & national high school weekly magazine. This is not “just another art exhi- | bition.” It has as many facets as a | well-cut diamond. It will provide par- ents, educators, sociologists, psychol ogists and art critics with plenty of “food for thought,” according to their varied points of view; it will give children a goal to aim for, and for the lay public, which merely wants entertainment, it will prove to be great fun. hibition is to be shown in Wash- ington. But for the past eight years such an exhibition has terminated a Nation-wide competition in which participate 100,000 art students of high schools of about 700 cities and towns in the United States, including | Washington. In addition an inter- eral Power Commission and the Fed- | eral Trade Commission, but Mr. Hen- | dricks, significantly, remarks that he | will not vouch for the statements themselves nor the integrity of either body. | The work is clearly intended to be | fair and, while it contains reports showing the evils of holding com- | | panies, we also have the author's| somewhat wistful remark in his preface that he thinks “There must be some virtuous holding companies.” This seems, however, to be chiefly an expression of faith. Mr. Hendricks does not tell us why he thinks so. Of interest to Washingtonians par- ticularly will be his references to the “Washington plan,” by which the rates of the Potomac Electric Power Co. are adjusted annually under a | sliding scale arrangement, and also his reports of the methods and cor- | porate arrangements of the Asso- | ciated Gas & Electric Co., the Insull | empire and other company institu- tions which have Washington inter- ests or connections. { although it must be added that the | technical treatment of the subject makes it a volume for serious reading only. THE GOLDEN CORD. By Warwick Deeping. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. IS is a new Deeping. done in the old manner. It is the story of a mother's devotion to her son and of his success, due to her encourage- ment and wisdom. If you like your Deepings—and almost everybody ap- pears to do so—you will get it. And y that, having gotten | it, you will be disappointed. | Books Received Non-Fiction. THE STORY OF THE HUMAN RACE. By Henry Thomas. Boston; Win- chell-Thomas Co. LIFE BEGINS, By Morris Braude. | Chicago: Argus Books. TEACH YOURSELF TO SWIM. By Margaret Penton Hamilton. Chi- cago: Albert Whitman Co. IS ANY ONE SANE. By Carl Abby. | Boston: Meador Publishing Co. THE KEY TO SHAKESPEARE. By Th. T. Naae. Boston: Meador Pub- | lishing Co. THE DU PONT DYNASTY. By John K. Winkler, New York: Reynal & | Hitchcock. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE POST-WAR YEARS. Frank H. Simons. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. THE SINO-JAPANESE CONTRO- VERSY AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. By Westel W. Wil- loughby. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. MARRIAGE MANUAL. By Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone. New York: Simon & Shuster. | THE ROMANCE OF HASSIDISM. By Jacob S. Minkin. New York: The Macmillan Co. | THE WAR OF THE COPPER KINGS. By C. B. Glassqock. Indianapolis: | Bobbs-Merrill Co. A PRINTER TELLS THE PRESI- DENT. By H. Ellenoff. New York: Published by the author. | FAMOUS CATHEDRALS AND THEIR STORIES. By Edwin Rayner. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Fietion. THE STRANGER WITHIN. By Mat- thew Trill. New York: Frederick A. Stekes Co. FIELDS OF GOMORRAH. By Nelia Gardner White. New York: Fred- erick A. Stokes Co. FOUR GARDENS. By Margery Sharp. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. COUNTRY HOLIDAY. By Frances Woodhouse. New York: G. P. Putnam'’s Sons. . | ENTER PSMITH. By P. G. Wode- house. The Macmillan Co. Juveniles. | LUCK OF THE ROLL AND GO. By Ruth and Latrobe Carroll. York: The Macmillan Co. THE SAINTONS GO TO BETHLE- HEM. By Helen and Violet Max- well. New York: The Macmil- lan Co. ALADDIN AND THE WONDERFUL The A . New York: The Mac- | On the whole it is a helpful book, | By | New | For the first time & scholastic ex- | Parents, teachers and others asso- ciated with children will not be sur- | prised at the high quality of the work | shown. But the many adults whore | | contacts with children are limited to| those who trample their lawns, or| those they merely read about in maga- zine articles treating children en masse, either as youth movements or citizens of the future to whom torches are handed, will have some of their preconceived notions pulverized by a stroll through the foyer of the Na- | tional Gallery of Art while this high i school art exhibition is on view. | Undoubtedly the dominant impres- | sion of the exhibition will be the ex- cellence of the work. But next to that, perhaps the most striking fea- ture is the absence of the depreasion as a “leit motif.” Yet these young artists’ ages range from 12 to 22, with most of them in the middle ‘teens: their most impressionable yea:s have been lived through the depres- sion. We are frequently reading of tne “blight to young souls” and “what a reckoning these disillusioned younz people will bring about.” If this is true, it seems strange that phases of | hardship have not become dominant | subject matter, for the young artists were obviously given freedom of choice. Attached to every item sub- | mitted was & questionnaire, chiefly | factual; but one question which the student artist had to answer, “source of inspiration” for the work submit- ted, elicited replies of enormous in- terest. | Any one who cared to tabulate | “Grave Diggers,” by Ralph Carson, winner of the prize for oils. | | ational section has been added for| the second time, to which art stu- dents of Canada and a number of European nations submit entries. Ap- | proximately 100 cash prizes are awarded and 18 scholarships are | given by 13 prominent art schools, including the Art Institute of Chi- cago, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Car- negie Institute of Technology, Pitts- burgh: the New York Schoo} of Fine and Applied Arts. and the Rhode Island School of Design. About 25 prizes are awarded in the interna- tibnal section; American and for- eign students do not compete for the same prizes. This art competition is part of a larger project originated and organ- ized by the editor of Scholastic in 1924, in which prizes are awarded for original works in literature by high school students. In 1925, after the death of the noted American painter, George Bellows, the Scho- lastic editors established the an- nual George Bellows Memorial Awards for high school art students. These awards alone totaled nearly $400 this year, and many additional prizes | have been established by manufac- | turers of art materials and the Car- | negie Museum to a total of nearly ! $2,000. | Many thousands of drawings, paint- ings, prints, designs and examples of various handicrafts were entered by young artists from all sections of | the country, Three preliminary juries of artists, educators and craftsmen labored for several days in Pitts- burgh last April, classifying and selecting the 12,000 items to be sub- mitted to the final jury. Amon these preliminary jurors was a Wash- ingtonian, William D. Boutwell of the | United States Office of Education. A final jury of six eminent museum | and art school directors, art educators and a lecturer awarded the prizes and choose the works which appeared in the Scholastic exhibition. THE popularity of the competition and advisability of giving high school students throughout the coun- | try an opportunity to view the work | of their fellows caused the Amer- ican Federation of Arts to take over | several hundred outstanding items | from the Scholastic exhibition of 1932 | for circulation throughout the United | States. This enterprise has been re- peated annually. | The present exhibition to be shown | at the National Gallery comprises all | of the material to be circulated by :the American Federation of Arts and | in addition groups of metal work, | jewelry and ceramics which Maurice R. Robinson, editor of Scholastic, is to bring with him to Washington this week, when he comes to install the exhibition. These additional groups will not be circulated be- cause of danger of damage in transit. Hence Washington will have a more comprehensive view of high school art than any of the cities which are subsequently to see the traveling ex- hibitions. The National Gallery show will be divided into four approxi- mately equal groups, which will go | from here to Philadelphia, Elmira, N. Y.; Topeka, Kans, | Coast, respectively, and will continue | to travel from those points until next ‘Summer. High school art students apparently find no medium too difficult to tackle. The exhibition includes peintings in oil, water drawings in pen and ink, pencil, vari- ous kinds of crayon, charcoal and pastel; etchings, drypoints, aquatints, linoleum and wood-block prints; handicrafts in leather, pottery, tex- tiles, metal work, jewelry, sculpture, woodworking and mechanical draw- 3, | and the West | these answers would have a chart giving a very reliable cross section of young American thought. He wou'd find that the great majority of these young artists were inspired by the life around them, themselves (quite a number of self-portraits) and thewr possessions, their fellow students views from their bed room or clac | room windows, their “own back yard<,” | sports or outdoor activities, the coun- try, domestic animals and wild life. But within these classifications there is endless variety. One boy ob- serves the basement stairs in his own home and produces a careful realistic rendering in pencil (No. 53 in the exhibition, by Harry Bertoia of De- troit, which won second prize for pen- cil drawings). Another boy names something equally objective as his inspiration, *“gladiolusgs,” but pro- duces a design so abstract that no one would suspect the flower, in these flame-shaped lines and masses in grayed pastel colors, which won third George Bellows Award for John Broc- tawik of Schenectady (No. 3 in the exhibition). l MANY students gave the titles of > books and moving pictures as | their inspiration; in most instances the books are classics, and the mov- ing pictures outstanding, not trashy, films ‘Roman Mythology,” *“Chan- cer's Prologue” (made into a batik), “Alice in Wonderland.” “Rip Van | Winkle,” “Pelleas et Mellisande.” “An- thony Adverse,” Wallace Beery in “Viva Villa,” Frederic March as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the last-men- tioned made into a very ingenious surface design. “Imagination” is given as the source | of many a student-artist’s work, which | includes landscapes, race-horses and | other subjects as realistically treated | as though they had been drawn from life. Again, “Imagination” includes exquisitely fanciful “Woods in Fairy- land,” macabre “Nightmares,” hu- morous whimsicalities such as “The Circus” (No. 603), which boasts such | | animals and such performers as never | were seen in three rings, yet which | miraculously captures the thrilling | | essence of all circuses. Andrew | Christensen, the San Antonio boy who etched this, was awarded one of the scholarships for his portfolio of draw- ings and designs. | There are, of course, a few works | which reveal their creators’ absorp- | tion in contemporary problems. Rob- | ert Wallace of Lexington, Ky., whose | admitted .source of inspiration was “thinking of the tramps on the | road,” made a charming little block | print of a man tramping the h"‘h‘f | way, with a sunset landscape in the distance (No. 539). “Toilers of the | Drouth,” (No. 262) by a Kansas boy, | Reed Crandall, who won a prize for oil painting, and also a scholarship, depicts four young farmers watering their cabbages with buckets. “May Day,” a water color, by Simon Greco of St. Louis, represents a “Com- munist demonstration I witnessed on May 1" It appears to have been | very peaceful, with a policeman in | attendance, and a young woman ora- | tor pausing to pull up her stocking. | The most imaginative work in this | class appears to be that of an Ali- | | quippa, Pa., boy of central European origin, Charles Bohac Smehyl, who won a prize for oil painting; entitled | “Depression” (No. 421). It shows | workers in regiments, outside the por- | | color and colored inks,| tals of a great industrial plant, with a giant mechanical figure (obviously symbolizing technological unemploy- ment) towering above the closed gates and turning them back with a ges- ture of denial. “Unemployment,” by Jacob Lan- dau, Philadelphia, received first p pencil drawing. This 17-year- | tion: OKS—ART NOTES EXHIBIT OF STUDENT ART 'Notable Display of the Work of High School Pupils Opening ' .at National Gallery on Thursday Gives Youth a New Goal to Aim For. boy, an American of Russian-Polish parentage, submitted 50 pieces of work, in various media and in such diverse treatments (realistic, imagina= tive, abstract) all executed with ap- parently equal facility, that he was accorded the unique honor of exhibits ing them as a one-student group. Quite a number of these will be found in the National Gallery exhibi- tion, including the five which re- ceived prizes. FIVE Washington, D. C, art stue dents won places in the exhibie Ben Lyon Frishman, Central High School, whose teacher is Jessie Baker, and four girls who studied under Norma Bose at Roosevelt Hizh School, Gertrude Crane, Janet \ Eldridge, Nancy Hall and Eleano Smith. Their works are numbered 237 to 241, It seems invidious to mention even these few young artists' names, when | more than 100 have done work just as commendable. Children of old American stock (so far as one can judge by names) give a magnificent account of themselves; while those whose names suggest European or- igins give abundant evidence of the rich talents which immigration has contributed to this country. Visitors to the exhibition will find it interesting to compare the works by American students with those the small se n by school children of Canada, Austria, Denmark, Ge many, Italy and Poland. Conside in proportion to its size, the section gives evidence of more em phasis on design and also of a more sombre outlook on the part of foreign children. War subjec reet fig death in various symbolic guises have occupied young European minds. One interesting project in this section comprises a number of tailpieces util zing the word “Finis." A skeleton hand on piano keys illuminated by a guttering candle; a scythe and wheat, and dandelion seed pods scat- tered by a breeze, are some of their conceptions. All who are mentally bogged down with thoughts of unemployment, un- balanced budgets, war in Africa and the myriad other plagues to peace of mind, should visit the scholastic ex- hibition and forget for a little while their anxieties and perplexities. Op- portunity to see this work lasts until October 7. ed fore Foot Ball Season __(Continued From First Page.) olic University yearly puts forth a team that commands ‘the respect of all and sundry. Maryland, too, has moved forward, and now comes old Georgetown thun- dering back into the picture. In an- other season or so, if the Hilltop trend continues, Georgetown may dis- pute the right of George Washington or any other school to rule the Capital foot ball roost—and if it does, may be dropped by Maryland. There never has been any serious friction between Georgetown and Maryland, nor between Catholic Uni- versity and George Washington. A State institution with no public high school foot ball, Maryland couldn't hope to compete with a national set- up such as Georgetown's so long as the Hilltoppers capitalized on the ad- vantage, 50 Maryland merely held off playing foot ball with the Blue and Gray until the Hilltoppers clipped themselves to the Terrapin measure George Washington abandoned its game with Catholic University almost aitogethier for business reasons, ac- cording to its own explanation. The Colonials said they put a lop ed majority of the customers in the stands, but divided the gate equally with the Cards. Jim Pixlee reasoned that he could do better not only in a financial wa but in the matter of picking up pres tige by bringing in colorful teams from a distance. He may have proved his case. Anyway. the Buff and Blue has drawn better than any other team in the city's history. with at- tendance at George Washington games growing from year to year But if it should come to pass in the next yvear or two that G. W. and C. U. find themselves tops for this baili- wick, it shouldn't be surprising to see them battling again. Ideals galore are nursed by educational institutions, both in class room and on the field of play, but it might be difficult to find a school anywhere that woul pass up an opportunity to till a siz- able hunk of dough at the expense of a small infringement on an ideal or at the risk of a little political or strategical loss. You won't find any gridiron critie who will deny that the Big Four of Washington foot ball are passing up an opportunity to help themselves financially in a big way, or that they are not withholding something from their own patrons that nearly all would relish. After listening to a great variety of explanations from college foot ball leaders as to why the thing isn't done, one gains the im- pression that they're swallowing a lot of camels, and making herculean ges- tures toward a swarm of gnats. ND while the four schools classed as Metropolitan Washington in- stitutions, at least in an athletic sense, are carrying on a thinly veiled scrap for patronage, instead of helping each other and the game, the United States Navy may steam in and give 'em something over which to worry plenty. The Middies are extremely popular with Washington folk, in every wa and particularly in the line of sport. ‘Thousands of Washingtonians brave traffic jams and hard weather to see the 3ailors perform at Annapolis with high-grade attractions current in their of the SEASON AND THE LEOPARD MEN OUT, thie exeiting new novel " £ r King's ereator, Edgar Ri Liustrated.