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B2 UPHEAVALS OF EUROPE MADE TRA $ THE EV TAKES REFUGEE BACKGROUND Question Raised as to Whether American -All-Nation Entry Is Not | Superior—Translation Is Minor Masterpiece—Downfall of Nicholas—Thesaurus of East. By Mary Carter Roberts. THE STREET OF THE FISHING CAT. Translated from the Hun- garian by Elizabeth Jacobi. By Jolan Foldes. New York: Farrar and Rinehart. HIS novel is the international prize winner in the recently conducted All-Nations Prize Novel Competition. That com- petition was based on the plan that & publisher in each of the competing countries would nominate a board of judges to select from manuscripts sub- mitted in that country a best novel, after which the various bests thus selected would be submiited to an nternational board for & final single selection. England, France, Canada, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Den- mark, Sweden, the United States, Spain, Norway and Czechoslovakia were in when the contest closed. “The Street of the Fishing Cat,” the Hun- garian entry, is the novel that lasted to the finish. | It is a light, readable book, given over to examining the fate of modern exiles. Its scene is set in Paris, where a Hungarian laborer’s family becomes the center of & group of assorted refu- gees—Russian aristocrats fled from | the revolution, Poles of a political; complexion unpleasing to their com-| patriots, Greeks uprooted by Turks. ! Lithuanian socialisis who have found socialism unpleasing to the rest of their countrymen. Such as these make up the first group. Later come Russian Communists who find that their comrades can be | as difficult as the Czar, Spaniards who | are non grata to the dictatorship, | Italians in the same position and | finally Germans escaping from Hitler. ’I‘HE book covers the period between 1920 and 1934, and runs fairly | ‘through the count of European politi- { cal upheavals which, in the time, ren- | dered various groups of citizens un- | welcome in their native lands. These citizens assemble in Paris and talk things over. Through and against their en: the Hungarian (who alone came for | economic rather than for political rea- | sons) and the narrative of her effort to make a life for herself, surrounded ky the uneasy ex-patriots. She serves %o give the work continuity, and is identified with the background of exile by the device with which the author finally disposes of her. 1 That device is that the restless, un- | certain flow of the life of those who | surround her incapacitates her for normal, settled existence. This point is made when she is offered marriage | by a German exile, a man of intellec- | tual attainments, who has secured & | post in America as a university pro-| fessor. He wishes her to come with | him to the comfortable life which he" expects io realize in the new land, | but, with emotions deadened and in-| tellectual perceptions px-opoz!ionnlpl)v; quickened by her lifelong association with the homeless, she decides that | she cannot adjust herself to the pace of ordinary living. She refuses the professor, and continues a liaison with | Arnold Genthe, from a bust by Brenda Putnam. He is the author of “As I Remember,” which has just been published, (Reynal & Hitchcocl.) from pathos, It is a kind of writing | which cannot be done except per- fectly. There is no middle ground for it. “Benediction,” for those who care to go with the writer into her ! romantic domain, offers a performance of virtuosity. It is an account of an episode be- tween young love and old tradition, fought out with imperceptible weapons in the very seat of the tradition—an ancient French chateau where, in & modern day, the life of the past is still dominant. The lovers are crushed, the romance is ended and the brood- dless | ing sense of the unchangeable an falk is the siory of the daughter of | lives on. Almost no words are spoken, | it is a haitle of intangibles. The neurotically romantic quality of Claude Silve’s work is such that the conflict is invested with a suspense beyond that ordinarily appertaining to works of more open conflict. That is the merit of the work and its triumph. It is commended to those who enjoy the minor masterpiece. LORDS AND MASTERS. By A. G. Macdonell. New York: The Mac- millan Co. ERE is a rattling cheerful book which seems to be the work of a British Sinclair Lewis, in so far as | the terms can be made at all com- patible. Mr. Macdonell, the author of “England, Their England,” evi- dently enjoys lambasting his native land, and in his present work he has written of its follies in the heartiest vein imaginable. His book is amus- ing reading, because his satire is at times very well carried off and also because he has provided a melodra- matic lively plot. There are times, { | is absorbing reading. But perhaps one should amend that to read because | of partisanship, for obviously to deal with Parnell in the detached and | analytical manner would be to kill | the tale. It would be flying in the very face of a rare writer's providence. It would be base ingratitude for & story of almost unparalleled lush- ness. And so we have the classic (reat- ment here once again—the villain Gladstone, referred to as the Grand Old Man, to be sure, but only in what | one comprehends to be & tone of scathing irony; the Judas Healy, the | weak disciples, the Gethsemane scene of committee room 15, the broken heart, the shameful defeat, all of it. And why not? A good tale will alwa) s | bear retelling. THIS IS MY AFFAIR. By Lols Kinel. 1 Boston: Little Brown & Co. 'HIS is the story of the life of the | author, a young Russian uprooted | by the revolution and forced to support | herself, in the words of her publisher, | “by her wits.” It is a tale of wander- | ings about post-war Europe, of jobs as a translator and a journalist, of various emotional experiences, of emigration to America, of a Hollywood marriage | and divorce. It is done in that vein | of artless self-preoccupation which is common in works of this kind written | by women. 1Inother words, it is an in- | | teresting narrative told in an irritating | manner Comment may be made on the cir- ;cumstmre that few women, writing their lives, distinguish between artistic frankness, which is desirable, and con- | fidential revelations, which are not. | And this comment does not apply to | subject matter. There would seem to | be no reason why the autobiography j of a woman should not be as complete as she sees fit to make it. The criti- cism instead is aimed entirely at man- ner. For where writing is concerned, there seems to be a fixed feminine inability to achieve impersonality. There 'is, of course, the fact that it | is always more difficult for a woman to achieve that condition than it is for | a man. and that custom plays its part 1n the fault; in life 2 woman is usually Jjudged as a woman first and only sec- ondarily as a human being—if at all But for this very reason, it might be urged that when women speak Iar‘ | themselves, they do it as human beings; | | that, when they tell of their emotional | disappointments, they do it with ob- Jjectivity and resist the lurking tempta- | tion to become momentary heroines | of a drama. Miss Kinel does not always drama- | tize herself but at times she does, and | it is exactly at those times that her | | narrative loses its impressiveness. It is too bad, for her history is quite as | interesting as that of a number of | male autobiographers who have re- | cently placed themselves on record be- | fore the reading world, and certainly |it 1s a pertinent post-war document. | 1t should be said here that certain | chapters of Miss Kinel's life—those | | dealing with her work as a translator | for Isadora Duncan—are currently | running in the Atlantic Monthly. | o Russian refugee, & former noble- | to be sure, when his satire does not | TPeS€ are perhaps the most felicitous- man, supporting himself by working as & mechanic when necessary and | drinking the rest of the time. ’I‘HE denouncement is not quite so impressive as it might be if the | author had not made it clear that| no question of love was involved in the professor’s offer of marriage. wve‘ are given to understand that Anna’s refusal of that offer indicates her| incapacitation for normal living. Yet | no motive for accepting it is brought forward except the one that the mar- riage would have provided her with gecurity. To the reader, it is apt to seem that the young woman'’s refusal | is in itself highly normal. To enter | into a loveless marriage simply for | economic reasons may be wise. but| surely it is not the rule of normal behavior in the young. | In this respect the book fails fo| earry conviction. And, as this seems to be its essential point, it cannot be passed without criticism. For the reat, the book is admirably done. It seems 1o the reviewer somewhat less than might be expected from so mo- mentous a contest as that in which it is winner, but such as it is, it is competent. The problems of the exiles, their development from hope to resig- nation, their desperate efforts to keep alive, the resentment felt against them es foreigners by the French, all these points are well treated. Yet one feels inevitably that the pertinence of the subject has influenced the judges, to some degree at least. To award a prize on subject matter is, of course, per- missible, but permissibly also, when the novel is one of international move- ment, we might look to find the sub- | ject matter treated with more relation- ship to the generality of human prob- Jems than is the case in “The' Street of the Fishing Cat.” JPOLITICAL exiles, after all, are a | very limited and very special group. Their tragic problems are a saddening spectacle, but one to which the very great majority of us can| bring only an intellectual interest. The reviewer considers the winner | of the American prize in the all na- tions competition a better book than the present one. That was John T. Mclntyre's “Steps Going Down,” a genuine picaresque set in this modern day, & book dealing with seamy and sordid lives, but casting an fllumina- tion of timeless appreciation over them. The winner of the international prize, it may be mentioned as a point of interest, received an award of $19,000. Mr. McIntyre's prize was something less than a fourth of this, he drew $4,000. Both are good books, notwithstanding. “The Street of the Fishing Cat” is very easily readable. BENEDICTION. By Claude Silve. ‘With a foreword by Edith Wharton. Translated from the French by Robert Norton. New York: D. Appleton Century. HIS novel, the winner of the French . Prix Femina, is one of those works which are from time to time pro- duced with success by writers whose interest it is, in the words of James Branch Cabell, “to write perfectly of beauiiful happenings.” That de- scribes it perhaps as adequately as any prolonged review can possibly do. 1t is a slight, very slight story, cast in a deeply romantic atmosphere and invested sucessfully with that momen- tous, fateful quality which touches works of writing with intimations of the other world. The very narrowest line conceivable separates such a work > ) come off. but comes down, rather, and that in a distinctly heavy man- ner. But at those times, when one is tempted to lay his book aside, story interest comes forward as a saving element and it is safe to prophesy that most readers will per- severe unto the end—for one cause or _another. This combination of excellent satire and ingenious plot with the broadest kind of uninspired belaboring does put one in mind of our own Nobel prize winner in his more careless mo- ments. But, as Mr. Lewis is impos- sible to read for long without the dis- covery of some felicitous crack, so is Mr. Macdonell. One is forced to feel, in this present book, that he has written hastily. With more time, he might have weeded out the heavy pas- sages of his story and produced a consistent satire that would have been really treasurable. The story is thrown together on the basis of contrast—a contrast be- tween the manner in which the un- touchable British tradition of gen- tility is actually built up (as Mr. Mac- donell sees it), and the manner in which its heirs imagine it to have developed. Mr. Macdonell reminds us that the basis of any tradition is inherited fortune, and that fortunes are always made by men strong enough to make them, and not by men preoccupied with dreams of playing the game, or by that category of con- siderations which the nicer charac- ters of the book sum up as “cricket.” On the contrary, in the words of the hero, a steel magnate of refreshing but somewhat unlikely frankness, fortunes are made partly by fraud and partly by violence, says Mr. Macdonell. Against this disarmingly honest statement, we have the magnate's children admiring worshipfully the | notion that they are inheritors of in- alienable privilege, bestowed upon them by their proven superior quali- ties. The hearty old pirate who has begotten them views these pretensions with cynical tolerance. And thus the | contrast. It all makes for lively reading and can be commended to any readers ex- cept very confirmed Anglophiles. PARNELL. By Joan Haslip. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 'HE career of Charles Stewart Parnell has by no means been neglected by biographers in the past, but that hardly seems to indicate that its appeal to writers of lives is exhausted. For few figures in history combine more picturesquely the ele- ments which go to make a good tale than does the stormy petrel of Ire- land’s politics. He was the leader of a romantic cause, he was the defler of the tyrant, he was the martyr, he was even the lover. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he seemed to live for the delectation of future generations of historians. His career might have been planned in advance by a committee of blographi- cal writers. It is therefore with no surprise that one receives yet another account of his rise and fall, nor does the circumstance that the tale is written in a vein of fiery champion~ ship and unadulterated hero-worship occasion downright consternation. ‘The most hardened reviewer cannot deny that Parnell’s life is a first-rate story. He ranks with Uncle Tom and Camille as a reliable tear-jerker, and, like them, seems destined to come to semi-mythical status. The present book is vividly written, and in spite of Imf& partisanship, the | I ly told passages of the book. | NICHOLAS II. PRISONER OF THE PURPLE. By Mohammed Essad- Bey. English version by Paul Maerker Branden and Elsa Bran- | den. New York: Funk & Wag- nalls. “’E HAVE here an interesting book { about an uninteresting man— | about a man, indeed, whose remark- able achievement in nonentity was the most interesting thing about him— | that is, the last Czar of Russia. | | The book is interesting in that it | is sympathetic and tolerant. 1t makes | what seems to be a sincere effort to | unearth the impassive autocrat's per- sonal interpretation of his autocracy, and places on him an auctorial inter- | pretation based on the world in which | | he lived, rather than the world of western civilization. | | That Nicholas was superstitious, in- | different, hesitant and weak, the | author makes no effort to deny. But | from this admission he follows the line of examining the influences which worked on the Czar to make him what | he was, rather than that of execrating | him for not being something different, Such an examination is due, histor- ically, although no doubt the sympa- thetic tone of the present writer will offend adherents of the regime which brought about Nicholas’ downfall. That Russia itself was a supersti- tious, indifferent, hesitant country, would seem to be the conclusion to which the book comes, indicating that in Nicholas it had a characteristic ruler who might, if allowed sufficient time, have moved his unwieldly do- main a little in the progressive direc- tion. That the revolution brought the | blessings of progress somewhat more rapidly to the Muscovites is not to be denied, but whether the attendant suffering in the long run might not have been less is a question that the author leaves significantly open. The book has a tendency to imply reverence for mere forms which is re- grettable. But in so far as it confincs itself to the character of Nicholas, it | is & sober and worthy document. IT'S THE CLIMATE. Horace Rathbone, jr. Richard R. Smith. THIE is & series of short stories | written by an artist about life on | the Caribbean Islands. As is to be | expected, the stories are vivid, color- ful, with a .pictorial quality and an attention to detail that makes both actors and scene live for the reader. The stories are all short, all well writ- ten, all on different themes, and with different strata of island society for motives. They touch on the tragedy of the white islanders with colored blood, on the misfortunes of the col- ored islanders who go away and come back, on the stifling effects of living on jungle plantations, and with vari- ous phases of negro superstition and voodooism. There is little doubt that had Rathbone lived, he would have made a brilliant name for himself as a writer. This is an unusually guod first volume from the standpoints of interest, structure and style. While it is true that too many of these stories are rather nasty in conmotation, that is a fault that is often remedied by time. AS I REMEMBER. By Arnold Genthe. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock. A John Day book. ARNOLD GENTHE is amused by the vogue of “candid camera shots.” He has never taken any other kind, 1 By Charles New York: LOLA KINEL, Author of “This Is My Affair.” (Little, Brown & Co.) he says. This German-born artist, who came to America as & young tutor, began his photographic career in San Francisco, where he took unposed, but careful pictures of & rapidly disappearing Chinatown. This led him to his life work. His pic- tures became the vogue al the turn of the century, when stilted, iron- clamp pictures were the rule. He lived a gay, Bohemian life on the coast, with such friends as Jack Lon- don, George Sterling, the Irwins and Frank Norris, The earthquake sent him East. In New York he was immediately successful and the last 25 years have brought to his studio & steady parade | of celebrities. He took the first pic- | tures made in this country of Grela Garbo and he believes they opened the eyes of the moving picture magnates to her possibilities when they were ready to send her back home as “just : ’ accompanied by 112 superb photo- graphs which prove the lens mightier than the pen. RUTURN TO MALAYA. By R. H. Bruce Lockhart. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. R H. BRUCE LOCKHART, author * of the eminently successtul “Brit- ish Agent” and “Retreat From Glory,” has, with the completion of his latest, and some say, best book, “Return 1o Malaya,” supplied the last needed bit of proof to justify the claim of his myriad admirers that there is only one Lockhart, all other chroniclers of history and adventure being shallow imitators. And, perhaps, it they are not entirely right, they are a long way from being altogether wrong. Lockhart devotees will remember, from his other works, that his early manhood was spent in Malaya—in Singapore, Java, Batavia—all the ro- ING_STAR. WASHINGTON, D. (. SATURDAY. JANUARY 16 1 OLUME By M.-C. R. OMEWHAT late, due to the omis- sion of magazine notes last week, the reviewer comes to 1 the 50th anniversary number of Scribner's. It is a very handsome mag, indeed, and well worth looking up. The work of such illustrious past | contributors as Theodore Roosevelt, Bret Harte, Frederick Remington, | Harrison Fisher, Stephen Crane, John | Galsworthy, Howard Pyle and Edith ‘Wharton is reprinted or reproduced {In it, snd it is an achievement over | which its editors may quile reason- ably feel complacent. FICK‘ION PARADE for January leads off with a story by that excellent but little publicized writer of stories, Elizabeth Bowen. It is a good piece, but then Miss Bowen seldom or never writes any other sort. | ‘The reviewer has more than once | wondered at her absence from anthol- ogies, although, actually, there is | less connection between this sentence | and the one preceding it than one un- | familiar with anthologies might as- | sume. Anyway, her quiet little tale | of & bargain governess in January Fiction Parade is worth reading. It |18 reprinted from the Listener. | FICTION PARADE also has a piece | * by James Thurber (reprinted from i the New Yorker), in which there oc- curs a paragraph, which simply must be quoted. The piece is called “The Case Against Women,” and except for the one passage, is like a thousand would-be funny efforts to state man’s resentment of woman’s lack “of logic and the like. But in the following lines the reviewer is of the opinion that Mr. Thurber has said something. Read and attend: “Another spectacle that depresses the male and makes him fear wom- en, and therefore hate them, is that | of a woman looking another woman | up and down, to see what she is wear- | ing, The cold, flat look that comes | into 8 woman’s eyes when she does this, the swift coarsening of her | countenance. and the immediate evaporation from it of all humane | quality make the male shudder. He |18 likely to go to his state room or his | den or his private office and lock him- | | self in for hours. I know one man | who surprised that look in his wife's | |eyes and never afterward would let | her come near him. If she started | | toward him, he would dodge behind | & table or a sofa, as if he were en- | gaging in some unholy game of tag. | That look, I believe, is one reason men disappear and turn up in Tahiti lor the Arctic or the United States Navy.” | And the reviewer would inform | Mr. Thurber that the Navy may be all right, but that the Eskimo ladies | GIC IN PRIZE V 'SCRIBNER’S MARSHA A. G. MACDONELL, Author of “Lords and Mas- ters.” (Macmillan.) examine each other’s bearskins with just the same coldness and flatness of eye. and that when two female Tahitians meet they similarly calcu- late the tastefulness of each other's grass skirts. And that he is perfectly right about the appalling nature of of this inhumane performance. And that nothing can be dome about it. wOME time ago there was announced *” in these columns the news that & co-operative magazine was to be in- | stituted, operating on the basis that contributors should bear proportion- ate shares of production costs and received proportionate shares of profits. This idea moved the re- LS PAST Hllustrious Contributors Brought Back for an Interesting Anni- vesary Issue—Men Who Write in Judgment of Women— Experiment in Co-operation. | not a Summer. "If subsequent numbers show improvement, the reviewer will be delighted to advise the world of the fact. "THE new Lssue of Stage is at hand, bearing on its cover a drawing by Jo Mielziner of Miss Katharine Cornell in her role in “The Wingless Victory” The reviewer, having pro- tested In the recent past against the quite horrid caricatures which were serving this magazine as covers, con- | gratulates the editors on the change. Miss Cornell, to be sure, appears a bit slimmer in this picture than she did on the stage, but whether or no, she makes a decorative page. And the caricatures most emphatically did not. ‘This issue of Stage is considerably less spasmodic than is usual with that periodical. A substantial article on the Anderson plays of the season by Stephen Vincent Benet, others on Mrs. Piske, Richard Mansfield and the Cohan family give it & substantial reading quality. ORONET for January begins pres- entation of the line drawings of Heinrich Kley, German artist extraordi- nary. They are mordant, rich and | beautiful. Coronet seems to the re- | viewer the most completely modern magazine, unless, of course, one 1s 1o | consider as more progressive the achievement of the periodicals which | have eliminated reading matter com- | pletely. It is not a completely sat fying magazine, to the sure, for 1 type is small, and to read anything the shape of the Readers’ Digest is incurably reminiscent of the Digest itself, and the fearful influence which its circulation shadow has cast on one-time comfortable publications. But Coronet, while paving homage to the current dual tendency of maga- zines to shrink to the size of alma- nacs advertising pain-killer and to fill their pages with pictures, pictur pictures, still does get in some pre: good reading matter. And not many magazines do all three. viewer to mirth, and she said quite | frankly that she thought it funny for any one to pay to get anything— of any nature—into print. Now comes a letter from the editors of this experimental publication—the American Yellow Book — defending their sincerity. The reviewer had no intention of calling that commodity into question. It seems obvious that any one undertaking such a projeci would be sincere—painfully so. But the more important question rests in the quality of the periodical which results from the co-operative | experiment. If it be good, its business methods do not matter. Unhappily, to judge by the first issue, it is just what might bave been expected—an arty, artless sheet. Of course, one issue is | AS TO the Readers’ Digest, and the other herrid litle digests which | have followed in its impressive wake, the reviewer sometimes dreams hap- | pily of the day when they will be | overtaken by the nemesis of their own creation. That is the day when they shall have driven all regular publi- cations completely out of business— | and then what will they do for their | digestion anyhow? They should re- | member something about the goose | that laid golden eggs and not shoot- ing Santa Claus. At present a new standard of exclusiveness might be set by a periodical courageous enouzh to advertise that nothing ever pub- lished in its pages has been “digested.” It seems worth thinking over, anyhow. J TWO PRESIDENTIAL PARALLELS JOAN HASLIP, Author of “Parnell, a Biography. another Swede” Woodrow Wilson liked his photograph of him, but his campaign manazers shied at using it for mass appeal. Theodore Roose- velt posed at Oyster Bay, his clothes untidy, but his eves flashing. Andrew Mellon was the most taciturn man Genthe ever photographed, but the photographer was impressed with the placidity of the man. He says Dr. Grayson has told him that his photo- graph of the second Mrs. Wilson won many friends for her. ‘This man, who has captured the beauty of many women, famous and | unknown, refrains from selecting his loveliest subject. He is inclined to favor Eleanora Duse because her beauty withstood the years. He ad- mired Isadora Duncan, and tells in- teresting stories about her, but she was no great beauty. She simply created beauty. Not all of Mr. Genthe’s autobiog- raphy is concerned with personalities, although & major part of it is. He has traveled around the world with his camera finding and recording scenic beauty in obscure and inac- cessible places. = He is not a particularly lively | raconteur in these meories and they | are in no way unusual, but they are » (F. A. Stokes Co.) . mantic spots so flagrantly described nowadays on the colored tourist cir- culars and via the movie travelogue. From the East he entered the con- sular service, spending several years {in Russia and later in the Prague. Finally deciding to leave government | service he entered the field of jour- | nalism, conducting a column on the ;London Evening Standard in addition to his numerous other writings. | His desire to reutrn to early scenes | took him, at middle age, once more to the stamping grounds of his youth, | whence he comes with & shrewd com- | mentary on changing times, inter- | mixed with his own reactions and re- | grets. Traveling by boat, plane, car | and foot throughout the Malay Pen- insula, he was enabled, by the Lock- | hart prestige and his own inquisitive- | ness, to talk to high and low. He | visited old landmarks and old friends, | which should have a “must” rating it | only for its complete coverage of the [whule Eastern situation, from eco- | nomics to flora and fauna. It is a thesaurus of the East, an encyclopedia of easily assimilated facts, a vivid pic- ture of modern world trends and.aboye all a highly interesting personal tale. | R.C.R. Brief Reviews of Books Neon-Fiction. LIFE ETERNAL. Excerpts from the writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l- Baha, Movius. East Aurora: The Roy- croft Shops. CHRISTIANITY AND SECRET 80- CIETIES. By Willam Edward Smith. Boston: Meador Publishing Co. An attack on secret societies on the ground that they are con- trary to religion. | THE POWER OF KARMA. By Alex- ander Cannon. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. The occult science set forth by one who believes in it. YACHT RACING RULES AND TAC- TICS. By Gordon C. Ayman. Foreword by Philip J. Roosevelt; 130 action and diagram photo- graphs. A sort of primer on this expensive sport. SPORT SHOTS. By Dr. Paul Wolff. New York: William Morrow. A book of fine photographs of Olym- pic games and athletes. Fiction. NOT IN UTTER NAKEDNESS. By Thomas Alva Stubbins. Boston: Meador Publishing Co. Biographi- cal novel of young man. Maudlis. LADIES IN LOVE. By Ladislaus Bus Pekete. New York: E. P. Dutton Compiled by Mary Rumsey | Co. Three girls and their hearts. ‘Trash. | GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE. By Constance W. Dodge. New York: Covici Priede. Romantic historical novel of old Scotland. Average. | GRANDMA BATES SEES THE WORLD. By Eva Thomas Nettle- ton. Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co. Old lady turns lively. Bub- bling stuff. Mysteries. THE MYSTERY OF THE TARN. By Carolyn Wells. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Another Wells, with all the liveliness that that implies. OUT ON BAIL. By R. L. Goldman. New York: Coward McCann. Mur- der among the doctors. Fair. THE HARVEST MURDER. By John Rhode. New York: Dodd Mead & Co. A new Dr. Priestley story. THE D. A. CALLS IT MURDER. By Erle Stanley Gardner. New York: ‘Willlam Morrow & Co. The author of the Perry Mason stories presents a fighting district attorney. THE EMPEROR OF EVIL. By Carroll John Daly. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. One of those dual personality thinga. ‘. and from it all has compiled a volume | By Ernest Hackett. F ANDREW JACKSON were fo stroll into the White House now, ! after an absence of a century, he would find himself and his host | in rare accord on political philosophy and much alike in fundamental per- sonal attributes. Tick them off: A fixed belief that the rights of a | man transcend the rights of a thing. | and that the voice of the majority is the voice of a democracy. On the personal side the similarity between | these two Americans is even more | striking, startlingly so, when back- ground and ancestry are considered. Jackson was the son of a Scotch- { Irish linen merchant, who left his little Belfast shop for the new land beyond the sea. He headed West, but | | found the pioneer's ax too heavy for | his hands. He worked himself to| | death before Andrew was born. The | posthumous son received. almost en- | | tirely through his own effort, an edu- | cation which was sketchy and he | never rid his tongue of the broad | | North of Ireland accent. To the day | | he died a clerk was a “clark” to him. | His spelling was a thing to have | | cheered the heart of George Wash- ington and to have caused Noah | Webster to sneer. But he wrote as he shot; there was never a doubt | about what he meant or where he aimed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes of different stock and is shaded by a | soil of the New World before ever the Union was born. His life’s path has been far from the wilderness trail, but he arrived at the White House, | seemingly bringing with him a | philosophy identical with that of Old | Hickory. On the purely personal it side, ! bond of kinship between these two men. Next is the ability to win and hold friends. There are, however, two notable exceptions in the lives of each; the exception which proves the | rule. A’r ONE time John C. Calhoun was to Jackson the embodiment of all human virtues, not to mention a few godlike attributes, but he left the White House ruminating sadly on his failure to have hanged his one-time Vice President and friend. Alfred E. Smith, once mentor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, strayed, wandered and finally “took a walk” out of the Presi- dent’s life and, possibly, out of the Democratic party. His reason, in its essence, is, I think, the same as Cal- houn's—pigue, veiled by the assertion that a President had thrown aside his party’s principles. The two Presidents, a hundred years apart in time, are brothers in absolute fidelity to themselves and their fixed boundaries of right and wrong. In each the same determina- tion burned to follow the course planned, even though one was guided by blazes on forest trees and the other by & compass’ needle. Jackson was about as conventional as a Chick- asaw mule on a rampage; President Roosevelt's acts indicate he views con- vention as binding only when there is reason, other than age, for its ex- istence. So much for the paralielism of es- sentials, and now for the right-angles of technique. ‘Could there be two things more widely different than Jackson's bull-like rushes and raging temper and Roosevelt's suavity and smiling self-control. Andy charged: the Virginia dynasty, which for 24 years had held what family tree whose roots were in the | seems that courage is the strongest | White House. Old King Caucus went headlong, lost his crown, broke his scepter and emerged minus a portion of his trousers. Roosevelt defied con- vention when he took control of the Democratic party from the hands of Smith, titular head by reason of his having been candidate for the presi- dency. He disposes of opposition by the whelming method. Jackson did it by “givin’ them th’ pint in th’ friend. The youth, with a fight on his hands, came to Uncle Andy for advice. “Yank a palin’ off th’ fence an’ give him th’ p'int in th' belly: battler. REGARD[NG the courage of the two Presidents the scales seem to balance. If there is a difference, in my opinion, it favors Franklin D. Roosevelt. Compare occasions when each was under fire in personal en- | counters. A young man named Charles Dick- inson spoke lightly of the character of Rachel Jackson—than whom none could have been more above re- proach—and thereby earned for him- | self a place in the history books. But | he paid a high price—an ounce of lead in the abdomen. Jackson, because he | proved to be a quitclaim title to the | wounded, and with a pistol in his hand. | JN PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S first term, at its very outset as a mat- | er of fact, he was called on to dis- play courage of another sort. He en- | tertained a definite fear—it was more | than fear, it was certainty—that the banks of the country were headed for a smash. He closed them, and | closed they remained until the finan- | belly.” as he once advised & young |cial house had been put in order | Political suicide. That is what many | of his friends believed. The President | believed that for the safety of the country the banks should be closed. | il work,” counseled the forthright so he “gave 'em th’ p'int in th’ belly,” regardless of consequences to caree: or self. Jackson, late in his first admin- | istration, ran afoul of Nicholas Bid- | dle, an estimable gentleman who was | president of the United States Bank | Nicholas, he learned, thought him- ;sel( and his bank bigger than tne | United States. This knowledge came | to him through the banker's refusa! | to turn over public money and pen- | sion records to an authorized Fed- eral agent. I doubt that Andrew Jackson ever heard the word economics. I am dead certain he could not have spelled it. | was less schooled in law than in life, | Put he did know that the fellow who | married Rachel Donelson Robards be- | fore she had obtained & divorce. She | and Andy both believed the decree | had been granted, but he, a lawyer, | failed to make certain. That one mis- | | take followed them through life, | wreaking a most cruel vengeance. Dickinson had the bad taste and | | abominable judgment to refer to the | :conmtcmm and Jackson called him | out. | | On the way to the meeting place, in Kentucky, Jackson confided to a friend that he felt certain Dickinson, | | the “best pistol shot in all Tennessee, | where good pistol shots were plenty, would hit him. “But I'll shut his lyin’ mouth with lead, even if he shoots me | through th’ head.” | Dickinson did not do exactly that, | but he did send & bullet into Jackson's | | body where he thought it would find | | the heart. It cracked the breast bone and shattered a rib or two. But Andy | was still on his feet, one boot filling | | with blood. Steadying himself, he | | raised his pistol, aimed and fired. | | No need to comment on where the | lead lodged; it was in strict conform- | ity with. the Jackson method. Dick- inson was carried from the field, dy- ing. At Miami, as is well remembered, an assassin shot at the President and mortally wounded Mayor Cermak of Chicago, who was riding in the auto- mobile beside him. The Mayor lurched convulsively at the impact of the bul- let tell from the car to lie helpless on the running board. The men guarding the President shouted to the chauffeur to speed away. The assas- sin’s revolver cracked above the sound of their voices to give point to the command. Franklin D. Roosevelt, unable to rise from the seat and seek safety unaided, was steadfast, and, If fearful for his own life, did not show it. Instead of panic there was cool- ness. He halted the car and when driven away the wounded man was in his arms, thus to be borne to a hos- pital, where he died. Meanwhile, two other persons were wounded, not se- riously, by the flying bullets, each in- tended for the back of the President, who would not desert a stricken friend. That courage is, I think, of a little higher order than the dauntlessness ““ man, upright on his legs, though holds the purse strings is boss. Bid- dle’s fiscal lordship was vested {n him by virtue of his bank charter, which did not expire until 1836. There was no handle to the jug, until Clay, Web- ster and Calhoun supplied it, in their effort to hamstring Old Hickory. A resolution was introduced into Congress four years before the bank charter expired to extend its life four years beyond 1836. Smart politics Jackson would veto: the resolution would be passed over executive con- demnation, and the man in the White House, whom they hated, would be on record as opposed to the bank on the eve of his campaign for re- election. That's the way it read in the scroll of Clay, Webster and Cal- houn. When the dust settled, the trio of practical politicians and Mr. Biddle were ‘eager to hire out in an arnica factory for their board, there to lave their bruises. Webster and Calhoun made what the physicians describe as a good recovery, but Clay always limped after that encounter, The Great Conciliator was begin- ning to believe himself the favorite child of misfortune, and when the election returns were in that Fall he was certain of it. Candidate Clay 8Ot 49 of the 288 votes of the elec- toral college and Jackson 219. His victory vote to succeed himself was not so great as that of Roosevelt, but it was a sweeping indorsement. The “forgotten man” of Jackson’s day had not sobbed himself to sleep over the fate of the bank. In fact, his reaction was the same as that of today’'s “forgotten man” toward Presi- dent Roosevelt’s financial policies. I. was clear to Jackson—it is equaily apparent to Roosevelt—that the “for- gotten man” with a ballot is a hard chap to forget in November. 16,000 Skulls. THI collection of skuils developed by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of physical anthropology in the Smith- sonian Institution, has now reached the great total of 16,000. These have been labeled and placed in trays for exhibition purposes, telling in their grim way the development of the human race. ~