Evening Star Newspaper, July 31, 1937, Page 16

B—2 THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. (. SATURDAY, AMERICAN VERSES COMPILED Anthology Containing 600 Contemporary Poems Written by Men Is Well Worth Having—Autobiograpical Volumes Make Reader Glad That the Atlantic Is Wide. By Mary Carter Roberts. CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MEN POETS. Edited by Thomas Del Vecchio. Tllustrated by Charles Cullen. New York: Henry Harri- son. AST year Henry Harrison brought out an anthology of contemporary poetry by American women. Hard on the heels of the appearance of this volume, there arose, so he announced, & demand for a like compilation of the verses of living American men. present collection is the result of this demand. It contains some 600 poems by 459 authors. The feminine an- thology was a somewhat thicker bool {ts contributors numbered 1311, Cert- tainly the idea of publishing collec- | tions of the work of living poets is an excellent one and must be com- mended. The division into works by men and women, however, seems pointless. One could wish that the poems had been classified in some | more significant manner, Be that as it may, the two volumes do constitute | & first rate survey of contemporary American poetry and ought to be ac- quired by any one who has an interest In poetic development in this country 8ix hundred verses and almost as many verse writers, of course, make a batch of material and personalities oo unwieldy to be handled critically in any but the most general, or the most extremely specific terms. A reviewer ocan take such a volume author by author or verse by verse and do it Justice, if he has unlimited space at | his disposal, or he can simply indicate | the general level, mention such char- acteristics as seema to him common to the work as a whole and let it go at | that. The latter method on the whole | seems preferable. For when one undertakes close ex- amination of verse, one must enter upon technical considerations which are outside the interest of the general | reader, and one also runs into the in- | escapable fact that, in poetry, every | man is his own competent ecritic. | ‘There are no rules that can be de- pended upon. The world has taken | Homer to its bosom these many cen- The | | instantaneous present is brought be- | JULY 31, 1937. | “American Upsurge” and “Cross of | Column, giving for his reason later ame.” And others. that he was afraid. As he puts it, he | | For the benefit of Washingtonians, | “just couldn't stand trench life.” This | | the reviewer will quote the sole in- | is rather startling, in view of his pre- | | cluded work of that fine local artist, | vious idealism. ;Yinhn Lee Higgins. It is called “Wild | He did not give up his interest in the | orses [ < war, however, on quitting active serv- | Never again a wild nag on the prairie | jce, but got a job as correspondent and | To court the little brown mare in | settled down to observe from Madrid. |, thelgrass, | What one gathers from his revelations | No click of small hooves bounding | is that Spain is a madhouse, a ground | from the sorré where international rivalries are beng To rendezvous in sheltered moun- | fought out at the bitter expense of the tain pass. Spanish people, who, for the most | part, do not understand any of the | uproar. He himself is bitterly partisan for the government; his revelations, however, unconsciously expose conduct on the part of the prevailing regime which seem equal in corruption and folly to anything which he attributes | to the rebels. The very incoherence of the book, one feels, is is part. It is “No gleaming teeth to touch the brown | 3bout an incoherent situation. mave's haunches, The two works are a startling Nibble its withers, nip its sharp- | Monument, when taken together. They | eed eare. | speak of corruption that is fathomless, Brush its flanks and race it down the | CTU€lty that is deliberate and horrible, A {and &n impenetrable contempt for Sudden as hawks to stoop and sink | individuals and individual iverty. To e vead them is, as has been said, to marvel at human conduct. And to be ‘ihankml that the Atlantiz Ocean is | so wide. “Never a mad, wild stallion coulee Marking its spoors upon the tor- tured turf, Wheeling about with lusty neigh and whinney, Majestic and wild-eyed as plunging surf. in the “O you may find a mare’s nest in a fable, A misty filly loping in wild grains, A wide-winged stailion soaring in the ether, But never again a wild nag on the plains.” THE SEVENTEEN MILLION. Ogden L. Mills, New York: MasMillan Co. "HIS book is & defense of the Con- stitution against what the author takes to be the present determination of those in office to render the docu- ment of our liberties ineffectual. The Watson. New York: E. P, Dutton | tille comes from the election returns of last November. Seventeen million & Co. i Americans went on record there, says THE troubl | 883 m"“;e :i::‘"d’“:’[" °; f""’?" | Mr. Mills, as preferring the established past and in the | roms of our Government to any | drastic alteration. Other voters, not fore readers this week in the two | = books listed above. “Escape to the inside that number, probably held the same view without realizing that the Present” is the story of Germany since 1} . Constitution was to be tampered with the war by another unhappy ex- in the post-election months. But, as patriate. “Single to Spain” is the % story of fighting in the Spanish civil | M. Mills sees it, the administration By | The | ESCAPE TO THE PRESENT. By Jo- hannes Steel. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. SINGLE TO SPAIN. By Keith Scott turies. It also embraces Eddie Guest.| A critic, viewing the phenomenon, | may well feel somewhat puzzled. i 8o it seems likely that those who are | seriously interested in this new an-| thology will get it for themselves, and | nothing which a reviewer could write about it would in the least impress them, unless, of course, it happened to agree with their own conclusions. | For the guidance of those who have | not decided whether or not to buy this | book, however, this reviewer will write | that the volume seems to have a rather | low general level, but also more peaks than one usualy finds in a collection | of the same scope. In other words it| 48 very uneven. Unquestionably it contains some excellent poems; it con- | tains enough of these to make its pos- | session desirable. But these fine works seem to be set down among others of a peculiarly irritating badness—that is, | works of precious mediocrity and— | ‘worse—verses in which the pretentioug statement of a popular idea is ob- viously expected to offset careless and unskilled technique. | In general these popular ideas have | to do with the class struggle. They also get around to the disillusion of post-war youth, the wickedness of the | Nars, and the fecund discovery (so dear to young men) that friendship is | feigning and loving is folly. There are some good verses on all these subjects, too. But in general the glaringly obvious has attracted the | less able. | Among the good works it is inter- | esting to find that the overwhelming number follow recognized (or at least recognizable) forms. There are some fine sonnets, grave, dignified and moy- ing, as a sonnet ought to be. There are some delicately beautiful lyrics. ‘There are some swinging and spirited ballads, some accomplished blank verse and some equally good free. In these works we find the poetic form and the poetic thought blended with propriety, and that, of course, is what makes a poem. The inferiority of the other verses seems to lie in the ruthless de- terminamon of some poetaster to yoke cheap thinking with cheaper shapeless- ness and depend on the honored tra- ditions of the poetic craft to win him respectful reading. There is a number of these sufficiently large to be dis- couraging | The editor in his preface makes the announcement that “the poet of today, far removed from the ‘romantic’ pe- riods of literature, struggling for eco- nomic and artistic survival, must in- evitably recognize that a thorough understanding of political economy is an essential requiren of his art.” and this, no doubt, explains the la number of what may be called “polit- ical” poems included in the volume The reviewer made no ac but under the impression that there are more poems on the subject of political change than on any other one theme Without exception, moreover, these verses are left-wing in sentiment ‘Whether poets who do not share leftist sympathies simply are not iting on politics at all, or whether the editor has deliberately excluded their work because he disagrees with it, one can- not know. Certain it is, however, that he has himself a vivid hatred of the system of our Government, us as much | as in the past.” he says, “the epposition to truthful artistic expres- | sion is Jed by a vicious privileged class which stops at 18 to maintain 1ts wobbling supremacy.” ‘The statement obviously what more ardent than accurate When he speaks of the past, he seems not to remember th, has been the tyrant through a ory who has sheltered the arts; and when he applies his indictment to the present, | he overlooks the fact that, though | Communist Russia, Socialist Germany | and Fascist Italy are using severe | censorship against free expression democratic and capitalist England France and America offer the poet greater freedom than he has enjoyed | at any time in modern history. With such a flagrantly prejudiced and un- truthful prefatory declaration, the | volume might well turn out t be a sort of bible for the parior radicals; but, in spite of the strong infusion of | work of such sentiment, there is enough real poetry in it to carry it along for any reader of somewhat more liberally cultivated taste. This does not mean, either, that all of the political poems are technically bad work., A few of them are very good. Orrick Johns' “Sailor's Ballad of Mooney” is first rate. 5o is Jerome Nathanson's “To the Btriking Sea- men.” And there are others. On the other hand the book contains such lamatable stuff as Robert Gessner's is not is some- | ¥ ’ | home he told his young sons that the | outlook, he sees our trend as toward war by an Englishman who enlisted |15 in the hands of collectivists whose “to fight fascism” and served some | intention is revolutionary. weeks in the famous International| “No mere amendment will Column. Both are sufficiently de-|the purpose of the collectivists,” he pressing works. says, “—and none has been presented. “Escape to the Present” is in the | They would remake America to suit form of an autobiography. The au-|themselves. And to remake America, thor belongs to the generation which, | the Constitution must not just be when the World War broke out, was | amended—but destroyed. 100 young to go to the front, but old [ “Since the Constitution cannot be | enough to' be given military training | destroyed directly, it is to be rewritten and to listen thinkingly to the war | by a subservient Congress, supported talk of its elders. His father was & |y a packed and servile court.” military caste old-school German, | That is his thesis, patriotic, proud of the Fatherland, but | He then takes up in successive chap- given to cultural and humanistic | ters the problems of peace, security, thinking. His mother was an English | spriculture and labor, and shows how. woman, who. though her husband | yiihin the existing limits of the Gov- fought siendily through the ORIt | (rnment, there Js perlectly adequate ¥ machinery for handling such problems man neighbors. When the father returned to hi”ls have arisen. As for the present serve German Army had not been beaten | ® Fascist state, with ever greater cen- in the field, but “trampled to pleces | (ralization in Washington, and ever by its own officers, who stole and | ET€aler restrictions imposed on indi- whored; by its own generals, who were | Viduals. Planned production, he says, incompetent and vain: by & pack of | Will have to be met by planned con- poliscians, who were like vultures; by | sumption, which means, lling the | & bunch of jackass diplomats, who | people when to buy, what to buy, and never told us in the beginning that | how much.” Such an assumption of we were up against & world in arms.” | authority has not yet been attempted, And with that statement the old man's | he observes, but, he points out, “Hitler energy seemed to die. He retired ..to | was voted in by & majority of the | disillusioned musing and young Jo- | German people in an apparently hon- | hannes was left to assume responsibil- | est election. But just let the German | ity for the family. people try to vote him out.” And he | His story is the story of youth faced | leaves us to draw the inference for by an empty world, and s0 must be | ourselyes. taken as typical of the case of much| Wnether or not one agrees with his of post-war Europe. To be sure, he | premises; one must always find the e ‘:():ep-l]::'\mll :uvele::d clozd:":tm | championing of the doctrine of indi- with e ional energy ngenuity. | | : Bl e e mmlsxduu liberty a heartening thing. faced thousands of young men whose | THE STORY OF DICTATORSHIP. gifts were only ordinary, and through| By E. E. Kellett. New York: E. P, his struggles it is possible to visualize| Dutton Co. | a world in bankruptcy, as far as ideals | /INHIS is a collection of scnolarly essays, each devoted to treatme: or oportunities went Herr Steel first speculated on the ot ol e R n‘:nwed 5 mm‘}u{ a particular dictator (or, as th a small fortune there during the dly“uwd to bt"tallwl m‘m'x- from the of the inflation of the currency. After | P€8INNINg of recorded history down to that he secured & post as a sort of | (€ Present time. The theme running through the collection s that tyrants and tyranny through the ages differ | economic spy for the Weimar Repub- | lic. His duties were to go into foreign countries and discover what oppof- | litle in any but outside trappings, tunities existed there for German in- | #nd not enough in those to deceive the | dustry and—if that might be—<clear | discerning. A man arises in a troubled the way for German trade expansion |time to repel an invader, to stabilize by any convenient means, bribery be- | finances, to champion the poor; he ing the commonest one, apparently. | does what he promises to do; he next With the collapse of the republic he | discovers a “conspiracy” among the was offered a post in the Hitler gov- | wicked to undo his good work and ernment and the promise that, if he | orders summary executions or banish- obeyed orders, he would be undersecre- | ments; the so-called wicked generally | tary of state within five years. He re- | include his former friends and asso- | fused. Within a few davs he was kid- | ciates; he begins to fear opposition and | naped by Storm Troopers, carried to | suppresses free speech and the press: | a vacant house outside Berlin and | he lengthens his original term until it | kept there nine days. What fate was | becomes for life; he depends more and | being held for him he did not wait| more on the army: and so on. All to discover, for he saw a chance to | alike, says Mr. Kellett, all unmistak- | escape and took it. He fled to England | able and subsequently came to America. | NyiSieon Abimilech where he ""““’“““‘l"‘ el J"“f"l'“" | Pertander, Dionysius. Lopez, Francia, sl et there is any hobe | yyiier Mussolini and Stalin—all are I-”'m“!-‘\' :,:'x‘.hn;:x:u :‘u "An?:n‘l-;',‘: | examined here and found to conform country | reliably to the pattern. The book is 11 ' apers. A G s Mo A R | written with & cool, non-insistent His story is solidly the story of | 5 Germany's drift into Nazi-ism. The | \rony and without a vestige of preju- It makes wmusing reading until | dice course of the nation, as he sees it, has | ! L comes to the present. Then it will been accompanied by an utter loss of | o ¥ | probably be amusing only for the reader who is a philosopher. But to political honor, faith and idealism such it can be heartily commended. the de Medici, But this, he adds, is substantially the | course of all Europe. On the other half of the world, the future lies toward the East. he declares. “The nations of Europe,” he writes, “will be rent asunder and not borders but concepts of society, of social order, will constitute the boundaries of hostility “On the continent of North America, a similar development is possible, but RAILROAD WEST. Meigs. Boston: Co. "TTHIS is the story of the building of | the Northern Pacific Railroad, | told in the form of a novel. It centers | around the work and romance of | not automatically necessary, and can | YOUN8 Philiy Fox, who goes out as an | be prevented. This is 30 because the | Sl8In€er on the project, meets his economic premise here s fundamen. | fUlure wife there, takes surveys while tally different . . » And he says that | 10d1ans are potting at him, fights in America “class consclousness.” as | PUZZArds, swamps, hunger and thirst it exists in Europe, is unknown, There | 5668 the rallioad project apparently may be & connection somewhere. swepl away by financial panic, but His is a sombre book and to read it | Anally stands proudly by while the last is w0 wonder at the course of history. |3Pike is driven. It is a quiet litle tale, “Single To Spain,” as has been said, | but told with sincerity and a certain is & record of the experiences of a | impid grace. It can be recommended young Englishman who went to fight | 0T Pleasant uneventful reading. what he conceived to be the powers of darkness by means of joining the government forces in the Spanish civil war. It is & somewhat incoherent work. divided between humorous ac- | counts of barrack life and ghastly | stories of battles and raids and looting. | tors, Considering the shocking nature of the | latter kind of episode, the humor of the ' former seems somehow out of place, | and the reader is likely to be puzzled | about what is the real purpose of the | work. Puzzling too is the author's own behaviour. He describes his burning determination to fight, he tells us how impatient of delays he became when week followed week without any move toward the front. Yet, after his second battle, he calmly resigned from the By Cornelia Little Brown and HEADLINING AMERICA. By Frank Luther Mott and Co-operating Edi- tors. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. "IHIS is a compilation of newspaper stories, chosen by a board of edi- | and representing what those | editors feel to be the best work along | certain journalistic lines. The mate- | rial is divided into interviews, political campaign stories, news, news with feature handling, disaster stories, heat and drought stories, depression and recovery stories, finance stories, crime, crusades, celebrations and pa- rades, features, personalities, obitu- aries, sports, foreign correspondence, criticism and science. As against these outstanding jour- nalistic feats, there is also s section A | sizes several important things, chief of “WHEN JAPAN GOES TO WAR."” HARUKO ICHIKAWA, Author of “Japanese Lady in Europe,” published two weeks ago. (E. P. Dutton.) given over to routine treatment of | Japanese university professor and her most the usual themes. Students of | husband on & Kahn traveling fellow- writing could hardly do better than|ship. In the course of their peregrin- make a study of this volume, ations they visit most European coun- The reviewer wonders, however, | tries and some others. In her diar about what happened to book reviews? | Mrs. Ichikawa records her impressions Criticism apparently is limited to art | of the countries, places and people exhibils, dance recitals and movies. | visited. And they are the impressions Yet 50 young people come in or write | of a sensitive, open-minded, cultured this office weekly, asking how one gets | woman with a sense of humor and to be that way. So, it would seem, | mind untrammeled by Occidental con- there is some appeal in the profession. | ventions. What about that, Mr. Mott and Co- | to color and form. although she regrets operating Editors? You seem to have | that she is not “picture-minded.” The forgotten something. reader gets unexpectedly intimate peeps into the mores and psychology of the places mentioned, for the record is one of the things that impressed the writer—and many of these things are such that might be noticed by the Western traveler, but would not be mentioned by him in the mistaken notion that they are too trival. EMMA. By Louis Paul. Garden City: Doubleday Doran and Co. N THIS lively novel Mr. Louis Paul (evidently not forgetting the golden streets of Hollywood) has used about every trick of popular appeal in the catalogue. He first gives us a young wife so discontented with her | Her reactions to the foreign scenes, aimless life that she leaves her admir- | people and customs are vivid and able husband and sets out to earn her | quaint. Her descriptions are lively and own way in the world; he gives us then | original. For instance, in speaking of & picture of the dangers which beset | Denmark, she savs: “The children inexperienced young women job- | look lovelier than those of any other hunting in a depression; he gives us | country, but their loveliness is that of next the story of the rise of a female |a bulidog puppy.” And one business executive, for his Emma | perfect picture of fat, solemn, healthy, abandons job-hunting as a bad busi- | square youngsters. In speaking of ness and enters on a career as restau- | Vienna, she says: “If a town had an ratuer; he gives us finally a happy | arm and you could put a thermometer ending, for, having made a huge for- | under the armpit, it would stand at tune within a few months (as a bit of | only & little more than 35 degrees realism) the young woman discovers | centigrade, in the case of Vienna; it that love is all that matters anyhow, | and throws it all up to go back home and have a baby. Realism, did one say? Why, it will knock you cold. These examples could be multiplied indefinitely. They make the reading doubly interesting. R.R.T. JAPANESE LADY IN EUROPE. By | LAST YEAR'S SNOW. By Don Tracy. Haruko Ichikawa. New York: E.| M. S. Mill Co., Inc. New York. P. Dutton & Co. COOL novel for Summer reading, EERIISA1 S ofiitne i diaty Fol all about the North woods, guides, S L A G oy (] S P eI T rards. Of course, in order to have & story at all there has to be a little heat. So we have an ex-husband, plus a present husband. a beautiful but hard-boiled wife, a susceptible bache- lor, all mixed up and marconed for several davs. Result, one murder and one busted romance. The ending is a good one, but not the conventional means the theme of the book clinch. The murderer is the to-be- nese Lady in Europe” is ostensibly | expected unexpected and unsuspected and in fact the chornicle of the Euro- | one. Pleasant but not important read- pean pilgrimage of the wife of a ing. which is the theory that if women were running politics there would be more | international good will and less war. | Another theory that gains strength from this book is that travel of private citizens, and traveling fellowships, are excellent alds toward establishing world peace. But these theories are not by any “Japa- | and her probable staying power in an HE Sino-Japanese crisls, which | 2/Most inevitable conflict has been looming in the Far East for several weeks, wavers now on the point of peaceable adjustment, now on the verge of a new and destructive war. Japan's apparent reluctance to press on in the face of Chinese aggression is & sharp reversal of the policy she has heretofore pursued. The answer seems to lie in an economic situa- tion which at once impels her to expand and to proceed with caution. The Public Library presents a short list of books and magazine articles on present conditions in Japan. All volumes may be examined at the cen- tral building, at Eighth and K streets, apd at the larger branches. A short on the background of the Chinese position in the current dispute ap- peared in The Star for July 17. Japan's Dilemma. SMALL INDUSTRIES OF JAPAN. By Barnard Ellinger. 37:-260-8. April, 1937. “The Japanese government is doing everything possible to foster these small-scale where they can be carried on rural districts, stand-by for the impoverished agri- cultural population, which still com- prises more than half of the inhabi- tants of the country.” YELLOW WORLD FOR YELLOW MAN. By Christopher Hollis. Catholic World, 145:223-5. May, 1937. “The Japanese cannot and will not emigrate. Therefore we can only live by producing manufactured articles and exchanging them for the food of other nations.” JAPAN'S DILEMMA way. Nation, 144:726-8; 145:39-41. June 26, July 10, 1937. in Contemporary Books. THE BASIS OF JAPANESE FOR- EIGN POLICY. By A E. Hind- marsh. 1936, HC67.H58 “The analyzes the crucial problem of population pressure and the pos- sible remedies, after which he pro- ceeds to an examination of indus- trialization and trade expansion and | their repercussions.” JAPANESE TRADE AND INDUS- TRY, Present and Future. By Mitsubishi, Economic Research Bu- reau, Tokio. 1936, HC67.M69. “An indispensable book of refer- ence, whose usefulness is limited only by the fact that in Japan a very im- portant part of economic activity slips | i i 1 i = through the statistical sieve, and is | T63Ult of many conflicting and inter " lacing forces—prejudice and super- not measured. g ces—pre] d pe: : g > stition, cultural tradition, the old JAPAN'S FEET OF CLAY. economic system, political conditions.” Utley. 1937. HC67.Ut4 “A book that is stimulating and | TRADE PROBLEM OF R even exciting to the well-informed on Economic Review, 27: sup. 43-8 Japan, who can make their own judg- s Felon ments and discard what s not sound.” | s e TNl L \ERORchatd, best export customers and is second WHEN JAPAN GOES TO WAR. BY |only to Canada as a source of our O. Tanin and E. Yohan. 1936. | {mports, makes the problem of chang- HC61.T2. ing trade relations with Japan a most “A comprehensive and authentic important one, which deserves careful Analysis of Jspen's sbility to fight' study.” A n have the Japanese military relaxed their demands on China? is to be found largely in the economic crisis into which world recovery has plunged Japan.” CONTRASTS IN THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION IN CHINA AND JAPAN. By J. E. Orchard. Political Science Quar- terly. 52:18-50. March, 1937. “The present contrasting economic By Freda She is particularly sensitive | has a| is & town somehow so low in spirits.” | Asia. | industries, particularly | and thus afford a | By Eliot Jane- | | “The answer to the question, Why Positions of Japan and China are the | By M.-C. R. ASHINGTONIANS will be interested in & series of | articles just beginning in | Harpers Magazine, the first one appearing in the August issue.| They are by Mrs. Bainbridge Colby, whose husband was Secretary of State under President Wilson. They tell | the story of Mrs. Colby's life as first lady of the cabinet, and are called | “Washington Wife.” The piece in the August magazine | describes her first White House din- ner, her first meeting with the other ladies of the cabinet, her selection of & home and servant staff, her sen- sations generally over having her hus- band lifted to so conspicuous a post. She writes with humor and a sure, light touch. “The waste of time in 1920's social exchange was unbelievable,” she re- marks. “Serious as & nursery game, packets of cardboard had to be| dumped from house to house. | | “‘It's Croats and Slovenes today,’| Charlie would say in the morning. | Each Croat and Slovene lady had l\fiu; cards and each gentleman one. My | own days were just as bad. The card bowl in the hall had to be empued‘ every afternoon like a basin. Soon after luncheon lines formed down the | block. All the visitors from the WPst{ and South came to carry home from | their trip the home life of our dear Secretary of State. Custom opened | one's doors to them. The file of peo- | ple was tailless for hours . . . Many sophisticates thought the whole thing & great bore, but it always amused me, like opening hands of cards, to see the row of nondescript oncom- ing faces.” Those who remember Mrs. Colby, | and those who are taking an interest in the frequently appearing books on Washington life and customs, will doubtless follow the series. It seems | to begin very pleasantly, anyway. | JRITING in an amazingly placid fashion, Emilio De Bono, Mar- shal of Italy, tells in the August Har- pers Magazine how he and Premier Mussolini planned the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and laid down prepara- tions for the attack well in advance of the opening of hostilities The article is, as the editors ex- plain, made up of excerpts from Mar- shal De Bono's forthcoming book, which is a detailed account of the plans and execution of the whole Ethi- opian campaign. The introduction to | the book has been written by Musso- | lini and fs given in full with the article. | The excerpts from the marshal's book are chosen to give an idea of | the deliberate manner in which the | Italians planned the conquest. In the | | beginning, it was their intention, says | the marshal, to await an attack from some disaffected Ras, to follow this with a counter-attack and an inva- slon. But no such attack took place, | although Mussolini instructed his offi- | cer concerning the famous Wal-Wal incident as follows: “We shall see how the Wal-Wal | affair turns out . .. If no solution of | the incident is offered, or if it is not | | such as to satisfy us, we shall follow | subsequent events exclusively in ac- | cordance with our own standpoint.” | As to the possibility that a solution | might have been reached, however, | the marshal says frankly in another | part of the article, “It Was the Autumn of 1933. (The Wal-Wal incldent oc- curred in 1934.) The Duce had spoken to no one of the coming operations in | East Africa; only he and I knew what | was going to happen, and no indiscre- | tion occurred by which the news could | reach the public.” The lack of hostile action by the Ethiopians, however, did not long keep the Italians chafing. They regretted it, but, as the marshal puts it, “From the plan of a maneuvered defensive, followed by a counter-defensive, we were obliged to change over to the | plan of an offensive action.” And so they did. But “obliged” | seems somehow just & little too fresh- | faced and innocent. Even for Mus- solini. Were they really “obliged”? Do they expect us to believe it? Well, the word is that of the leader and | planner of the expedition. He has | written it himself. And he is an old man. How ill it would become the youth of the world to disbelieve him! FIARPERS, it should be said, has new cover. No more the bright orange red distinguishes this veteran on the newsstands. It is now a light cream color with gold borders It | 100ks very tasty, too. Rich, as it were, but not gaudy. The size, however, re- mains the same. Harper's still is not pocket sized: neither is it spreading | out, like its colleague, Scribner's, into the wide flat thin format. Of the two courses, obviously, the latter is in- | finitely preferable. When Harper's | goes into pocket editions, then indeed will the dignity of American maga- | zines be fallen. ISAPPROVING elders who have been prophesying direful things to | overtake the post-war youth for some | years now may be pleased or annoyed, according to temperament, by an ar- ticle in the current Scribner's given over to discussing the present state of that generation. The title of the piece announces its theme. It is “Ours Was | the Best Generation.” The author is Gene Shuford, | _ Says the author, “The Period of the Psyche, in which we, as & college gen eration lived, covers roughly the mid- dle twenties—though for some it may run much lats It has been followed | | BEST SELLERS FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 24, Fiction. NORTHWEST PASSAGE. Rob- erts. Doubleday Doran. AMERICAN DREAM. Foster. Morrow. ‘THE YEARS. Woolf. Brace, BUGLES BLOW NO MORE. Dowdey. Little Brown CHILDREN OF STRANGERS Saxon. Houghton Mifflin AND SO—VICTORIA. Wilkins. Macmillan, Haroourt Non-Fiction. | | MATHEMATICS FOR THE | MILLIONS. Hogben. Norton. | | AMERICAN DOCTOR'S | ODYSSEY. Heiser. Norton | | HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Car- | negie. Simon & Schuster. CAPITOL KALEIDOSCOPE. Keyes. Harper's. | | RETURN TO RELIGION. Link. Macmillan CONVERSATION AT MID- NIGHT. Millay, Harper's. by the Period of Reconstruction, the present college generation: and it wi preceded by the post-war Jazz Era, when sex and bootleg liquor were meat and drink, the campus playboy slept | drunkenly through all morning lec- tures, and the self-styled intellectuals never read the books in any of their courses.” And he goes on, “Entering maturity, we find we have accepted many of the old-fashioned virtues—pragmatically, |of course, for we believe that moral terms require a redefinition in the eir- cumstances of every problem to which they are applied. But we do believe in their redefinition. There is more hope for us as a generation than for any other alive; we lack the narrowness and pettiness of men beyond 50, the cynicism and futility of the war and post-war group, the callow smugness of the new youth.” It sounds optimistic. It might even sound a little smug in its own right. But it answers pretty well the wailing that | has gone on—chiefly from writers who had made & good selling point of it— about the broken lives, the empty hearts and spineless characters of present-day young people day young people have borne with that literary wailing pretty well, too. They have kept their own mouths shut, which is the best way to take anything —until you are good and ready heartening to hear one of them speak- ing up at last. The reviewer has an intuition that there may be more on the same subject before long, too. A NEWSDEALER told the reviewer some time ago that Bachelor had suspended publication. Inquiries elict the statement from the editors of that publication that the rumor of their death has been as exaggerated as was that of Mark's. The July issue did get out somewhat late, and that is the reason for the mistake. Circulation figures. say the editors, are highly gratifying and the magazine has not the slightest intention of discontinuing. Present- | It is | CABINET LADY WRITES SERIES Mrs. Bainbridge Colby Describes Life at the Nation’s Capital in “Washington Wife,” Appearing in Current Harper’s. Bachelor Going Strong Despite Rumors. In this July number (late as aforee mentioned) Bachelor publiches & highly interesting article called “Just Folks” which, rather startlingly, has for its subjects the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Its author is Stanton B. Leeds who was a house guest of Mr., and Mrs. Herman Rogers at the time Mrs. Simpson (as she was then) was also staying with them. Mr. Leeds plece is described as a “plea for an undisturbed home life” for the royal romantics. He comments enthusiastically on the manner in which both the duke and duchess have borne themselves. Of the duchess he says, “To me she gives the impression of never really being afraid. Then, again, she has loyalty. She never goes back on a friend. Here was something to build on, with the surety that you had not been misled. And lastly . . . there's the fact that she creates a home where one finds ‘a kind of quiet pleasantly brightened by wit.' Something about all this would have been told the whole world by King Edward himself over the radio at the time he offered to broadcast his reasons for wishing to marry. At that time he wanted to take his people into his confidence, to tell them all about it “This ‘appeal for happiness’ he was prevented from making, and end, made that other And of Edward he says, “to this day no one seems to know just what he thinks of the Archbishop of Canter- bury. Reminded recently that Lord Baldwin had said that his friendship for the Duke of Windsor and the duke's friendship for him, ‘far from being impaired, would last for life,' the duke, it seems, nodded approvingly.” At any rate there can be no douht that Edward and the duchess hay stolen the show and still are stea it. Their name in a headline is enn |to secure readers. The King may ! | glad enough to escape the limelig! | But Edward and his duchess will hard! be able to look forward to such a boon Brief Reviews of Books Travel. 1937 IN EUROPE. Edited by Eugene Fodor. Boston: Houghton, Mif- flin Co. By all odds the most entertaining of guide books. The where, what and how of European travel in the present year, obviously written for intelligent and particular people. Every traveler ought to have it. Peace. THE PROFITS8 OF WAR. By Richard Lewinsohn. Translated from the French by Geoffrey Sainsbury. New York: E. P. Dutton Co. An exposure and history of what the author calls “the world-wide arma- ments racket,” ranging from “Julius Caesar to the du Ponts.” Very fllumi- nating. Co-operatives. CO-OPERATION ITS ESSENCE AND BACKGROUND. By Fletcher Du- rell, Boston: Bruce Humphries. An examination of the principles of co-operation and their application to every-day problems, including govern- mental, educational, religious and ar- tistic. Interesting. Hygiene. SHADOW ON THE LAND. By Thomas Parran. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. The problem of syphilis By Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service. Sports. HORSES IN SPORT. Edited by Frank A. Wrensch. New York: William Morrow & Co. One hundred and fifty equestrian photographs, with articles by leading authorities on horsemanship covering polo, light harness racing, hunting, racing, hunt racing, shows and West- ern horses. Very attractive. Casual Novels. WOMEN ALSO DREAM. By Ethel Mannin. New York: G. P. Put- nam's Sons. A woman explorer in difficulties with her heart. That sort of thing. As if important. BUCKSKIN BRIGADES. By L. Ron Hubbard. New York: The Macaulay Co. ‘White men and Indians shooting it out once more. Western stuff. Poetry. THE UNTILLABLE HILLS. By W. W Christman. North Montpelier Driftwood Press. Lyrie poems. Average. we nominated GONE WITH THE WIND “‘The Qutstanding Book of 1936’ we nominate as the Foremost Candidate for The Honors of 1937 . . AND SO- VICTORIA VAUGHAN WILKINS ;or here is a story abounding in excite ment and action’ from start to finish, st perbly combining romance, adventure an history, Its scene ranges over the world. It cove the two decades before Victoria's accessic to the throne of England, a time of plo and counter-plots, of royal scandal ar shame unequalled in any other period. Built around two of the most appealing characters of present day literature, itsweeps the reader with mounting excitement through over 600 pages of colorful story. $2.50 wherever books are sold! THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - New York