The Des Moines Register du lieu suivant : Des Moines, Iowa • Page 38

The Des Moines Sunday Register, December 28, 1930, Page Fivt About IBook: Short fR Does This Modern Civilization Standardize Our Minds? Finding a Juvenile for Odegard Tells How Newspapers, Motion Pictures Schools and Every County in Iowa 'Ruled by the DeacT THE hard cake of custom was not broken and the living were ruled by the dead." This, says Paul H. Appleby, Is the thesis ot The American Pub-lie Mind by Peter Odegard. rA Local Setting Helps Children to At Radio Flatten the Public Mind While Odegard thinks the tach Romantic Values to Their Own Section. DOXALD R. MTBPHY.

BY l'AClj II. APPLEBY "DETER ODEGARD expresses the thesis of his new book, Hie American Public Mind (Columbia University Press. A kld ot juvenile I have always liked in a single sentence: "The hard cake of custom was not broken, and the living were ruled by the dead." Two introductory sections show, in terms of modern nsvcholotrv. mind ot the public is having its rough edges smashed flat, Appleby is not so sure. He suggests that the danger- of standardization is not terribly great to a nation so obviously worried about it.

Paul H. Appleby was former, ly on the editorial staff of tha Des Moines Register. He is now editor nnd publisher ot the yews Journal of Radford, JTx. Is the sort that manages to attach romantic values to sections of our own country. I am Inclined to wish that all Des Moines children would how people are inclined to react under force of established herd habits.

The other sections comnrise a detailed tabu lation of instances in which pressure has been exerted to enrorce tnought-habits. They are presented as Btudies of the family, the church, the school, the press read Johnson Brigham's The Sinclair! of Old Fort vlM Moines, though it is nota Juvenile, simply in order to get the sense of the exciting past that belongs to our own city. For the same reason, I hope that Grundy and Hardin counties raise their children on Vandcmark's Folly. I would like to have Gome-body write a good juvenile for each of the ninety-nine Iowa counties, using either contemporary or historical material, but In each case making the setting local. rlod.

the comparison might better political parties, propaganda agen be made with the old world: Is cies, motion pictures, the radio. democracy more or less calculat a n.irjji i '4, I 4 books, and, finally, censorship. ed than autocracy to mane tor Instances of herd-pressure here standardized thought? The movement to reach "the enumerated are representative and valid, so much so that this vofume largest possible public" is really a movement of democracy, just as deserves to rate as a reference book. And it gives a needed ap Calibans Who Talk Like Knights of King Arthur John Dewey Suggests Ways to Make Our Behavior More Nearly Fit Our Moral Claims. ndfrirfuaisin, Old and Xcw by John Dewey; Mlnton Balch and Company 2.00.

AMID the din of "Rotarian applause for present conditions" comes this austerely written book by Mr. Dewey to sura up the problem of life in the American scene. Our lives, our institutions, our Individual fates, he says, are determined by economic forces and a man's worth Is measured by his degree of success in the competitive race for money, while our thoughts and feelings, our homes and churches and schools are based upon the ideals and traditions of the simple social scheme of any century before the eighteenth. Actually behaving like Caliban, wo have tho moral attitude of Galahad. And society, as a whole, has prospered.

Mass development has succeeded In applying fancy-work to the appearance of life, and we glitter as we go to work. Individuality, however, has suffered. Certain European critics have said that it has been completely submerged. But Mr. Dewey more hopefully says that only individuality in its traditional and old fashioned sense is in a losing struggle and that our problem is the construction of a new individual-Ity compatible with tho objective conditions under which we live.

Mr. Dewey has little difficulty in proving that escape, as recommended by the "new" humanists. Into Individual solitude via routes mapped out by minds of the past Is not a solution. It is a narcotic, not a cure. Analyzed carefully, industrialism is seen to be evil only in the motive which has given It its present form, in which form it contributes so completely to our peculiar money aristocracy as to seem to some to be identical with it.

If this motive (of financial gain for tho few) behind industry ran bo changed to the Ideal industrial motive, production lor consumption, American economic evils may be eradicated without disturbing the industrial surface of things. The machine is not to blame, but our use of the machine. "The enemy is not material commodities, but the lack ot will to use them as instruments for achieving preferred possibilities." Reform will be a long nnd slow process, and Its nature is unpredictable. We must first sacrifice out outgrown ideals and Institutions, so nt variance with things as they are. Ideals having Borne connection with realities, "framed out of the possibilities of existing conditions," must bo substituted.

Then by the slow action of tho individual upon so-. clety, society may eventually become an envlron- blocs and propaganda agencies are in virtue those nttltudeB may be. The simple two-party form is commonly held to be ideal on the ground that it is "efficient." Yet to reduce all political opinion to one division necessarily magnifies herd characteristics and rules out diversity. It is not quite so clear that when newspapers, radios, movies and schools ieach out to "the largest possible public" the effect is alto gether in favor of uniformity in thought. Odegard assumes that this is true.

Perhaps his one failure is to make comparisons with other periods. Are we more or less standardized in thought than were our fathers? Recalling that opportunity for individualism was extraordinary in the pioneer pe- proach to the problems of realis expressions of democracy, turner tic politics. they can not survive under absolut ism, absolutism can not. sur Blocs Are Worth Something The author's conclusions are not A new book of this type, though not about the corn belt, is The Mystery in Navajo Canyon by Hilde-garde Hawthorne (Century This tells of two boys who are attached to a scientific expedition hunting for signs of the civilizations of prehistoric man in Arizona. The boys find an untouched village of the Cliff-dwellers and more; the proper number of adventures are thrown The only fault I can find with this book is that it's going to make a lot of boys and girls 'pester their families to make an automobile trip" to Arizona next year.

In New England Hills Where Farmers Still "Hold and Drive" "VF THE juveniles I have read lately, I like Red vive enduring them. Blocs ana propaganda agencies represent a breaking-un of the large herd that obtrusive. Perhaps the most novel uggestion is that blocs in govern would exist under a more absolute ment have virtue and that propa svstem. Do newspapers, schools. ganda agencies do get effective ex radio programs and movies mat pression for certain varied atti tudes, however virtuous or lacking reach out to all these groups tend to re-consolidate them, or do they contribute to differentiation? Printing News for Minorities An Open Letter to Shultz It is difficult, in considering l'otcr IMelKdt.

Fears Standardization this Question, to distinguish be Horse Hill by Stephen W. Meader (Harcourt Brace and Co. ($2.50) quite the best. It Is a farm story and it has horses In it. Boys with similar tastes may like it as well.

Of course, the farm isn't our kind; it is a New England farm (apparently the In Which a Teacher Calls Mr. Shultz an Tsm-ery tween mere change and aotual con fluences rather than out ot tne rise higher under responsibility, under tho manifold influences of forces of a few is rather on the hopeful side. tribution to diversity. As the newspapers have reached an increasing public there can be no doubt that the public attitude on many things has changed. Relative nudity in newspaper art such as would have aroused a Btorm of protest fifteen years ago is commonplace although More Influences In Tlit) Schools The schools, too, as they reach Dear Victor: As a professional English, teacher, I resent your rather shoddy indictment of the tribe on a recent book page.

You evidently don't understand the iadies. They must have been bored to death according to your statement of symptoms. No teacher. Emile was a bright boy. They got along fine.

Our early educators read of that noble experiment and made the mistake of believing that if Rousseau got results by teaching his boy, the principles he used could be applied to mass education. The early edu the widest possible public, encom only kind people write stories about) and the methods of farming described seem rather pre-historic. The story tells of an orphan boy, who worked around a livery stable in a big town, got into trouble with the local Al Capone pass more and different influences. They teach more things, derived from more sources. In the news, inany people still object to it.

The change in newspaper art may lie in the schools, in the radio and in cators at least had an only change, yet it has accustomed the movies differences in religions alibi. They had no newspaper readers to seeing things nount tne doer ones had attended meetings before and hence had no special incentive for radio, press, movie, school, church and propaganda agencies than it is under the centralized leadership of some smaller group. Tho dangers, of course, are Just as real as Odegard's listing makes them appear. The need is for a proportionate Increase iu still other influences books like this one, publications like the Katlon, farm papers, labor papers, class publications of all kinds, and everywhere unyielding insistence upon tho one fundamental, which is free expression of thought. Increase in police regulation and all tho threats of herd dominance occasion less alarm if only the way is open to reach tho widest possible public with any sort of protest.

precedent to follow and escaped in a freight car Jj bound north. He landed in of which they disapprove. Ihe views and iu political views are treated with a certain toleration But where have you been for the last fifty just because the effort Is to reach the widest possible public. A years? Haven you seen the Rosseau harmonious with the happiness of the well public similarly has come to realize; rather foggily of course, that the newspapers will print other things of which they do not approve for the sake of interesting other readers. Much of the criticism directed at the newspapers conies from resentment ot the fact theory at work? Haven't you seen its great (leal of the strength attributed to giants of old was the strength of bitter, lop-sided prejudice.

The newspaper that tones down news hostile to its political party now gives cause for surprised comment' results? Didn't you a New Hampshire farming community, was taken up by a farm family, helped raise a colt to be a first class trotter, and won a big cutter race with him. In the days when light horses were used for farm work, and when special races were held for farm horses, such a winning was possible. What I like about the book, of course, is the affectionate description of out-door life; but the story ought to hold also readers with other tastes. I hope some boys who read this will write in to tell me how they liked it. Perhaps I'm guessing wrong on their tastes; if so, I'd like to know it.

know it had failed? appearing elated. The younger ones were perhaps bored because there were no attractive males in the room. The really smart ones were possibly at a movie. You make a number of assertions and assumptions to which any sensible person must quite naturally answer Didn't anyone tell yu of the. great discovery that the papers print things for developed Individual.

It1 Is a circular process, difficult to translate into definite ends and values, difficult to grasp, and well-nigh impossible to express wth clarity. Mr. Dewey, who does not want his book taken for an Aladdin's lamp, has handled the mntter as simply as and has given us a treatise which Is in Itself a definite assertion of tho critical individualism he advocates. Donald MncRae. Wilson Tells of the Hills of Darkest Arkansas Acres of Sky by Charles Morrow Wilson; O.

P. that it is different to minorities, for more than one lieru. In reaching out to the widest possible public they will print something for everybody, and expose Another story with a farm background Is Land teach a class of forty pupils of different mentalities than to have one pupil? Can't you figure out that in such a case some standard everybody to more diverse stimuli Bpell by Gladys Hasty Carroll (Macmillan temat. At least half of all the items in Odegard's book are culled from Again the farm is in New England; just how dif VIGGO JUSTESEN. "Hoomalimali" (A Hawaiian word meaning "blah" which should become popular).

ferent it is from our farms (or from lots of good newspapers printed for this widest Futnam Sons 12.00. New England farms) Is, shown In this quotation possible public. BWAY trains may roar Into Times Square and First, you assert the New Hu "That day Mark Shaw's ground was turned. Ed drove Odegard cites with regret a cer SUI r.i manism is "the most vital intel senators may roar in congress, but back in the Across the Blackened Vine AFTER these many years, there Is a queer thrill about opening casually a copy of Poetry, reading a sonnet there, thinking "My Heavens, this is great writing: It sounds like and then finding the expected name oil tho page. As Cabell remarks, we grow too familiar with the tricks of our groet writers; having liked them first because they were themselves, we grow tired of them later because they continue to bo themselves.

in Odegard's book. Once it was the rule to print, only the news of one party. Transformation of "party organs" fnto newspiipers printing news for the wholo public makes for tolerance of differences. The very example is potent. Enumeration of the forces tending to standardize and conventionalize everyone's thinking reminds one of the remark of a friend who had listened to a' long listing of the bad qualities of a mutual acquaintance.

He inquired. "Don't some of those things cancel?" ome of the factors bearing on the habit-patterns ot the herd may tend to cancel. Their very number suggests a divergency of influence. At least, it is worm whilo to ask whether there is not inherent vir the horses, and Mark iJhaw held the plow. Oily hills all is unchanged.

People got born; corn is tain decrease in the percentage of editorial opinion, and a decrease in editorial influence. Percentage is lectual struggle ever held In America." Such statements should al walked all day behind them, replacing broken furrows planted, harvested, drunk; people die. Tho hills re main changeless forever. with a hoe." not a proper measure, of course. ways be qualified by "in my time" or "that I have heard of." It is, Charles Morrow Wllnon has However, it is possible, even for of course, no more vital or intel This will seem interesting and curious to farm children, but it might give city boys lifted his eyes unto tho hills for his first novel's Betting.

The hills of darkest Arkan one who has expended a great deal of energy in writing for editorial is necessary? I quite agree with you that the brighter students should be encouraged more. They often get a dirty deal in a system where the average must set the standard. I think several ways coudld be devised, even with our mass education, so that the system can be improved. In the meantime, the English teachers are only too glad to help a child of unusual ability if they can. You mentioned one good teacher in Des Moines You know one who went out of her way to help a colored girl in the Bixth grade writo a novel, a fairly good pages, to feel that this change and girls some peculiar no may he rather an improvement.

tions of what farm life in For this reason and for others less sas. Only it doesn seem so dark after Wilson paints the woodland dwarf, Elijah, with hta shrewd philosophy; Hal, many sections is like. How Odegard's Implication is that editors are weaker than of old. It is complimentary to tha author, we ever, the family is well tue in having certain agencies that find it hard to recapture the first drawn; there is sympathetic probable that there are, even in proportion, just as strong editors do reach the "widest possible pub thrill ot enthusiasm with which ri description of the tasks of we greeted early works. home and field; by the time Some of the regrets that are voiced may bo not liberal but tory, c-urt "10 book is ended the reader today as there were in tho day of traditional giants.

The difference is that more influences are working on the public, and that a larg Yet I sometimes think that Edna St. Vincent Millay has gained with high hopes of youth. Hill people llvo by the law of sunlight and rain; man-made decrees are distant, half-known. Old fends flare whole clans march to pillage, murder, rape, Old feuds crumble hills remain 4 just as James Truslow Adams ra grets iu behalf of the old aristoc lectual than was Fundamentalism, Modernism, Freudlanism (your grandfather can add to the list at leisure). Any "ism" is, after all, merely a trend in thought some dunce tries to capitalize on by giving it a name.

That there is a trend in the direction outlined by the Humanists as a rebound from Rousseau individualism (of which "ism" you are either consciously or unconsciously an ardent disciple) is self-evident and. probably wholesome, at least when applied tothe teaching of English. It is a truism that an "ism" means nothing to the artist. He does as he has always done, thumbs his nose at minor creeds and sects and goes his own way. Others, less artistic, may make an "ism" of thumb racy that the privileged do not through the years.

She has sloughed off some ot that light smartness; has forgotten some of her rhapsodies; and has apparent have relatively their old monopoly er public is influential. Ministers are rather better trained today than they were in pioneer days, but their influence has fallen and for the same reason. CHARLES M. WILSON. one at that.

You know one wno puts on plays by Edna St. Vincent Millay. You know a professor who gladly leads his better students to Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce and that group and recommends them as English teachers. "You know me, Al." Fourth, you accuse Foerster of on the bettor things of life. Not the old aristocracy but a new one ly been for tha most part intent does have a stronger monopoly on feela somewhat the same affection for the farm and for Mark Shaw that his eons do.

The only trouble with the book is the subplot the author felt obliged to add to explain the presence of the narrator on the farm. This sub-plot is terribly silly but most children are sensible enough to dismiss It as nonsense and to go on to enoy the rest of the yarn anyway. Adventurers Who Headed West In fl Clipper Ship or Prairie Schooner rrHlS has been a good Beason for anybody who on making common phrnsca mi money, I believe, yet it is possible The relative strength of those raculously into pootry. All of who write editorials, however, is which is just a long winded way of saying that so long as Miss having set ideas. How about this one? "The modern painters have incidental.

The fact of tho multiplication of Influences is important. And the fact that editorial Millay writes sonnets like the following, she will get my trade. been for fifty yearB closer to cap ing their noses from having turing reality than these human Even In the moment of our earllost watched the artist. ists will get in the next two hun kiss, Second, you seem to think Eng dred years," And still you accuse When sighed the straitened bud lish teachers should inspire pupils The fine thing' about this novel Is its promise of engas to come. Wilson has mastered characterization; pastoral description.

But tho love scenes don't click. Even it in Ufa hill women talk like Wellesley girls with poetry complexes and give themselves us lightly as courtezans, they shouldn't In books. Tho reader Just doesn't accept such sophisticated hill Wilhelminas. Thomas V. Duncan.

An Old Sea Captain Tells of Brave Days on the Ocean When Ships Were Ships and Kot Tin Pots by Captain William Morris Barnes; edited by Hilda Kenbold Wortman; Albert and Charles Boni $3.00 ARE the ladles, bless 'em, more vulgar than the men? Not really vulgar, of course, but do they like richer, more robust phrases bettor than men do? I'm not inviting a quarrel, so you mustn't JL like books on American history. The Old China Trade by Foster Rhea Dulles (Houghton Mifflin $4.00) tells of the adventurers who pushed their tiny ships out into the ocean and snooped around the seven seas to find something to trade to the into the flower, to be writers rather than philoso him of Intolerance for saying, We wonde? if the modern painters Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome phers, a doubtful wisdom. How Influence has given place in importance to news emphasis contributes to this diversification of influences working on the public. This is a fruit of democracy and a contribution to. democracy.

Tha newspaper editorial page today is ttle more than an example of what readers should do with the news. Thai readers do draw their own conclusions out of the force of many in- know what.they are trying to do. you ever got the idea that the business of schools was to train artists After having studied modern art, that neither tho old nor the new aristocracies has the ancient monopoly on information, entertainment and even individuality. Where Ilnblt-Pnt terns Are Fixed. It is possible to find backward, isolated communities where the agencies appealing to tho "widest possible public" still reach only a limited public.

Such communities are more fixed in their habit-patterns than are those where a larger public is reached by the press, the radio, the movie and propaganda agencies. In the south even voting reaches a smaller public, laws excluding not only the Negroes but a great ninny whites on the theory that tills puis government Into the hands of the better qualified. Propaganda in the south is also less well organized. And government in the south is this; And that I knew, though not the day and hour. Too season-wise am being country bred, To tilt at autumn or defy the frost Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did, I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost." I only hoped, with the mild hope of all Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree.

look ot mo like that. Look, instead, at a few of our popular books of the past few years Trader Chinese for tea. The Chinese, unfortunately, didn't want anything we had In this country except gingscng; the skippers of our China-bound ships had to trade iron chisels and other such items to Indians of the Pacific northwest for furs before they could go on to Canton. Anybody who shipped for Canton might be gone two years, five or forever. There were pirates as well as Indians to argue probably as much as you have, I still wonder.

And I think Foerster has a perfect right to wonder all he pleases. In fact, I think it would be quite wonderful if he would wonder a little about the importance of the New Humanism. I agree with your conclusion, "No whatever is done in the cause of literature will have to be done outside the schools That is quite right. It always has been. May I add that English teachers will probably do as much for the cause of literature outside the schools as any other profession.

In the meantime, let English teachers teach the language to future normal beings and let genius teach genius as it always has done. Vlggo Justesen is beyond my comprehension. The genius, is, of course, not the product of schools. He never has been. If our English teachers can teach pupils to write tha English language so others can get the Ideas they are trying to express, if they can at the same time give them an Introduction to Shakespeare, Chaucer or any of those other fellows who didn't learn to write in school but who are nevertheless English teachers, (Note: your own delightful Sherwood Andersonian style), we should be happy.

Third, you assume all pupils are potential artists. That was a touching theory in tho days of Rousseau as a rebound from the Old Humanism. Rousseau taught his boy Emile. He was a good Mrs. McNceley Killed Iowa and the I'nited States lost a writer of talent when Mrs.

Marlon Hurd McNeelry of Dubuque was struck and killed by an automobile recently. Mrs. McXeolry was one of America's 'ending writers of juveniles. Hi-cent bonks of liprs are Rusty KuNtnn niul The Jumping Off Plate. A new book The Black Sheep Is scheduled for publication in the spring.

not more progressive but less, not moro but less vital. After all democracy is democracy, it must be met with knowledge that even under any other system it is possible to advance only so far as the mass is ready Horn, this When Ships Were Ships and others and you'll find them edited by women. And you'll find all of the naughty words right there in them; and perhaps you'll find vulgar words, too. Take H7ic Ships Were Ships, for instance. Here's an old sea captain, describing at loriKth his experiences on the seven seas, and if this one Is a fake I know I'm going to lose my faith in the stork story! He begun going to sea nt twelve, and ho followed It A fairer summer and a later fall Than in these parts a man (8 apt to see, And sunny clusters ripened for tho wine: I tell you this across the blackened vine.

KDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ilL at the time to advance. The question is whether the mass is able to THE TABLOID REVIEW DEPARTMENT CAPTAIN BARNES. for sixty-five years. Ho'b over eighty now, when he tells his story.

And you ought really to read his the extra twenty-five words are THIS winter, I see, isn't going to be nearly long enough. There are on hand a dozen or so long winded books, unnecessary. It is not enough more story he manages in it ahout everything that happened during those years, and his barnstorming of the seas has taught him to talk, and made him a Captain. Or maybe he's the wholo damned fleet. each of which is good for most of a winter's reading.

There are five or six books that explain the workings of the uni with. E. DOVGLAS The adventurers who went branch. west by the land route had a less profitable time and an even more dangerous one but alongside the efforts, the old China trade seems as imPf3' and unimportant as a spring bre e. 11 E.

Douglas Branch (Appleton $5.00) gives a picture of the wave of population as it rolled west over the Alleghenies, to the Mississippi, and on it Pacific coast. Mr. Branch has presented a readable and stirring popular account of the westwa migration; he has also inserted, though quite unobstru-eively, an amazing number of significant historical facts This is the first time, to my knowledge that anyone has put into one book a summary of this sort. The University of Iowa, where Mr. Branch took his graduate training, can congratulate Uself.

O'Brien's Asterisks Clash With the O. Henry Awards 0 THOSE who still retain a reverence for constituted authority and particularly for authority in the field of criticism, I recommend a com-parlson of the reports of Mr. O'Brien and of the O. Henry Memorial Committee on the distinguished short stories of 1929. The other week I reported Mr.

O'Brien's conclusions. Readers who took Mr. O'Brien seriously will be horrified to find what the T.7n.. Pnmmfttoa has done. verse in some detail: there are several extensive biogra phies; there are a good number of novels that run to 800 ous comment on 27ie Sun, Also Rises.

Hemingway's book Is older than two years, but we'll figure that the recent Modern Library reprint gives it a new lease of life for this department. Readers will recall that the French officer who pinned the medal on Hemingway's wounded hero, jsaid: "My boy, you have given more than life itself." Hie Hun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; Modern Library A sex variation of the old story of tho man who played tho piccolo No Nervous Embarrassed Giggles George Arliss may go down to fame as the man who made the tulkles endurable. Certainly many movie patrons ought to buy his book out of gratitude for his services to the no longer silent screen. Miss Mahnko insists that, he is also a writer. Perhaps he is, though this seems too much to expect.

It is a little too much like tho hero of the old talcs, who was a perfect horseman, a champion swords once you get him started. Don iarran. A Hero at Twenty-Five, He Was Burned at Thirty-Six The Itlack Baron by Tennlllo Dix; Bohbs Merrill pages ana suu.uuu woras Of this group, Arnold Bennetts $3.50. new one on how it feels to be a hotel manager, is supposed to be to allow a full discussion." I can't be sure whether Mr. Chrischilles wrote this before or after Miss Messenger's prize winning seventy-five word tabloid on It.

v. R. appeared. It was my notion that Miss Messenger made fine use of the extra twenty-five words. But for that matter, Mr, Chrlschilles does very well with his fifty.

Van Loon in a Literary Marathon R. v. R. by Hcndrik Willem Van Loon; Horace Liverlght This momentous tome, purport DON'T know who Tennille Dix is, but I think I one of the more important. No know what he has been reading and that is Gilles body has yet sent me a tabloid on when it rained S20.00 cobl pieces de Rats, a seemingly competent study by A.

L. on the hand. Dim I el low tutd an Vincent and Clare Binns, printed in London in 1926 It; probably even the fastest read er is stuck somewhere half through man, a devastating lover and the handsomest man seen since Byron began to put on weight. Perhaps The Week's Winner Success by Lion Feucht-wanger; Viking Press Sharply, incisively, deftly, with the cool detachment of the surgeon, Feuchtwanger cuts througlr the fatty layer of individual lives, to lay bare the anatomical disorders of the social system, and finds injustice gnawing at the very skeleton of society, i Marion L. Diamond Sheldon, Iowa by A.

M. Philpot, Ltd. I first thought that Mr. Dix was a it But Success, Feuchtwanger's Arliss is saved by the last item new book, has found a number of harmonica. C.

Meek, Des Moines. Even a Bystander Acts at Times Writing tabloids about a Russian novel is probably the his good fairy having endowed him with the homeliest phiz on the stage, has made his other gifts souls to plough through its for The Committee has fliviaeu fterolc the year between Dressing Vp by R. Bur-tt Harpers' November. 1929) and ther Jew $ar 1929). it length.

I am going to read ing to be a biography of the myself as soon as I can acquire 1 -I -MM famous Rembrandt van seem credible. the Years From Itlaomshury by George Arliss; Blue Ribbon 1 looks "l'n the Years From Blooms- world's hardest job. Miss Stuntz, woman and certainly this Is a ladylike story of Gilles de Ruis which attributes to sadism, and that without mentioning tho word, his murders of perhaps four hundred boys. Master of a tremendous fortune at 16, marshal of Franoe and light hand of Joan of Arc at 25, do Rais was hanged and burned at 3G, tnrealens, oiten, to oerotne an au tobiography her. suddenly finds its object again and amhles on to an uncertain end.

Out wording bury" Is a friendly, personal, yet not too intimate autohiograpliv however, manages to give us a notion of what Gorki's latest is about. Bystander by Maxim Gorky; Jonathan Capo and Harrison Smith Without Oriental magnificence, even our loquacious Dreiser, this of George Arliss. Honest and Is undoubtedly the season "lit Van Loon in a Literary Marathon. T. H.

Chrlschilles sends In a on R. v. II. and adds some erary marathon." T. II.

hrisehilles, Algona, Iowa. uVxperatn poverty or brutal cruel- Greek by William M. John (Century August Neither of these had the sacred three wrUta which mark Mr. O'Brien's prize winners, they are absent from the two-asterisk list; only barely do they Tin to the list of mildly distingmshed stories by collecting one asterisk apiece. Of the authors of the other short stories in the Henry collection, only one, Wilbur Daniel Stee la really a high ranker in the O'Brien rating scale.

Three of the authors didn't even collect one Brien asterisk; the rest worry along with one or two. No doubt the answer of O'Brien to this would be that Henry was a second rate writer and that a collection named after him should be made up of tories by second rate writers. My own feeling that the O'Brien collection is often somewhat IreaK-Ish while the O. Henry collection is always commonplace. I'd rather read O'Brien, even though he does seem to make plenty of typographical errors with his asterisks.

an injury that will keep me from working and yet not interfere with reading. Miss Diamond, who wins the prize this week, says: "I do not claim that my tabloid any more than a comment, it is impossible to summarize the generous seven hundred and eighty pages of his huge book In fifty words. It is, however, well worth the effort required to read it, particularly for the peculiarly impersonal point of view of the author, who regards contemporary Bavaria in the same light in which he regarded medieval Prussia in Power." It, the hook remains Russian of critical comments on my seventy- his Beemingly inexnaustime tennille dix. fortune nenrly dissipated. Strikingly handsome, he was a military man of the first rank, a poet and dramatist, an actor, and a producer of drama on a mer-velous scale.

He wa also an egomaniac, a sexual invert and a sadist. The lilack Baron is only a half-way modern bi five word contest "I 'choose' to straightforward, with no nervou9, emharrassed giggles on the part of the author the book leaves one exclaiming, "I feel as if I really knew him." Harriet I. Mahnke, X. Linn Street, Iowa City, Iowa. The PES MOINLS RFr.lSTER tm weekly vriie of new two-dollar Gold Pieces on the Harmonica tfye deepest dye, The Instamling dim, a watch Here is a tabloid from the For stick to the 50 word tabloid department and trust that your 75-word gotten City of the tabloid section.

er of amazing accuracy with a tempering of national fatalism is a'wavs immeasurably surprised Des Moines. How the outlandcrs ography. It fails to emphasize the sex angle. It contest has not made me ineligible for this. In my humble estima have been putting it over tho cap furnishes conversation and intimate details in the when ho finds himself to have modern manner (pretty thin Btuff generallv) and been now and then a participant.

tion, you cannot improve the 60 itals literary lights lately. Mr. Meek rallies around the deflated banner this week with a humor-, booh to the author of the brt Ml-word book-review rerelred. Address rele to the TABLOID REVIEW DEPARTMENT DIS MOINES REC1S-Jtft, PES MOLNtS. Fern K.

Htuntz. Hudson, Iowa. characterizations of the important figures (for the most part weak.) Charles Burns. word tabloid for a short summary;.