The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 55

CURRENT TOPICS Friday- jflardj of bcnte $nge of tfjc ian jftancteco Cxnmtnev iw3 noted writers The greatest danger today is Stephen ie. German Bonfires A Number of Things Looking at Life Bv Aelcla Rogers St. Johns- Vagabondia -Bv Bruno LesM'nir- l-Bv Aldous IIuxIov-1 i-Bv Charles II JyjEW YORK. Here I am, back where I started. Yes, sir.

More years ago than I like to dwell upon (because I don't look as old as I am and girls are shocked when I tell them my age and I hate to shock girls) an infant in New York squawled its greeting to this earth and that infant was me. (Yes, they learned me grammar.) And now, en route to Europe, I'm stopping off for a few days to give the old town the once over. The first thing I had to do was to go downtown to get my steamship ticket. I took the right subway but got off at the wrong station. On the return trip I got on at the right station but took the wrong train.

I landed across the river in Queens. Goir.g up the stairs I noticed that some women drew away and glared at me. so I suppose I was talking to myself. Why in blankety-blank don't they have men on th trains and on the stations to give you in formation? Those mechanical doors that open and shut by ghost power may be economical, but they give me the willies. The only man to whom I spoke said: "I'm a stranger, too." Mrs.

is unhappy. As she stepped on a train to go downtown a woman asked her jf it was a Brooklyn train and Mrs. said "No." Because she had no intention of Alt 7 -A vf 1 I fl 1 I W. 1 THE first annual convention of the Young Democrats Club, held in Kansas City, brought forth a demand from the members that "set speeches" by guest orators be re. duced or abandoned entirely.

You may have heard the story of the time a candidate for the Governorship verbally laid the cornerstone of a southern California high school while actually unveiling a war monument in San Francisco. But aside from that, the day of the old-time, stilted orator is definitely over. Today we demand frank and honest speeches, and we greatly appreciate a few funny stories, especially if they are new. That is why President Roosevelt's radio talks have gone to the hearts and influenced the minds of his fellow citizens. Nothing that savors of much preparation is any longer acceptable.

We must feel that the speaker is spontaneous. That convinces us that he knows what he is talking about and that he believes it. The greatest of our modern orators was Mayor James J. Walker, of New York. Once you had heard "Jimmy" it was easy to understand his hold upon the greatest American city.

The gift' of humor, sim-plicity and gentle pathos was his. Had he added to that sincerity and high purpose nothing could have stopped him. Without them he could go just so far and no further. DURING the lost -love suit of Mrs. Marion Read against Claire Windsor, love letters of the beautiful actress to George Read were read aloud in the courtroom.

If there is any supreme torture known to the human race it must be to sit in a crowded courtroom and listen in cold blood to one's love letters, written in the temporary insanity of a mistaken passion. The things that seemed so beautiful and so sacred become maudlin and commonplace, once the park of life and love has departed, leaving them poor little corpses without the dignity of ghosts. It must be sufficient punishment for any crime. Love letters have enriched literature and wrecked lives. The girl who writes impassioned love letters to a married man is taking one of life's greatest chances.

Possibly she believes his slightly ancient story of misunderstanding "we haven't really been man and wife for years" and accepts his version of a coming and inevitable divorce. F.UT, even if she adores the very ground he walks on, it would be very, very wise, and perhaps a little more honorable, to say: "All right, dear. Times have changed and it's not unheard of these days to announce an engagement as soon as the divorces are in the air. But I'd like to see the final papers before I put my love for you in writing." MRS. LILONE GREEN TORRENCE secured a divorce from Ernest Tor-rence, son of the late beloved motion picture actor, on the ground that her hushand told her she had lost all her charm for him.

Seems to me that Mr. Torrence was the one who might have won a divorce on those grounds. If a lady loses her charm for a man it Is usually her own fault and there doesn't seem any particular reason why he should stay married to her. There is a definite obligation on the part of a beloved woman to remain charming. if, if, TMNANCIAL writers are commenting LONDON.

I listened in, some few evenings ago, to the most curious piece of broadcasting that ever came my way across the ether. Its source was a Southern German station and its occasion was one of those solemn book burnings, which have become such a feature under the new regime. The entertainment began with a speech by one of the lesser ministers of the cabinet a grand oration addressed to German youth, to that "Hitler-Jugend," which is to transform the corrupt republic into a kind of Wagnerian paradise. The performance was dramatic and the stage management most effective. The committing of each book to the flames was preceded by a sinister roll of drums, such as used to prelude a military execution.

Then the harsh bawling of the orator broke out, denouncing the author; calling him a swinish internationalist, a dirty Jewish traitor, vile perverter of youth, an underminer of patriotism and morality. )(. 3f 3f. fTTHE speaker's favorite epithet, outside a limited repertory of words of abuse, was "un-Ger-man." "Un-German spirit," he yelled of every author whose book was burnt. If it had not been such a tragic reversion to tribal barbarism, I should have laughed.

For that "un-German" was really very funny. It is as funny as "un-English" or "un-American," as "un-French" or "un-Jugo-Slavian," as "un-Esthonian" or "un-Venezuelan." Patriots of every country, including Monaco, Andorra and San Marino, make copious use of this kind of abusive adjective. And its meaning is in every case the same: it signifies "not to my personal taste." For a Nazi, an un-German German is a German who happens not to agree with him and whom he therefore hates. If Einstein and Thomas Mann were ever to talk of un-German Germans (which they probably do hot) they would be referring to the Nazis to the men who are busily destroying the things which these distinguished exiles regard as most valuable in German civilization. TS THERE such a person as a truly German German, a genuinely Finnish Finn? The question is unanswerable.

All one can say is that there is apt, very naturally, to be a certain similarity of thought and behavior patterns among people who have been brought up under the same tradition. There is, for example, a kind of Lowest Common Denominator of Englishness, which is different from the L. C. D. of Amer-icanness.

Most eminent men depart, by the very fact of being eminent, from the mean their country. Each nation is proud of geniuses who are essentially un-national. How "un-English" was England's favorite hero, Horatio Nelson! How singularly "un-American" was Poe! How "un-Frcnch." Blaise Pascal Judged by Nazi standards, most of the great men of Germany were mt only "un-German" in being and therefore suspicious-unlike the average small 'No, sir, it was you who bopped the oiiieer, sir. I merely held your hat and stick, sir." THERE it one little story in Zona Gale's new collection, which she calls "Old-Fashioned Tales" (D. Appleton-Century which is as heartbreaking as anything I have read in a long time.

"Lights Out" is the name of it, and it concerns an old couple driven, at last, to the county poor house, through no fault of their own, simply the victims of circumstances. It is old-fashioned, I suppose, in this rushing age, to feel one's heart quiver, and almost snap, reading of such lonely people, destitute at the end of their piteous lives. And so Miss Gale's little masterpiece was rightly included in a volume so titled. She can tell, as few authors can, a great deal in a little space. Within the compass of a few pages she can make you see the entire life of an individual, merely by hiiting the high spots, passing over the years as a storm passes over the earth.

A hint here, an incident made known there, and suddenly you have a tragic vision of someone's existence, from the cradle to the grave. She is at her best when she writes thus; and always it is the little, quiet lives that interest her. She has peered into the hearts of country people and those dwelling in small towns, and she knows them well. A swift, sure touch is hers, an economy of phrase that is admirable. ift if IN another story, like "The Night of the Storm," she can review a feud in one flashing paragraph, revealing the reason for manv people's clumsy, behavior.

A little child is lost on a bitter Winter's night, and an enemy of the father accidentally discovers her, while others seek with ropts and lanterns all over the wide prairie. Then comes the real drama, when the father refuses to believe that the child was thus found, and dark suspicion arises in him. The end is gloriously simple, and the feeling is left with the reader that hatred is of little worth. Old-fashioned, too; but these old themes will never die. But Miss Gale, if she but knew it, is modern also.

"A Way of Escape" shows a young married group at a dinner party, and we see how commonplace they are in their suburban self-conceit. But behind the party lies a tragedy of which they are not aware, and there is a spiritual battle between a husband and wife who learn much of each other which otherwise they might never have learned. In "A Vinter's Tale," as in "Lights Out," Miss Gale uses the same idea, but does it with a neat turn of humor, and the outcome is happy rather than sad. In her foreword. Miss Gale calls this "light collection." but it has body, and it blazes now and then with a furious flame.

There are twenty talcs in all, and they can be read with profit as well as with pleasure. if, if, if, TN his biography of "Oscar Wilde" (D. I Appleton-Century Co.) G. J. Renier throws no new light on the strange, paradoxical man who amazed those of the Victorian era, and whose brilliant career ended with his imprisonment, and his writing of one of the finest poems of our time and a prose justification of himself that had in it all the self-consciousness which he could never quite shake off.

Mr. Renier speaks of Wilde's plays with unstinted praise. He says that "Lady Windermere's Fan" richly deserved its success. Perhaps it did. in its era; but I defy anyone of intelligence to read it now without bursting into the kind of laughter it was not meant to evoke.

He says that the play displayed creatures of flesh and blood. Reading tiie lines they uttered, after the lapse of years, one finds them stilted and absurd. The men talk exactly as the women talk a weakness that Wilde could never overcome. The epigrams are not those of the characters, but of the playwright. No plav was ever more dated.

If. if. THE late Alice Meynell once told me that she considered Wilde, as an artist, distinctly third rate; and as the years roll along I am beginning to think she was right. All his biographers impress upon us his ready wit; but it is well known that he prepared most of his extravagant statements, and created situations that would lead to their apparently accidental utterance. Some of his poetry and many of his essays have a lasting value; hut in the theatre only one of his plays, "The Importance of Being Earnest," has a chance of survival.

It is a legend that keeps his name alive, and, of course, while he lived, there was interest in him anions those who wished to see how he would reshape and remould his life, to make it possible for him to go on when he left Reading Gaol. Frank Harris, has written of those last fearful days spent in Paris, when Wilde found himself alone, and only a few people followed his coffin to its grave. Now that the man has been gone these many years, his figure is a ghost upon a screen; and while some of his wit still sparkles and crackles, a newer form of what might be called humorous wisdom has taken place, and Wilde's epigrams have lost their old-time lustre. Ifis snobbery, his love of titles, robbed him of those human qualities which might have saved him when he needed saving; but he seemed to be interested only in "dying beyond his means." Inside Dope on Germany Bv Rohrrt Benchlev The War on Peace -Bv (MTlrude Atherton- going to Brooklyn. But it WAS 1 Brooklyn train and now Mrs.

is worrying about where that woman landed. pHE town looks about the same as it did a year ago. perhaps even a little mors-so. It's a bit noisier and more bustling and people seem more cheerful. The great White Way seems dingier, and after all the parks I've seen in the West and in Europe Central Park looks a bit moth-eaten.

Food hasn't improved a bit I had better meals in San Francisco and Chicago. I'm sure that after Prohibition repeal the gentle art of cooking will have a renaissance. Bootleggers are very friendly and must have great confidence in human nature. On my return to my hotel tonight I found a printed price-list tucked under my door with the bootlegger's name and telephone number and the notice: "If this hotel operator says 'phone does not answer, please use public 'phone and you will get connection." Prices are quite reasonable. Gin from 75c to $2 a quart, rye.

Bourbon and Scotch whiskey from $1 to $3 and French brandy at $4 a quart. A bottle of gin or rum is thrown in with every purchase of $4. 50 and over. I never saw anything so charmingly frank. One of these days I suppose that kidnapers, dope peddlers and racketeers will be sending out printed monthly schedules.

On a newsstand I saw what appeared to be a new magazine called "Financial Ballyhoo." I wondered whether it was devoted to private or governmental racketeering and decided to buy a copy. But on nearer approach I found it was really two periodicals, one peering out above the other a financial review and "Ballyhoo." Nevertheless, that combined name isn't bad. if. if, 'pO my mind the outstanding features of A my native city have always been its bigness, its energy and its carelessness. I am using those words in their spiritual sense.

The height of buildings or statistics of size do not impress me. I wouldn't go around the corner to see the Empire State Building a second time, but I'm rather proud that we New Yorkers think when we do think in the most casual Empire State Building terms. You can say that New York-is provincial. In many ways it is. You can say that New York is not a typical American city.

It cannot be', because we have hundreds of cities all cut on the same pattern and none of them is like New York. In fact, there are lots of things that yoa can say about New York which, perhaps, might not be flattering. But you cannot say that New York is small in spirit or heart or vision or charity or intent. if. if.

if. AFTER writing the foregoing I recessed for dinner. My friend Gorty took me to Billy the Oysterman for cats. To everybody's disgust I insisted on corned beef and cabbage and they cooked it specially for me. Gorty took a steak.

I can get plenty of steaks in Europe but I can't get corned beef and cabbage. So I'm making haywire while the sun shines. And tlien Gorty insisted on taking me to the top of the Empire State Building. I told him what I had written earlier in the day and that high buildings made me nervous and that I knew just what the panorama looked like without seeing it and that I didn't want to go. But he's one of those Southerner that can wheedle a gold filling out of a tooth and he finally had his way.

It took three elevators to get me to the top. And I saw just what I thought I would sec an ocean of electric lights. I felt the building swaying and was sure it was going to topple. My knees got wobbly and my stomach felt queer. Then we got into the elevators again and fell down a million feet.

And now I'm as nervous as a cat. if, if. ANYWAY, this is a day that I shall always remember. It's the end of Prohibition for me. I have enough good illicit stuff to last me for a couple of nightcaps.

In the morning I sail for Europe, where there is no Prohibition. And by the time I get back here nothing but the unpleasant memory of that ignoble experiment will remain. Here's looking at you the fact that old traders are upon nuzzled bv the stock market trend and find they were also un-German in more specifically anti-Nazi ways. Goethe, if he were alive today, would be denounced as an internationalist, Schiller as a revolutionary, Heine as a Jew. Nietzsche was never tired of praising the Latin races at the expense of the Germans.

As tor Frederick the Great his canonized hero of the Nazis despised the German language, aspired to rank as a distinguished Parisian author and had almost no intimate friends who were not Frenchmen. One shudders to thiivk what would happen if a party of Nazis were to break into Sans Souci and find him at supper with such enemy-alien cronies as Mauper-tuis, Voltaire and that uncompromising atheist and materialist, La Mcttrie. "Un-Gcrman spirit But meanwhile the book burnings and the Jew-baitings continue. One cannot laugh. A GOOD deal has been written about the Peace Conference, but most of it too soon after the event, and by men whose hard heads hadn't an imaginative cell left in them.

I have always maintained that the great facts of history should be treated by writers with some training in the art of fiction, and I never felt more justified than when I read "Portrait of a Diplomatist," Harold Nicolson's biography of his father, Sir Arthur Nicolson, afterward Lord Carnock. You felt that in this enchanting book you were getting an accurate picture and interpretation of those sixty momentous years that moved with such a deadly precision toward the World War; but at the same time those inexorable facts were informed with such a rich and vivid imagination, arranged with so much art, the characters tvere so lifelike, the minor incidents so treated with all the ingenuous verisimilitude of the novelist, and the central figure, Sir Arthur, so lovable, that no historical novel could compare with it in interest. if. if. if, 'TMIOSE qualities, both sane and imaginative, so admirably fused in "Portrait of a Diplomatist," are equally apparent in "Peacemaking Rejnimscences of the Pans Peace," although the material is far less promising.

Mr. Nicolson went to Paris as a junior member of the British delegation, whose chief was Sir Arthur Balfour. He was, in short, one of those numerous young men attached to the various delegations whose job it was to cram themselves on every subject likely to come before the conference, thus saving the brains of the Big Four from bursting with too much digested knowledge. One gathers the impression from these brilliant pages that those younger men with their practical idealism, with their unworn, unblighted minds, their willingness to work and impatience with interminable talk (above all, with their enthusiasm for justice and fair play) would have done better if they had strangled their ciders and written a treaty that would not have bred every variety of miasmatic poison during the ensuing fifteen years. But it was not to be, and we must be content with a dispassionate, satiric and often humorous account of those criminal absurdities, merciless portraits of the Big Four, a description of the signing of the treaty in the palace at Versailles that is a masterpiece, and a journal at the end as delightful as Arnold Bennett's.

His portrait of Wilson is as devastating as it is sincere, for he went to that conference exalted with the belief that at last a great leader had arisen to function as both redeemer and guide. You feel in his disappointment all the tragedy of youth disoriented and permanently scarred. if. i if. TTE brought many illusions to that conference, but I doubt if he took any away.

He expresses "the conviction that human nature, like a glacier, moves but an inch or two in every thousand years." This book is avowedly written to re-create the "atmosphere" of an episode forgotten in all but its dire results, and there is no doubt of its success nor of its consuming interest and general distinction. But why, oh why, will the best British writers say "those sort of things," use "liable" with the verb, and "anyone," "somebody" with the plural pronoun? if, TWO other biographies, recently published, outrank, like Mr. Nicolson's two books, any novel in vivid interest; Duff Cooper's "Talleyrand" and Bolitho's "Albert the Good." In fiction we have had two notable first novels: "Lake of Fire," by Lionel Houser and "Afan of Two Worlds," by Ainsworth Morgan; a new and ever welcome Jalna book, and the best collection of short stories I have ever come across: "Short Story Hits of 1932," edited by Thomas B. Uzzell. These stories, that appeared in All Fiction, Big Circulation and Literary magazines, are so uniformly admirable that it rather appalls one to observe how totally unknown most of the jLjAVING been privileged to go "down the Bay" on the press-boat to meet the incoming Nord-Hamburger Lloyd liner "Bremerhaven" on her maiden voyage to this country (well, possibly not a maiden voyage, but awfully, awfully nice I am able to write an exclusive interview with Mr.

Otto G. Gelegenheit, the well-known student of foreign affairs and Kelly pool player, who was returning to this country after three months spent in Germany and surrounding hot-beds. Receiving me in his cabin while the ship lay in Quarantine (hay-fever had been discovered in the steerage and the entire passenger list was held for examination) Mr. Gelegenheit spoke freely of affairs in Germany under Hitler. "I do not think that America understands the situation in Germany today," he said, smiling and scowling at the same time.

"Jede Revolution bedeutet die Durchhrechung der stehenden Reichtsordnunf; "I didn't quite get that last," I interrupted. "I said that during a revolution one must expect a few irregularities in the outlying districts," he continued. "However, the German people as a whole "You play Kelly pool?" I asked. "A little," he said, modestly. "And you?" "I'm fine, I replied.

"It has been a little hot here this Summer, but I personally don't mind the heat. I thrive on it." if. if. if. MR.

GELEGENHEIT laughed heartily at this sally, and I had to chuckle a little myself. "I tell you what I like best, though," he said, as soon as he had regained his composure. "Cold chicken that one gets out of the icebox at night. That's eating!" "You are painting a very tantalizing picture, Mr. Gelegenheit," I said.

"What else do you sing?" "I go in more for classical music," he said, opening a steward and bringing out a seidel of Murtchner. "I like to hum." "Would you hum something now?" I asked. "In just the shake of a lamb's tail," he replied, tossing off the beer. "You don't drink in this country, I understand, now that prohibition is coming in." "They never can enforce prohibition repeal in this country," I said hotly, "We take orders from nobody," I added with a significant leer. if.

if, If, A NATION must act as a unit or not at all," he replied. "New in Germany, for example, bei zielbewusstester and tatkracftigster Fuhrung "There you go, clowning again!" I laughed. "Can't you ever be serious?" "Sure I can," he said. "Look!" And he knitted his brows fiercely and made a clawing motion with both hands in my direction. "Frighten you? "No." "Not just a teenty-weenty bit?" he pleaded.

I had to give in. The man's charm got me. "All right, then! Just that much!" And I indicated about the tenth of an inch of my forefinger. "Good!" he exclaimed. "Now we're getting on!" DID you have a rough passage?" I asked, getting back to my interview.

"It was pretty choppy there for a couple of days," he said, reminiscently. "But I kept a stiff upper lip." "You keep a chauffeur, too?" I asked, pencil poised. "Just a little one," he replied. "You'd love him." "I'm sure I would, Mr. Gelegenheit," I said.

"But I must be toddling along now, thank you. And, by the way, how are things in Germany, anyway?" At this point five stewards wearing Nazi armbands appeared from the clothes-closet. "Mr. Gelegenheit has nothing to say," said the Chief Steward, throwing Mr. Gelegenheit into a large trunk.

"Auf wiedersehen!" When I awoke 1 was in the water, just to starboard of the St'atue of Liberty, swimming like mad to make the first edition with my interview. Once a newspaperman, always a newspaperman. something strangely amiss in the new scheme of things. Says Mr. Harry H.

Becker: "The highly professional character of trading meantime has become increasingly apparent." Which all, in everyday language, means that the boys aren't able to manipulate the market as they used to do and that they are playing pretty much by themselves. Maybe we have actually gotten onto ourselves. The frank statements of Mr. J. P.

Morgan before the Senatorial Investigating Committee which revealed that prices were run up and down at the will of a few powerful inside men has percolated, and the man in the street has decided that said powerful inside men can run it up and down for their own amusement. What it really means is that the days when every taxidriver, milkman and hardworking bookkeeper rushed out on some wild tip to buy some stock that the boys were going to have some fun with are gone beyond recall. It was fun for the boys in Wall Street while it lasted, but we're pretty busy and a lot wiser, and we won't keep on being suckers after we've been told about it. THE flat-chested woman will be out of luck this year, according to Mrs. George Palen Snow, fashion expert, who upon her return from Europe says: "The hour-glass silhouette, as it is called, will mould the figure and fit like a glove.

I don't think this new silhouette, introduced by Mae West, is essentially romantic." I must disagree with Mrs. Snow. A woman was created to be a -voman and to me there is something darned romantic about the physical expression of her womanhood. The flat-chested, flat-hipped "is that a girl or boy" figures of last few years were about as romantic as an alarm clock. Hurrah for Mae West if she has helped to render it unfashionable as well.

I'i'i I 1 MUD BATHfi The Celestial Garden Warning Around me lie the city streets, Macadam, brick and stone, With here and there a stunted tree In some back yard alone. But when the magic twilight falls, Then, from my window high, I lean, and looking up behold A garden in the sky. The stars like clustered lilies bloom Along the paths of night, And through them moves the shining moon, A lady robed in white; And when I wake at dawn to meet Whatever dav discloses. The rising sun before me spreads Its gold and crimson roses. Minna Irving, Implicit faith is very beautiful, But somewhat dull! I find distinctly greater charm about Doubt! Consistency's a stupid, prosy feature In any creature How tedious, darling, to be always quite Right! Trust me, my cherished lord, hut not too far! You see.

there are So many lovely corners to be found Around I Sara Henderson Hay. writers arc. Lan ttiey permanently escape being smothered by so muck excellence? What irony! I 'Don't forget to clean the tub when you're through!" Contenu tliii la copyright bf Eearit Kewepapera. loa, 1933..