express in public life their love of comfort."

The Spectator (London), independent Conservative weekly, contained this statement: "This is a new reading of English history, under which Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights become simply the public expression of the Englishman's dislike of discomfort and inconvenience-not by any means an unattractive reading!" priest, Don Sturzo, the Party professed undying hostility to Benito; but, because the Premier was trying to conciliate the Catholics, many members of the Party sympathized with him, seceded, became political nonentities.

To regularize this situation, the seceders met at Bologna, home of the sausage of that name, founded the Italian National Centre Party, with a program identical to that of the Partita Popolare, except that it was decided to support the Fascist Government.

Benito beamed, encouraged the new Party, hoped that it would knock edgeways the adherents of little Don Sturzo.

Found

At a wooded spot, somewhere between the villages of Scrofano and Andriano, a dog howled dismally, became excited, started to scratch furiously.

The master of the dog peered into a culvert at his foaming canine, started, peered more closely, drew back, crossed himself, exclaimed: Santa Madre di Gesu Christo, rushed off for the Carabinieri.

To the spot swaggered three gorgeous Carabinieri, capes a-flowing, swords a-rattling, hearts a-thumping. Near the thicket their pace slowed down. Once the dog moaned, his master prayed fervently. Once the wind tipped the trees and they shivered; the sun hid itself behind a cloud. All the time the master of the dog prayed and crossed himself repeatedly. Carabinieri stopped, hesitated, went on.

In the culvert the Carabinieri saw a decomposed body, a file sticking in its breast. The corps was pulled out, and by the contour of a speccialy treated gold tooth, the shape of the head and the high cheekbones, the Carabinieri knew it was the body of Deputy Giacomo Matteotti, reported murdered some two months ago (TIME, June 23 et seq).

The finding of the body followed the discovery of a bloodstained gray jacket pierced by daggers, with one sleeve

Germany, might have been Kaiserin, has rheumatism and is obliged to hobble about on crutches. In this state she hobbled off to Baden-Baden to take the cure, her husband's physician in attendance. It was reported that her step-children ignored her presence in Germany.

SPAIN

A Luncheon

In the Royal Palace at Santander, a luncheon party was given by King Alfonso. Among the notables invited to lunch were the Duke of Alba, General Primo Rivera, U. S. Ambassador Alexander P. Moore.

During the conversation, in which the King spoke on internal affairs, it was duly noted that Ambassador Moore called the King "Chief" and the Duke of Alba "Jimmy". Alionso responded to such familiarity by saying that he and Mr. Moore understood each other.

It is an unwritten law-not always, however, unvoiced-that royal utterances shall not be directly quoted. What King Alfonso has to say about Spain was therefore placed conveniently in the third person. If the account had been quoted in the first person it would have revealed Alfonso's sang froid to a marked degree and would have appeared thus: "The rumor of a coming crisis has been spread by Spanish newspapers which do not like the present régime because it has cut off the subsidies allowed the Press by the former Government. There are 70 dailies and 3,000 other periodicals in Spain, and I interpret much of their opposition to the Directorate to a desire to see the reëstablishment of a régime which would restore the subsidies. Personally, I oppose such a system as leading to corruption, whereas one of the objects of the present Spanish Government is to have in Spain a system of independent newspapers such as exists in the United States.

"Several Madrid journals published a statement that General Primo de Rivera was going to fight a duel with another General, a member of the Directorate. Observe, gentlemen, that both Generals are present at this luncheon and on best terms.

"It is not proposed to abolish the system of representative parliamentary government in Spain; it has been suspended as the most efficacious means of reforming conditions, which is the purpose of the new régime. I

think great strides have been made toward giving Spain a clean Government. There is no intention of superseding Primo de Rivera; on the contrary, I am sure that the Dictator will remain in power until conditions have been made safe for the return of parliamentary government, and I think this will take at least another year.

"The Government is making great progress toward rooting out governmental graft, including padded payrolls. As an example of what has been accomplished, look at the budget of the city of Valencia, which has had a deficit of 2,000,000 pesetas. Without curtailing the public service, this has been converted into a favorable balance of 1,000,000 pesetas. The Government has gone ahead with the good roads program and the extension of the common-school system.

"But the big job of the new régime is to give clean government to Spain, and from what I have heard from the people, I feel confident that Primo de Rivera has popular approval. I may say that it is wrong to call the General a Dictator, since Spain is really being run by a directorate of ten men, and not by one man."

As was truly remarked, the King is unafraid of his enemies, who represent the throne as crumbling.

Tomb News

That intractable foe of the Spanish ruling house (Prof. Don Miguel Unamuno) recently wrote: "The Moroccan debacle will be the tomb of the Habsburg-Bourbon dynasty in Spain and the tomb of the monarchy."

The past week's news from the "tomb" was as dismal for Spain as might well be expected.

Not long ago, Director Primo Rivera, as he must now be called, withdrew several thousands of Spanish troops from Spanish Morocco. With the aid of the famed Moorish Chieftain, Raisuli, with whom Primo is now on excellent terms, a non-aggressive policy toward the Moorish rebels was adopted. The rebels were, however, quick to take advantage of the new order.

During the past week, the rebel forces attacked the Spanish positions, won many victories, captured several villages. Spanish native troops and those under Raisuli deserted in large numbers to the enemy. The Spanish position was serious. Primo had, perforce, to rush several battalions from Spain to the "tomb."

RUSSIA

"In for It"

The British Commonwealth of Nations is "in for it," to use a colloquialism, if Grigori Zinoviev, fierce Bolshevik spirit, is to be believed. Said he in Moscow: "England is now the chief task of the Communist International. If we succeed in creating a mass Communist party there, half the European victory will have been achieved. We must not set too low a value on what is going on in England. We must organize a daily Communist paper and create a left flank of trades unions. We must set to work in the British colonies."

CHINA

Floods, Famine

Floods in China made millions of people homeless, drowned some 50,000 persons, submerged tens of thousands of villages. So ran a report from Shanghai.

Famine, affecting some 10,000,000 people, was reported by U. S. Minister to China Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman. According to the Minister, the situation was serious: Spring crops were destroyed by drought; Fall crops were destroyed by flood; Winter wheat cannot be saved because of the water which lies like a lake over the land.

Rocked

JAPAN

Tokyo, Eastern Capital, was rocked 15 times by the heaving breasts of mother Earth. General alarms were sounded; people fled to the wide, open spaces. There were no casualties; little damage to property was sustained.

LATIN AMERICA "Menocal or Death"

Gen. Menocal,* onetime President of Cuba, was nominated by the Conservative Party for the Presidency in opposition to President Zayas, whose partisans were urging him to stand for a second term of office.

Excitement was high. The Conservatives, with iron resolution, adopted the slogan "Menocal or Death" but failed to specify who was to die. Presumably it was their

*Maria Garcia Menocal, Cuban-born (1867), was educated in the U. S. at Cornell University, was admitted to Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity (strong nationally and strong at Cornell). During the Spanish-American War he functioned as a fiery guerilla leader. Then he turned his attention to the Cuban-American Sugar Co., took charge of the largest sugar estate on the island. In 1912, he was elected President of Cuba on the Conservative ticket. He was reelected in 1916. "Unemotional, quiet, determined, honest, economical, friendly to the U. S.," say friends of Menocal.

enemies, since they were reported to have arranged to keep all delegates within range of "sawed-off shotguns" in case any of the latter should try to suspend the Convention.

Mexican Discord

On one sultry August afternoon, the denizens of Mexico City were startled by the clatter of horses and the tramp, tramp, tramp of feet. With curious eyes, they watched detachments of police, armed with shining Mauser rifles, surround Congressional Hall.

Inside the building, there sat, as the Electoral Congress, the Permanent Commission and the Deputies unopposed at the last election (TIME, July 21). They were there to examine the credentials of the newly-elected Deputies.

The parade of armed force was necessary, according to the civil and military authorities, because of much high feeling between the adherents of President-elect Gen. P. Elias Calles and those of Gen. Angel Flores on the one hand; between the Agrarians and Laborites, both supporters of Gen. Calles, on the other.

The Floristas admitted that they were beaten in the polling, but charged that the Callistas had broken ballot boxes and prevented them from voting. There was a possibility, it was said, that the Floristas might form a small Chamber of Deputies of their own for the purpose of calling upon President Obregon and upon the public for fair play in the matter of selections by the Electoral Congress.

The trouble between the Agrarians and the Laborites was that they were both trying to put their own candidates into office, both claiming the honor of having made the election of Calles possible. This factionalism split the Callistas and gave rise to expectations of riotous demonstrations.

Brazilian Rumors

The Brazilian Federals crushed the revolt which recently raged around Sao Paulo (TIME, July 14, et seq).

The revolt spread to the State of Amazonas. A state of siege was declared.

Federals cleared the State of Paraná of rebels.

Rebels retreating from the State of Sao Paulo smashed water tanks to hinder pursuit.

Casualties in the recent siege of Sao Paulo were officially numbered at 1,106.

MUSIC

A New Metropolitan?

The Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, is at least realizing what is self-evident to every visitor from Toledo and Akron: that the structure which now houses the "greatest opera company in the world" is woefully inadequate a small, dingy, undistinguished, badly-located building. Otto

O. H. KAHN He'll talk to the other directors

H. Kahn, khan of music-patrons, said as much. "The Metropolitan is antiquated. It has no room for the thousands who cannot pay high prices of admission. It is in a congested district of the city. We should have a modern, more beautiful, more commodious structure, located in another section. . . . Will we ever get or build a new Metropolitan? . . . Well, I'll talk to the other Directors about it."

Strike

The musicians who toot and twiddle in Chicago's theatres are now paid salaries which range from $57.50 to $87.75 per week. Seven hundred of them, the musical personnel of 35 theatres, have decided that this is not enough money. They want an increase of 10%. Through their union, they demanded the boost. The

theatre owners proposed a compromise on a 5% raise. The musicians shook their heads, issued an ultimatum, stood pat, scheduled a strike to begin on. Labor Day unless their demands are met in full.

Sistine Again

Last year the Sistine Choir, sweet singers of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, turned their faces west from the Holy City, traversed the Ocean's watery floor, came to sing their lauds and hallowed canticles in the U. S. The tour, as everyone knows, was financially a success, artistically a triumph. This season the Sistine Choir will again visit the U. S. Among those who will be heard

are:

Luigi Golinelli, giant white-haired basso, whose locks are snowier than the fleeces of Sharon, whose voice could shake the walls of Gaza; Spartaco Morgia, dramatic tenor, with barrel chest and amber voice-a man like a hogshead of honey; Attilio Boschi, young baritone, who, it is declared, is destined to be "the second Scandiani"; the Rev. Antonio Grimaldi, basso at the Sistine Chapel for 16 years, a famed authority on ecclesiastical music; Eugenio Andriselli, adult male soprano and assistant organist at St. Peter's. In all, there are twelve singers. Their programs will include selections from the religious music of the sedate Palestrina, operatic numbers and folk-melodies of Southern Italy which, it is said, have never before been heard in the U. S.

St. Louis & Atlanta

St. Louis has recently become the scene of a successful musical experiment. In a cup-shaped auditorium seating 10,000, opera, grand or comic, has been given nightly. The principal singers and comedians are imported; the choruses are local talent-St. Louis boys and maidens, trained throughout the Winter months. Velvet Summer twilights in St. Louis thrill to the strains of Verdi, Mascagni, Gilbert and Sullivan; the moon, that vision of still music in the sky, looks down upon declamatory stars in tinsel and brocade.

Atlanta sent a scout, one C. B. Bidwell, over to find how it was done. On the first evening of his visit, rain deluged the city at seven o'clock. At eight, he went to the auditorium, found 5,000 people there, heard the light opera The Lilac Domino finely performed. The scout returned to Atlanta and reported to his chief, Asa G. Candler, Coca-Cola man. The latter was astounded by the revelations he received.

for the cinema (TIME, Aug. 4). The innovation has been duplicated in France; Darius Milhaud, one of the leaders of Paris's younger set of tonal wits, has composed the musical accompaniment to the new picture L'Inhumaine, which features Mme. Georgette Leblanc.

Darius has defended his new venture as follows: "The cinema interests the musician through its rhythmic life, full of an intensity and a complexity, which in the picture L'Inhumaine becomes mysterious and spiritual. The poetry of machines is effectively interpreted through fantasy and an absolutely new technique. Much research and work has made this film the achievement of a poet. It is an artistic effort which has, at last, been realized; and the cinema becomes, as Jean Cocteau says, 'the tenth muse'."

Several streets in Paris have been renamed, two of them after composers. Rue Henri-Martin has become Rue Massenet; Rue St. Charles is now Rue Saint-Saëns.

Music, Cigars, Woolworth

A great "temple of art," having been sold to a cigar store corporation, will eventually be turned into a five-and-tencent store. Aeolian Hall, Manhattan, bought two weeks ago by the Schulte Cigar Stores for $6,000,000 (TIME, Aug. 11), has been leased to the Woolworth Co. for a term of 63 years. Says the official announcement:

"The ground floor (the present concert hall), which will be occupied by the Woolworth Co., will probably represent the most important store in their large chain of approximately 1,350 fiveand-ten-cent stores, including stores in England and Canada. The deal emphasizes the tremendous growth of this company, which started about 40 years ago with one small store at Lancaster, Pa."

The structure will probably be retained by the Aeolian Co. until May 1, 1929, on which date cigarettes and cheap cutlery will oust Art from the premises. Meanwhile, five more seasons of concerts will be heard inside the 43rd Street entrance, and for five years talking machines, radio apparatus and electric pianos will be sold from

the 42nd Street side. Then the fiveand-ten will raise its scarlet standard, and the tobacco company will begin to profit on its $6,000,000 outlay.

Woolworth will pay a rental of $400,000 a year for the first 21 years. A graduated rental scale has been arranged for the second and last periods. These three periods have doubtless been fixed to correspond to Beethoven's famous "three periods," out of respect for the composer's shade, which undoubtedly haunts the hall. The rent for the entire 63 years, will amount to the neat little sum of $27,500,000. In addition, the tenant has agreed to pay taxes, insurance and running expenses.

"Mash Mash Mash"

An earthenware tablet, long buried in the Middle Eastern section of the Prussian State Museum, has been found to contain the musical notation for a religious hymn. This notation has been deciphered by Dr. Kurt Sachs, Curator of the Collection of Instruments at the Berlin High School for Music. The tablet comes from ancient Assur, capital of Assyria, and was inscribed in cuneiform characters about the year 800 B. C. It contains three columns: The first is the mysterious music; the second, in archaic Sumerian, an account of the creation of Man from the blood of the gods; the third, a translation of this into Assyrian.

Prof. Sachs first figured out what the ancient notes were called. Here are the first four lines he deciphered: ME ME KUR KUR A A A A A

KU KU LU LU

MASH MASH MASH MASH

Finally, he discovered the modern musical equivalent of each of these syllables. He concluded that the Assyrians, like the Chinese, had a scale consisting of five different notes, giving much the same effect as that which is produced when one plays on only the black keys of a piano. The tune of this particular hymn turned out to be rather "Chinese" in character, monotonous and plaintive. It was played on a harp which had 21 strings and was probably very popular with the old priests and cutthroats of Assyria.

CINEMA

The New Pictures

Empty Hands. Readers of the novel by Arthur Stringer, from which this film was fashioned, hold that its chief interest lies in the development of the devices by which the man and the woman existed and finally made themselves comfortable in a hidden wilderness. When they arrived, via a gorge of rapids, the woman had no standard equipment at all (her bathing suit had been torn off by the torrent's claws) and the man had only a coat, trousers, undershirt and a hunting knife. Before the rescue, a good many weeks later, they were living in a log bungalow with a full line of cooking utensils, clothes and toilet articles. Manufacture of these things did not interest the producers (quite properly). They were forced for reasons of dramatic necessity to stress the wickedness of the young lady (Norma Shearer) before she reached the purifying atmosphere of loneliness. Indeed, if her mother's ghost had not walked at just the right moment, she might have run off with a married man. Instead, her father whisked her away to the open spaces, where a heartily disapproving young engineer (Jack Holt) went to her rescue down the rapids. The opening phases of the film are struck off with the old rubber stamp. There was even the midnight bathing-party, at which everyone got drunk and hurled the fat guest into the pool for comedy. But comedy ceased when the man and the woman were hurled into the canyon rapids. From that point forth, the adventure gained in entertainment values.

Fools in the Dark. Every now and then some producer reaches the absolute end of his dramatic rope and decides to make a melodrama on the theory that old things are best. Accordingly, he stirs up daggers, skeletons, an avalanche, death traps, mystery yachts, a Hindu villain, an airplane rescue. In the present instance, a death ray was included to give that natty modern touch. No matter how often you have been to the cinemas, the incoherent multitude of these manufactured thrills serves a sure purpose. There is an inevitable, if factitious, reaction. Matt Moore and Patsy Ruth Miller assist materially in making the discerning spectators feel like fools in the dark for enjoying such arrant debris.

This book takes no no plot to give it to give it blood is the cont and spirit. Its subject strangene ..nent of Africa; and its

of

tr

Τ

ss proves once more the truth

ancient apothegm concerning uth and fiction. Written in the manner of a novel and cast in the pattern of a travelogue, it belongs to that obscure hinterland of literature that W. H. Hudson visited in Green Mansions and Defoe, to a certain extent, in Robinson Crusoe.

Africa is harsh nursery for receptive natures. The author had to reconcile his to the task of keeping in order some sheep and some natives-a task which included counting, shearing, ear-marking, castrating the former; humoring, doctoring, whipping, burying the latter. This was itself taxing for a young and literary Englishman-a Beau Brummel in khaki pants and red shirt, exiled from home because of ill-health. There were compensating novelties. For instance, on the night of his arrival he lay shivering through the white hours in a disused woodshed while a lion drank from a reservoir outside his door; later, he put down a native riot, shot a hippopotamus, trapped a lion, was hoodooed by a witch-doctor, barely escaped being trampled by a herd of wild elephants.

At another time Mr. Powys had accused an African "Man of God" of stealing goats and had been heartily cursed in return. That night, as he lay in the dark, he heard a ghastly laugh, he writes, "long and loud, whining and wailing up from the forest, up from the gully, so I judged. I tried to reassure myself. Surely it was the howl of a hyena feasting on the remains of the dead buck? But even as my mind was suggesting this, my subconscious self knew that it lied. That criminal human outcry, it could issue from no animal throat. Somewhere out where the hispid branches swayed, know there was man with white canine teeth giving vent to BLACK LAUGHTER! . . A long time passed . . . then gradually I began to realize that the room had become filled with an extraordinary odor, an odor of putrifying blood and rotting flesh, the odor and breath of a hyena." When day comes he looks out and "stamped in the dust of the threshold, two indents-one the footprint of a man; and the other the padded 'dog's spoor of an erect hyena. I knelt and

a

sees

*BLACK LAUGHTER-Llewelyn Powys-Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

examined them both closely. There was no mistake about it. One foot was a foot with toes; the other a foot with claws!"

Such experiences as this have a novel ring, but they are not totally unfa

AUTHOR POWYS

Now he lives in New York

nfiliar; others have undergone them, written about them, cinematized them. The difference between these people and Mr. Powys lies in the fact that the latter is an artist. His book is informed with the spirit of Africa as with a sensible presence, is haunted with the shadow of that jungle in whose twilight incredible beasts wage their truceless wars and come down by night to drink from the river-pools under the swinging constellations of the Cross-constellations that see, here and there, man's fugitive campfires, how dwarfed in that illimitable waste! Reading, one can almost detect an odor, acrid, animal, exciting-the smell of Africa.

The Significance. It is in this quality of primitive reality that the book is original and profound. Questions are always being subtly provoked that are easy enough to answer at a dinner table within hearing of a hotel orchestra-not so easy when one can catch far off, as it were, the challenge of the ageless cataracts of life and death thundering forever in the dark places of the world. In one passage, Mr. Powys recounts talking with a Kikuyu who asked him solemnly if he were aware that elephants had once serious been "He looked so

men:

when he asked the question that, on my soul, I was half inclined to believe him. I tell you in that darkening forest with the rustling of the tropical leaves about me and the indefinable stir of the oncoming night audible everywhere, it seemed more than possible that I was about to hear the authentic story of the origin of man." This may serve to illustrate, in a small measure, the eerie quality of a book that bids fair to do what W. H. Hudson's work has done for South America-include another Continent in the Empire of English Letters.

The Author. In 1914, Llewelyn Powys went to Africa, where his brother had a farm, to avoid dying of consumption in England. He returned in 1920, published Ebony and Ivory, which won him instant recognition. Now he lives in New York.

Africalamity*

Brave, boyish Janet Rawley and her brutishly neurasthenic spouse, Jack, are about to plunge into African shrubbery on a safari for game and gold. Capt. James Antrim, of the King's African Rifles, splendid fellow that he is, cannot bear to see such ill-mated tender feet wandering loose among the lions, thirst and loneliness. He turns in his steamer ticket from Mombasa to England, takes command for and of the Rawleys, gets the safari past the usual vile German agent and as far as a highland camp, three weeks from nowhere. Here fever, whiskey, manslaughter, flies and love descend upon them. Rawley indulges in the first three and then loses his unpleasant self in the ample countryside. Janet and Antrim stagger home, black-lipped and full of British guilt. After the decent British interval, they marry. A ghostly negroid smell haunts them nightly, requiring Antrim's return to Africa to lay the ghost of Dingaan, a black he sent to find the strayed Rawley. Two skeletons come to light in an abandoned game-pit, clearing Dingaan of a murder he might pardonably have committeed.

Mr. Young's African smells, sights and sounds are indubitable. He can occasionally strike off action, too. His i motivation, however, is vague, unac countable, spasmodic. His emotions plod in circles. His temper the generous will call wholesome and dignified. others cold and muttonish.

*WOODSMOKE-Francis Brett Young-Da! ton ($2.00).