Laurence Stallings

America Should Be Proud

How Laurence Stallings will dislike the title I have written on this column! He is not the sort of person who indulges in mock sentiment-yet he need not accuse me of mock sentiment. His Plumes is as fine a novel of the War as has been written, and why should anyone who thinks so not say so as plainly as possible?

Mr. Stallings is a critic of no mean power. When you first meet him you gain an impression of bulk, and of a winning smile. He is a Southerner with a soft Southern voice, and he has many of the ingratiating qualities which are often associated with gentlemen of the lower part of the U. S. His attitude of mind is eager, even penetrating. So alert a mentality is apt to be a trifle impatient of the slowness of others' minds. Mr. Stallings is not characterized by literary or intellectual patience, although, as a man, I imagine, he has unusual understanding and tolerance of other folk and an immense amount of personal bravery.

Since he has been writing the book columns of The New York World he has developed a large personal following, and for a good reason. His reviews are brilliant, carefully conceived, and show a background of reading which is unusual in one of the youngor so-called "young"-school of criticism. I suspect him of being impatient with daily journalism, yet I wonder if he is not too nervous, too eager a mentality ever to be contented to confine his abilities to the writing of novels and plays. He is one of those persons whose nervous energy drives them to constant work. There is something about a frequent copy date for a writer of this type that is as necessary as an opiate. I am convinced that journalism is an essential stimulus for this type of per

son.

Presently Laurence Stallings' War play, Glory, will be seen on Broadway. It, too, will be sardonic, perhaps even more so than the novel; but if it possesses the same driving quality of passionate understanding that is manifest in Plumes, it should prove to be a drama worth seeing.

Mr. Stallings, like most of those young men who were active in the War, does not care to have his War experiences discussed. In this instance, they were heroic ones. That he has been able to see them with detachment, and to view the War with fairness, is one of the things that make him the very unusual person, the very fine writer that he is. J. F.

PLUMES Laurence Stallings Harcourt, B. cce ($2.00).

New Plays

The Best People. If the visitor will promise himself not to take this play seriously, he will probably have a rather amusing evening. For it is another younger generation jeremiad and proposes that two rising scions of the wealthy Lennoxes marry, respectively, chauffeur and a chorus girl, to mix into the decadent family veins a strain of

FAY BAINTER

"The question will probably not be solved"

common sense, that presumably comes with commoners.

Younger generation plays are falling into the category of popular songs; they all remind you of something that was published last year under another title. Accordingly. The Best People displays its youth (brother and sister) immoderately bored with their own expensive section of humanity. Sister is engaged to the silliest ass English Lord that has been dragged up from antiquity and dusted off with modern slang in quite a period. Brother has set his heart on a dumb-but-honest chorus girl.

Thereupon, Father and Uncle George arrange a supper party with the latter lady, hoping, with the unpleasant intolerance of Babbitt opinion about chorus girls, that they can ward her off with wealth. By a curious coincidence common to the stage, Sister is in the same café with the family chauffeur, and Brother is somewhere downstairs, very drunk, and jealous because his fragile flower is getting her evening's fodder at the expense of two elderly unknowns. By the end of the scene everybody has

strayed into everybody's else private dining room and there is a great deal of talk about going to Turkish baths to sober up in time to go up to Greenwich and get married.

In the last act, the authors (David Gray and Avery Hopwood) twisted themselves out of the clutches of their plot via a supply of idiotic philosophy from Father, who concludes that, after all, the chorus girl is probably the only one who can stop Brother's drinking and that Sister will certainly have some common sense thrown into her by the savage chauffeur.

James Rennie wears the latter's livery and puttees and, though he is always rather an inflexible actor with a single mood, makes much of it. Gavin Muir had an amazing flash in the first act as the wobbling brother. Yet the masterpiece of the evening's acting was fashioned forth by Florence Johns. Those who remember her extraordinarily restrained and tragic performance last year in Children of the Moon will be interested to learn that her new venture invades the opposite realm of the cheap, wise-cracking chorus girl, friend of the brother's bride. Avery Hopwood (coauthor) has done, again, for her rôle what he did so well for similar characters in The Gold Diggers. She bears the burden of the piece and makes it actively amusing.

The Dream Girl was Victor HerLast bert's last legacy to the world. year, a short time before he died, he composed the score which, for various reasons, was delayed in process of production. Possibly the delay was fortunate, for thereby the Shuberts found the time and patience to dress it with deserved distinction. Fay Bainter was recalled to musical comedy to play the star, and Walter Woolf, the finest baritone currently singing light music, was engaged to be her lover.

The story dates from an old play called The Road to Yesterday. The characters stare soulfully at the spotlight and wish for the romantic glory of the Middle Ages; the lights go out, stage hands scurry and scenery bumps in the darkness; the lights revive on a 15th Century garden. Victor Herbert snatched the opportunity to inject a rousing old-fashioned marching-drink

ing song which, with The Dream Girl ballad and Miss Bainter's I Want to Go Home, are the leaders of a highly melodious evening.

It was once said of Fay Bainter that she was probably a very pleasant person though technically not a fine actress. Since she is not called upon to do any special acting herein, the question will probably not be solved until next season. By that time, so many people will have seen and fallen captive to her naïve and witching charm that the solution will probably not make any difference anyway.

Tendencies

War Plays are Coming

Last week there was noted in this column the widening ripple consequent to the recent plunge of Hungarian plays into the Manhattan theatrical pool. This is, one supposes, what is termed a "tendency." Now tendencies have a forbidding sound about them. Somehow they seem sinister. One speaks of the husband of one's neighbor as having a tendency to drink too much. It was a tendency in the Borgia family to fortify their enemy's Chianti with toxic drops. Yet giving money to beggars is not described as a tendency. It is a form of personal advertising, and becomes tendency only when the advertiser performs it to such an extent that his family have him removed to the hospital on the grounds that the fractional balance of his wits is against him.

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Therefore it is with hesitation that tendencies in the Theatre are discussed. Let them be called, rather, inclinations; and let there be further inspection of the opening season's inclinations.

Though the younger generation was damned, defended and dismissed as a back number at least two years ago, there have already appeared two plays (Dancing Mothers and The Best People) in which the parents weep and wonder at the antics of their offspring. Apparently the ink of playwriting has not yet exhausted its quota on this topic. There will be others.

Already one play has lived and died in an effort to retell the general narrative theme of Abie's Irish Rose. Reports from distant parts indicate that the producers of this uncannily successful product will spend much money through the season exhorting the population to beware of imitations.

Kid Boots is another success which has accumulated its train of similarities. It is a musical comedy based on the vicissitudes of golf and bootlegging. Already Top Hole, a golf musical comedy, is announced with others in the offing.

Yet the most significant inclination of the new season is the return of the War

play. Next week TIME will be occupied with discussions of Nerves by John Farrar and Stephen Vincent Benét and of Glory by Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson. Hard on their heels will come Havoc, fresh from a London success, and The Conquering Hero, by Allan Monkhouse, an Englishman, under the beneficent auspices of the Theatre Guild. At least two others are now in preparation. The swagger and tinsel of war in the theatre of eight years ago has been discarded. The majority of these new productions are bitter, ironic dissections of sorrow. Probably none of them will possess the morIdant satiric force of Shaw's Arms and the Man. Yet their mission is clear.. The young men who have written them have been to war. After five years their protests must be heard. W. R.

LAW

International Congress

In Vienna, the Institute of International Law opened its 31st Conference in what was, before the War, the Austrian Parliament building. Welcome was extended to the delegates by Foreign Minister Grünberger.

U. S. Jurists present: Prof. James Brown Scott, President of the American Society of International Law; Prof. Philip Marshall Brown, of Princeton University; Frederick R. Coudert, senior partner of the law firm of Coudert Bros., author of Certainty and Justice, and Government delegate to the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists, held at St. Louis in 1904.

The Institute of International Law was founded at Ghent, 51 years ago. Last year it held a 50th Anniversary meeting in the room that saw the first meeting. Later, the 30th Conference was held in Brussels.

International Law is defined as that branch of positive law which governs the inter-relations of foreign states and is clearly distinguished from that branch of positive law which governs the internal affairs of a foreign state and which is commonly called "Municipal Law." International Law is divided into Public International Law and Private International Law, which is usually referred to by the name "Conflict of Laws." The weakness of International Law lies in its provisions for enforcing the observance of its principles. Conferences such as the one now being held are generally recognized by jurists as useful in formulating the principles of Public International Law and in solving problems of Conflict of Law, but as comparatively ineffectual in contriving a means to punish offenses against the Law of Nations.

Dr. Moore's Book. In Manhattan. there was lately published a large book* elucidating the knottier problems of International Law. It is not a book for laymen; its interest can be only for the legally minded. Its author, Dr. John Bassett Moore, American Judge in the Permanent Court of International Justice, is doubtless the leading active authority on the subject in the U. S. Dr. Moore formerly lectured on International Law at Columbia University. His treatment of his subject was characterized by a fine faith in the value to mankind of the precedents of public International Law, which he held were as consistent and logical and, on the whole, as little violated as the precedents of Municipal Law. "Beware," he would say, "of the man who feels qualified to speak and write on International Law simply because of the correctness of his moral reactions."

Dr. Moore has made in this volume He original contribution to knowledge. That was not his purpose. He has rather sought to elucidate certain knotty problems in International Law and to dispel some common illusions.

For many years Elihu Root has been generally spoken of as the foremost international lawyer in the U. S. Mr. Root, as a member of the Alaskan boundary Tribunal (1903), as U. S. Secretary of State in President Roosevelt's cabinet (1905-1909), as counsel for the U. S. in the North Atlantic Fisheries Arbitration (1910), as a member of the Hague Tribunal since 1910, as one of the Commission of International Jurists which, on invitation of the League, reported the plan for the World Court (established 1921), as Commissioner Plenipotentiary for the U. S. at the Washington Arms Limitation Conference (1921), Mr. Root has had unrivalled experience.

Two younger men who have attained distinction in the field of International! Law are:

Prof. Manley O. Hudson, of Harvard University, who was attached to the international law division of the American Peace Mission (1918), was legal advisor to the International Labor Conferences of 1919 and 1920, and to the International Conference on Ob scene Publication at Geneva, 1923.

Prof. Edwin M. Burchard, of Yale University, who was for some time law librarian of Congress and an assistant solicitor of the U. S. State Department.

*INTERNATIONAL LAW AND SOME CURRENT ILLUSIONS AND OTHER ESSAYS-John Bassett Moore, LL.D.-M Millan-$4.00.

MEDICINE

Oil of Garlic

For many years British newspapers have carried extensive advertisements of an alleged cure, called Yadil, for cancer and other diseases. It occurred to the publishers of The Daily Mail (newspaper with the largest circulation in England) to investigate this nostrum; and they began a campaign of exposure against it. Yadil turned out to be essentially a 1% solution of formaldehyde, flavored with oil of garlic. The Daily Mail was aided in its exposure by Sir William Pope, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Cambridge. Threats of suits for libel and injunctions have not deterred The Daily Mail from continuing its exposure.

Beads

For many years physicians have been interested in the rate of progress of food residues in their passage through the body. In making tests, patients have been required to swallow insoluble matter, such as small pieces of metal and charcoal or dye substances, which could be easily detected in the excretion. When the X-ray was discovered, barium sulphate, which is opaque to the X-ray, was given, and the passage of the barium was observed through the fluoroscope. The giving of a large amount of indigestible material like barium with a small amount of milk or gruel, however, brings about conditions within the bowels which are hardly similar to the normal passage of food.

Twenty years ago, two English physiologists studied the distribution of food along the digestive tract by giving to rabbits large numbers of small glass beads. Then the rabbits were killed at various intervals; and the distribution of the material throughout the stomach and intestines was noted. Recently, Doctors Walter C. Alvarez and B. L. Freedlander, San Francisco, of the George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research in the University of California Medical School, used similar method in studying passage of food through the human body. They found that the normal individual with good digestion and a daily excretion does not in 24 hours pass anything like 100% of the material given.

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Fifty small beads were placed in a gelatin capsule and swallowed. These colored beads were given on three consecutive days; and the excretions were sieved so as to determine when

the beads, and how many of them, were recovered. The beads used were very small, about two millimetres in diameter. Two of the individuals studied passed around 85% of the beads in 24 hours; but most took four days to get rid of 75%; and there were some who passed from only 50 to 60% in nine days. On an average, 15% of the beads were passed at the end of the first day; 40% on the second; 15% on the third; and from 5 to 10% on the fourth and fifth -so that between 90 and 100% come through by the end of the week. In one person who suffered with chronic constipation, careful sieving until all of the beads were accounted for showed that the last one came through on the 40th day. Since the beads had been mixed with the food, it is obvious that the individual's food residues also must have required this amount of time for passage.

The conclusions from this work are that wide variations in the rate of passage of food through the body are perfectly compatible with good health. All of the persons tested seemed to be normal on examination; and none of them admitted having poor digestion or poor health. Nevertheless, the rate of the movement of food varied greatly from very slow to very fast in the group of persons studied. The studies seemed to show also that the giving of purgative drugs, or that spontaneous, repeated emptying of the bowels results in such thorough emptying that no further excretions should be expected the next day, or even for one or two days following. The California physiologists also believe that there is little fear in general of the condition formerly called "autointoxication".

RELIGION

"Lord's Acre"

"Lord's Acre" has become an institution in the South, particularly in Georgia, because acres planted for God have produced more abundant crops and have been miraculously free from the boll weevil, potato bug, army worm, and other enemies of God's people.

Last year, the Rev. H. M. Melton, pastor of the Baptist Church, Bluffton, Ga., induced seven men to sign the following agreement:

"We, the undersigned farmer members of the Bluffton Baptist Church,

Dauss King grew a bale of cotton on his Lord's acre, which he did not even spray with calcium arsenate. "It is in the Lord's hands," said he.

Belief spread that miracles had been performed at Bluffton. From all America and parts of Europe came inquiries to the pastor, the postmaster, the mayor, the banker of Bluffton. Literature was compiled.

This year, Baptist headquarters in Atlanta were amazed to find that 100 churches in Georgia had instituted the Lord's acre, making a total of 500 acres, from which the yield is expected to be at least $20,000.

Georgia pastors now believe that the institution of consecrated land will be adopted in every state. Whether miraculous or not, the institution of the Lord's acre stabilizes church finances and is in accord with Jewish traditions dating from Abraham and the Roman Catholic practice in feudal days.

"Hath Made Thee Whole"

The Soviet Chief of Police reached for the code. He read-Article 120that imprisonment is the punishment for "exploiting the religious prejudices of the masses against the Soviet government and fostering superstition among the masses."

Summoning trusty agents of police, he directed them to the village of Pskoff, to search the doings of Priest Troitski, to bring him to justice.

At Pskoff the police heard tales. Troitski had an ikon, a painted image of the Blessed Virgin whose tears, copiously shed, performed miracles. One tear-drop, applied to a wound, healed it. By virtue of the tears, Lydia Belskaya was cured of scrofula, Nadya Kolkova of a chronic abscess, Natasha Arcipova of paralysis. Thousands of tears had been efficaciously shed.

The police-themselves but humble Bolsheviks-trembled to lay hands upon the holy man who conducted so holy a shrine. But they feared Moscow more.

against Evolution in the First Baptist Church of Butte, Mont.

Gloom pervaded the church, save for the glare of one spotlight playing upon the speaker's platform. There stood the Rev. O'Farrell, gesticulating, shouting to make himself heard above a strange series of interruptions. Beside him, chattering, chirping, squeaking, a lively monkey tugged and chafed at the cord that tethered it to a broomstick. Brought into the pulpit by the preacher to advertise his bold sermon and to illustrate his bold points, the simian had to be held in place by the sermonizer's 12-year-old daughter.

The Rev. O'Farrell, perspiring heavily with his exertions, blamed the teaching of evolution for the Franks murder in Chicago, said: “We are suffering from acute mental and spiritual intoxication," said "To save the world for God, we all must use drastic methods," wiped his brow, concluded: "We will now sing Hymn 123.”

Papal Notes

In the crypt of St. Peter's, many Bishops, including Mgr. Canale Oberti of Santa Fé, last week said mass for Pope Pius X, "the Good", who died ten years ago. Before the tomb. thousands of candles were lighted, thousands of flowers scattered. The Late Pope's aged sisters, who still live near the Vatican, attended.

The reigning Pope, Pius XI, will carry out the desires of the late Pope Benedict XV in presenting to the Catholic University of Washington, D. C., a picture of the Immaculate Conception, executed in mosaic at the Vatican. For model he has chos

as Mexico's Queen; as such she merits our gratitude and respect.”

There was no intimation as to who would be the new Nuncio.

Rev. Charles Jaggers

At Columbia, quiet sun-filled capital of South Carolina, a Negro preacher died last week. During the half hour before his funeral, no business was transacted in the city. White and black paid tribute, by proclamation of the Mayor.

Rev. Charles Jaggers, born a slave in the first half of the 19th Century, began preaching from fence corners, always on one text: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). With some contributions, he established a mission; with others he took the gospel to the chain gangs. At the end of each year he took one cent salary. He was wont to say: "My services belong to God."

Young Missionary

Eric Liddell, winner of the Olympic 400-metre race, returned to Edinburgh University to receive his degree. Mid cheering crowds, Sir Alfred Ewing, the Vice Chancellor, crowned him with a garland of wild olive. Students bore him in triumph to a service at St. Giles' Cathedral.

Liddell will shortly proceed to Tien-tsin, China, to join his father in missionary work.

During the Olympic games, the young Scot refused to participate in the 100-metre race because it fell on Sunday. Instead, he preached in Paris.

which hangs in the Prado, Madrid.

A group of Mexican Bishops are visiting the Vatican. The Supreme Knight of the Mexican K. of C. is consulting with prelates in Manhattan. Mexico City expects as a result the appointment of a new Papal Nuncio to take the place of Mgr. Ernesto Filippi, who was expelled in January, 1923. When President Obregon entered Mexico City ten years ago, he ordered all priests to leave. He was the Church's enemy. In ten years a President learns much. Said Obregon last week: "The Virgin of Guadalupe always has been regarded

Martian Opposition

"Come again, go again, talk again, Mars."

The "opposition" of the Earth and Mars, as their nearest approach to each other is termed in astronomical language, took place last week with a maximum excitement on the part of the public and a minimum excitement on the part of astronomers. These oppositions occur about every 26 months, but every 15 or 16 years there is an opposition when the two bodies are nearer each other than usual, and about every hundred years

In Vancouver, a radio station heard a regular series of dashes or zipps every day at certain hours; these, however, were explained as signals from "radio beacons" set up by the U. S. to assist vessels at sea.

C In Newark and in London, strange sounds were heard; they probably came either from amateur stations or from static or peculiarities in the apparatus.

At sea the steamship France encountered an electric storm which upset radio communication, and the gullible press suggested "Mars!"

¶ On the top of the Jungfrau, a Swiss scientist claimed to have seen flashes of yellow and green light from the planet, which might have been flashes of sunlight on mountain peaks.

In the main the results were decidedly negative. Some study of the planet was made from certain observatories. The Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz., which "specializes in Mars," made observations in an effort to advance the tenets of the late Professor Percival Lowell that there is life on the planet, as evidenced by the existence of vegetation colors and the alleged canals. In general, astronomers displayed more interest in studying the satellites or moons, Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Dread), named after the mythological steeds of Mars' chariot. No new satellite was discovered, although at the Yerkes Observatory at Lake Geneva, Wis., conditions were very favorable for examining the satellites.

There is considerable dispute as to the exact conditions which persist on Mars' surface, so that there is ample room for difference of opinion as to the possibility of life. Conditions are certainly different from those on the Earth, but it is just as impossible to say that there is no life as to say that there is. The evidence is circumstantial to a refined degree. But if there is life on Mars, it is in different form from that existing on the Earth. Some scientists are inclined to grant the existence of vegetable life, such as (Continued on Page 22)