Shanghai, the U. S. had 250 marines landed, Britain 360, Japan 400, Italy 100. Outside the harbor, an armada of 22 foreign warships was rocked by the sea.

JAPAN

Ambassadors

an

Ambassadors are exchangeable commodities. When Washington nounced (TIME, Sept. 8, NATIONAL AFFAIRS) that it was sending Edgar Addison Bancroft to Tokyo as U. S. Ambassador to Japan, Tokyo scouted about to find someone to send to Washington as Japanese Ambassador to the U. S. in succession to smiling Ambassador Masanao Hanihara.

The choice was said to have fallen upon Tokichi Tanaka, whilom Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, whilom Counselor of Embassy at the Washington Embassy, whilom Consul at Seattle. But Eki Hioki, once Japanese Ambassador to Germany, and Tsunso Matsudaira, a sub-minister in the present Cabinet, were also mentioned as marketable diplomats.

Meanwhile, the Nichi-Nichi, chief vernacular sheetlet of the Eastern Capital, "enthused" over the appointment of Mr. Bancroft:

"Whether or not he has any special interest in the Far East is a question that will not alter our attitude toward the new Ambassador. We welcome a man who comes to our country with a clean, white sheet of paper, free of experience. He may be freer to do what he believes ought to be done.

"Whether he be pro-Japanese or not is immaterial. What we hope is that he will see things as they are and will face Japanese-American problems squarely, and will have the courage to solve them, to do what he believes right without regard to Japanese criticism; but at the same time, if he finds injustice among his own countrymen, to say so boldly."

LATIN AMERICA Princely Visit

While Lord Renfrew, on the northern continent of America, moves in comparative freedom, another prince, on the southern continent, has to be watched and guarded zealously.

Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, having been fêted with royal ceremonies by Argentina (TIME, Aug. 18), departed for Brazil, where he was to have been accorded a royal welcome in the gay capital of Rio de Janeiro. This plan was mutilated, however, by the recent São Paulo revolt (TIME, July 14 et

Chamber of Deputies; so did the Cabinet, which was prompt to resign. A new Cabinet was formed, non-political in nature, pledged to institute the reforms mentioned in the petition. General Luis Altamarino headed the Cabinet taking the portfolio of Minister of the Interior. Other ministers:

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Emiliano Figueroa, onetime Ambassador to Argentina.

Justice and Instruction: Gregorio Amunategui, Rector of the University of Chile.

War: General Bennett.

Public Works: Angel Guarello, onetime Minister of Justice and at present the most prominent Democrat in the country.

Thus did the Army officers accomplish by the pen what is usually undertaken in Latin America by the sword-a coup d'état. Not only this, they apparently received the plaudits of vast sections of the Chilean populace.

Revolt Ends?

Early this year (TIME, Feb. 11), a revolution broke out in Honduras. The revolt was caused by presidential candidates in the elections failing to receive a majority. The ballot having failed, the disappointed candidates took to bullets.

In March, President Rafael Lopez Gutierrez died. His term of office had expired on Feb. 1, but he had kept himself in office by establishing a dictatorship. Immediately after the President's demise, Generals Arias and Bueso seized power and constituted themselves dictators (TIME, Mar. 31). Thereupon Generals Tiburcio Carias and Gregorio Ferrera joined forces, wacked the dictators.

After much fighting, the revolt came to an end. Through the offices of Sumner Welles, a special peacemaker sent to Honduras by U. S. President Coolidge, the rival parties were brought together and agreed upon the selection of General Tosta as provisional President (TIME, May 12).

Less than three months later (TIME, Aug. 11), revolution again broke out. General Ferrera charged that his old friend General Tosta, under whom he was once Minister of War, was seeking to perpetuate discord in the country; at the same time he disclaimed any personal ambitions for himself.

Last week, an offer made by the U. S. Government to use its good offices in settlement of the dispute was accepted by both sides. The end of the second revolt was envisaged.

New Operas

Hundreds of operas are composed every year, complete with millions of separate notes, arias for sopranos and tenors, overtures, choruses, ballets, stage directions. But few of these are ever produced. Still fewer find their way into the hearts of the listening multitude and into the permanent repertoires of the great companies. Nevertheless, the industry goes on unchecked, in spite of the tears and tribulations that inevitably follow. Here follows a very partial list of hopeful efforts going on at the present time:

From Maestro Pietro Mascagni, the "one-opera-man" (TIME, July 28), now in Vienna, the Opéra Comique has ordered a lyric drama based on the successful Plus Que Reine, by Henri Caen. Under the title More Than Queen, it was produced in the U. S. in 1899, with Julia Arthur playing the regal part. It is a dramatization of the career of the unfortunate Empress Josephine, willowy victim of Europe's "man of destiny." Mascagni has already set himself to work transcribing her sighs into pathetic whisperings of violins and flutes.

John Drinkwater, author of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Stuart, Oliver Cromwell, Robert E. Lee and other dramatic histories, has completed a libretto for an opera, based on the life of Robert Burns, eternal Scots laureate poet. This screed is now in the hands of composer Ernest Austin, an Englishman, known chiefly for his colossal organ tone-poem, Pilgrim's Progress, in twelve huge parts. In the new work, Austin plans to make use of many Scotch folk-tunes, including several of the familiar melodies now associated with Burns' popular lyrics.

Maurice Ravel, Frenchman of devilish cleverness and satanic fertility, is busy putting the delights and horrors of Monte Carlo into operatic form. His libretto was written by Mme. Colette, who had laid its scene on the Côte d'Azur.

It is in Italy, however, that the operaindustry really flourishes, as always. There Maestro Zandonai has already written a four-act Legende, Maestro Giordano his new Cene Beffe, WolfFerrari (composer of The Jewels of the Madonna) his La Veste di Crilo and modernist Malipiero has completed no less than three "lyrical comedies."

In Jail

John Philip Sousa, dean of brass band leaders, lent his services as conductor to the inmate-musicians at the Eastern Penitentiary, Philadelphia. The audience also consisted almost

was prohibited; the close of each number was thus received in stolid silence.

Four pieces were played; two of them composed by John Philip himself.

At times, the dashing martial strains were suspended in mid-air, while the leader gave the performers the benefit of his own personal interpretation of exacting passages.

At the close of the third number, Sousa was presented with a cane, manufactured in the institution out of bits of paper tightly rolled together and held together by silver bands, the product of hours and hours of patient toil. Also a box of cigarsbut whether these were made in the same fashion was not stated.

In Manhattan

Summer is over. Italian names are being inscribed in the leading New York hotels. Two opera companies, taking advantage of the Metropolitan's comparatively late opening, are simultaneously offering their

wares.

The San Carlo run opens at the Jolson Theatre on Sept. 22. Impresario Fortune Gallo will present standard repertoire, spiced by the appearance of two important "finds" in the

way of singers. Tina Paggi, Italian coloratura soprano signed up at Chicago last year, has just swept South America and Asheville, S. C., with enthusiasm and, it is said, has inundated box offices with buckets of real gate-receipt money.

There is also Mr. Louis Rosseau, American tenor, who was discovered wasting his time in Paris last June. He has risen from a position with a banking house at No. 100 Broadway to the heights of stardom at the Opéra Comique. He can sing leading male roles in 42 operas, and is equally at home in French, German, English, Italian.

The Manhattan Grand Opera Association flings wide the swinging doors of the Manhattan Opera House on Sept. 15, with a gala performance of Aida. The ranks of the company have been filled to overflowing with a chanting pilgrim band of Milanese, Neapolitan, Venetian, Roman artists who arrived on the steamer Conte Rosso. Among them are Mme. Clara Jacobo, Adriana Boccanera, Beatrice Melaragno, Frances Cairone, Giuseppa La Puma, and Signori Giuseppe Radaelli, Rino Oldrati, Giuseppe Oliviero, Amadeo Taverna, Italo

Picchi.

Hayes in Berlin

In Berlin some weeks ago, Roland Hayes, Negro tenor (TIME, Oct. 8), gave a concert. To Germans, black men are "colonials"; they encountered them in the French line during the War; more recently, in the Ruhr. Learning that a member of this unpopular race was to appear publicly in their midst, Berliners were indignant. Protests were made to the American Ambassador against the "impertinence" of permitting a Negro to be heard on the concert stage, against the lèse majesté of offering musically scrupulous Berlin the tunes of the Georgia cotton-pickers. Hayes appeared. He sang his first number over the boos of several thousand publicspirited citizens who had come to witness his downfall. The house grew quiet. He sang a group of spirituals, then some songs in German, in French, Italian, Russian, English and one in Japanese. The applause was explosive. Leaving Germany, the dusky tenor received offers for 40 engagements next

season.

Now Hayes has returned to the U. S. After a month's rest, he will tour from Coast to Coast, starting in Brooklyn.

Balisand*

Mr. Hergesheimer Uncorks

the Spirit of 1780

The Story. Lavinia Roderick, light of step and heart, the fairest flower of Henrico County, was coming down to dinner in Todd Hundred, Va. For three days a party had been in progress to celebrate her engagement to Gawin Todd. But of all the company which, assembled in the hall, waited for her to descend, it was for Richard Bale that she wore a yellow rose in her bodice-for him that she sang, as she came, the dying fall of a sweet air. He, a Bale of Balisand, had been, like other Virginia gentlemen, a soldier. Fire and ice had altered the temper of his youth. Back again where fiddles were playing, an elegant and austere figure, somewhat of a stranger to gaiety, he had fallen in love with Lavinia and she with him. The night before, he had challenged Gawin Todd to a duel for her hand; now he stood and watched her coming down the stairs. He saw her silhouette above the banister, heard the thread of her frail singing and her cry, as she caught her heel in the carpet, slipped and fell down, down the great stairway-the thud as her head struck the oak floor.

In the years that followed, he isolated himself from men and affairs, rode about his plantation, distracted his loneliness with the pursuits that became a gentleman-drinking, dicing, riding. Sometimes he talked politics. Citizen Genêt was rebuked; the country expanded westward; John Adams was elected President; Jefferson, with his large affectation of the homespun, became a power in the land. By degrees Bale became concious that he, always a staunch Federalist, was owning loyalty to a party discredited. He affixed to his hat the black cockade of his ancestors, and broke his riding-whip over the head of any man who looked askance at it.

There were times when, whatever he might be doing, the memory of Lavinia, vagrant and unsummoned, would bring about him the sense of invisible flowers chilled under webs of cold dew, and a voice would weep and implore in his heart, like the weeping, the imploring, of the fiddles of Todd Hundred. Mastering the longing of his thoughts to lose themselves in the past, he married Lucia Mathews, a lovely and courageous woman, who bore his children and loved him well.

His hatred of Gawin Todd never

slept. At last the two met, high words passed, a challenge was given. They fought at dawn by the river. As Richard Bale lifted his pistol,

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

His preoccupation has always been with beautiful surfaces

the rising sun fell in his eyes and, his own shot missing, he received a mortal wound. The cartel permitted a second exchange if either demanded. Bale, strapped with his scarf to a sapling, shot his enemy dead and died himself in the the arms of his second while his slaves were rowing him, chanting as they rowed, over the dawn-lit river to the lawns of Balisand.

The Significance. In this novel, Mr. Hergesheimer does not borrow from a century but presents it. He has achieved a book that has the texture of velvet and the rigor of bright iron. His method of dating the narrative with politics and giving history's skeleton, flesh and wit in the lives of his characters is, though a difficult artifice, perfectly persuasive. To say that we have advanced in our system of government since Revolutionary times is to say that Jefferson was right and Richard Bale was wrong. It is an opinion generally accepted. Mr. Hergeheimer, indeed, holds no brief for the proud Virginia Federalists. Their courtly manner of life was maintained at great social expense. This book reminds the reader, that government by gentlemen for their peers as against government by the unbred for the undesirable was a question once hotly debated in the U. S.

The Author. Joseph Hergesheimer

went first to a Friends' school in Philadelphia, later studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Of Quaker descent, his preoccupation has always been with beautiful surfaces, in landscapes, women, old furniture, centuries. A symposium of critics last year voted him America's most important novelist. His works include Mountain Blood, Three Black Pennys, Java Head, The Happy End, Cytherea, The Bright Shawl.

Ethel M. Kelley

"She May Very Probably Write a Great Novel"

The lady writers of the U. S. have been able to develop care and style in their craft more expertly than most of the gentlemen. Why this is true, I don't know. Perhaps America requires too strenuous a life of its men to permit of their becoming properly educated. Perhaps they are by nature careless of technique. So many times our young men have stories to tell and do so with superb effect yet without any real attempt at construction or beauty of language. It is to the lady novelists, then, that we turn for the lacery of writing. They do not disappoint us. Among the men, true, we have our Joseph Hergesheimers and Thomas Beers who are not neglectful of the mot précis; but it takes Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Agnes Rep plier, Katherine Fullerton Gerould and more like them to preserve carefully the manipulation of the mother tongue in America.

a score

To this group more and more clearly belongs Ethel M. Kelley. To her present position as a novelist she has come through various pinafore lengths. She wrote children's books and good but slightly conventional lyrics; she edited magazines; she quietly became a member of the intellectual crowd which centers around Manhattan's colyumists. From New England, she let her de tached and somewhat amused intolerance develop into a still detached but nevertheless real tolerance. She wrote a novel ca.led Beauty and Mary Blair which was pretty good. Then she wrote a novel, Heart's Blood, which was very good-and her new book, Wings, is even better.

She is a good example of the persistent development of a fine writer. Having achieved the ability to manage words skilfully and to develop character with precision, there is no reason why she should not continue to give us good novels. When some fine and flaming passion shoots through her work, as it well might, she may very probably write a great novel. At any rate, here is another American woman of whom we may well be proud. J. F.

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE THREE HOSTAGES-John Buchan* -Houghton ($2.00). Three were kidnapped-the daughter of the richest man in the world, the heir of the proudest English dukedom, the child of a national hero. Sir Richard Hannay, unraveler of mysteries, is called from his Cotswold cottage to find them. Matching his wits against those of a fascinating villain, he culls clues from the subconscious mind and follows his quarry through a series of extraordinary episodes, finally stalking for a night and a day over the sinister and mist-wrapt Highlands of Scotland. Aside from its indisputable ability to excite, this work contains a wealth of character study and pungent observation that lifts it from being a thriller into being a book. The style is that of well-read hunting-squire, talking rather fantastically at his own dinner table where, after all, he is privileged to talk.

a

THE SAILOR'S GARLAND-An Anthology of Sea Poems, collected by John Masefield-Macmillan ($2.50). Here Mr. Masefield has gathered his favorite songs of the sea. No fainting nostalgic verses, whispering sotto voce of flying spindrift, cloudy sails and hushed lagoons are these, but salty ballads, roaring chanties, brave sea-tales. Though Chaucer, to whom Mr. Masefield owes much, John Donne and Sir Andrew Barton are well represented, most of the poems are comparatively modern. This is explained by the fact that the older poets, through the Elizabethans, knew the sea only well enough to fear it, regarding it as a crawling, treacherous enemy, as indeed it was, and looking upon sailors as rude, blasphemous, uncharitable dogs, as indeed they were. They were also intrepid fighters and stout explorers. These are the songs, as they might be sung by a binnacle light over a can of flip, of the exploits of those who sailed in galleon, lazaret and caravel-a tribute to Many an old captain whom we shall never know,

Who walked the deck under the colours
when the winds did blow,
And stained the blanks red with his
blood before they carried him be-
low,

Like an old sailor of the Queen's,
And the Queen's old sailor.

Buchan is famed as historian and editor 23 well as novelist. An extended review of His NATIONS OF TODAY-Houghton (6 vols., Rinn was printed in TIME. Feb. 25 (FOREIGH NEWS).

New Plays

What Price Glory. Heretofore, war in the theatre has been pretty generally concerned with the girl back home and the band playing the Marseillaise back stage. War has been essentially an adventure into which went certain souls; some of them came out, some were cowards and some were heroes; and the general effect was that of a Liberty

"THE TOUGHEST FACE"

Louis Wolheim plays the drunken captain

Loan fight talk by William Jennings Bryan. What Price Glory is different. It tells the truth.

Twenty marines and one French girl hold the stage. Two scenes behind the lines and one in a cellar at the front define the action. The soldier speech is salted with profanity; the telling of the story seasoned with a stronger irony; the point of the discussion that war is a filthy, futile fever of brutality.

There is little plot. Captain Flagg and Sergt. Quirt have fought in many wars. Always the fighting has been incidental to their personal feud over one girl or another. Quirt is attached to Flagg's company as top sergeant. Five minutes after Flagg departs on leave, Quirt has attached himself to Flagg's French girl. The second act, at the front line, is mainly a war interlude. In the last act, both men-with a chance to have the girl and escape the coming offensive-leave her standing in her dingy little bar.

The extraordinary feature of this amazing play is its persistent wit. It had to be shortened after the opening night because laughter in the audience

stretched the evening until 11:30. It is humor close to the soil; sometimes t shocks; always it bites.

The authors (Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson) owe no moderate debt to the cast for a performance that rubs elbows with perfection. Louis Wolheim (Hairy Ape) plays the drunken captain; William Boyd, the sergeant; and Leyla Georgie, a newcomer, the girl. Mr. Wolheim has the toughest face in the American Theatre, the toughest part as Captain Flagg, and he blends them irresistibly. The remainder of the company seems a superb selection. The play with any other cast would smell too sweet.

Percy Hammond-"Mr. Hopkins, the respectable producer, was a little ashamed of the God damns and Jesus Christs in the dialogue, and he apologized in the playbill. Mr. Arthur Krock, who is an editorial companion of the authors on the staff of The New York World, describes their play as a barrack-room ballad. . . . I thought that Miss Leyla Georgie's characterization of a frail French girl, skipping gracefully from marine to marine, was a little masterpiece."

Alexander Woollcott-"You may be sure there has been some editing, for the American stage is not yet ready for the undiluted speech of the U. S. Marines. Indeed, the favorite participial utterance of that distinguished corps is not once heard."

Havoc. Two War plays from London are on the list this year, successes both across the Sea. The first is Havoc. The second, The Conquering Hero, which will enter town via the Theatre Guild. Havoc is a front-line melodrama, highly charged with the forces of excitement, toned with tragedy and substantially spattered with romance.

Returning to the trenches, Dick Chapelle brings with him the ring with which Roddy Dunton had affianced Violet Deering. Chapelle has succeeded Dunton in her heedlessly wavering affections. They quarrel. In the attack the following day, Dunton gives Chapelle false orders. He returns blinded. Overcome with the vicious cowardice at his act, Dunton shoots himself. Chapelle, sightless, returns to London, to find that the girl has engaged herself to a luxuriously wealthy

market Theatre migrated to Manhattan for the occasion. Joyce Barbour, she of the errant affections, is both beautiful and accomplished in her craft. Leo G. Forbes and Ralph Forbes combine the severity and simplicity of bitter emotion with distinction.

Nerves. Probably when the discerningly competent John Farrar and Stephen Vincent Benét are more experienced in the Theatre, they will look back upon Nerves and wonder why they ever did it. It originated as a one-act War play, was spread thinly through three acts and emerged as such an inexpert contrivance that the critics quite lost their tempers. The story discusses a young aviator with a bad heart and too much imagination who went to War, funked his duty, was driven to it, crippled himself for life getting his Boche. There is also a girl who decided with difficulty between him and the vigorous captain of the squadron. The second act of the play brings the drama of war on the lines into intense, if slightly conventional, relief. The locale of the other acts is on Long Island. College men bandy injudiciously selected slang and punch each other to display affection. Winifred Lenihan gave her usual flawless performance as the heroine, while lesser flights of excellence are provided by Humphrey Bogart and Mary Philips.

Heywood Broun "Aerial warfare pictured as a sort of Yale Alumni activity."

Top Hole. There is not much to be said about a musical comedy except that it is good or bad. Top Hole happens to be bad.

The Tantrum. Nearly everyone will recall the generously constructed Roberta Arnold of The First Year and Chicken Feed and her voice that twangs like a guitar. She is an anomalously successful actress, having neither beauty, restraint nor reverence for the canons of her craft. Yet she is aggressively effective, recklessly individual. She is Roberta Arnold. You either like her or you do not. Most people do.

She is herein concerned with displaying the vagaries of the modern shrew. The curtain ascends on a man and his wife quarrelling at a theatre. The scene slips away to their comfortable Long Island home where she bickers and batters him into revolt. He deserts to the easier confines of debauchery, finally is shot by the shrew. The scene reverts to the theatre. It has all been a play. The shrew is reduced to tearful penitence and they depart, presumably to a life of humdrum harmony.

Through that first act at home, Miss Arnold resembles a series of explosions caught at the precise moment of detonation. She wastes gestures; she talks at

ROBERTA ARNOLD

"A voice that twangs"

the top of her voice, always out of turn; she overacts magnificently-and makes you like it. Thereafter the play runs down a trifle. There are other good performances, notably Will Deming's difficult drunkard. Yet without Miss Arnold the play would be fustian. With her it seems eventful entertainment.

Percy Hammond-"Expert and amusing."

Alexander Woollcott-"Based on the familiar meditation that, whereas all men kill the thing they love, all women bawl him out."

B ourself. It has become a fairly well-established trait of all plays by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly to be amusing. The latest is a musical comedy which is short on music and long on comedy. This refreshing departure from the usual is in itself enough to make Be Yourself an encouraging addition to the local ranks. Alexander Woollcott proclaimed it the most comic libretto he had seen in ten years' attendance at the Theatre. The rest of the production is unimpressive. The costumes show lack of taste and the chorus is rather less beautiful than one would wish. Queenie Smithshe of the brilliant slang and flashing feet-is comfortably situated at the head of the cast.

Rose Marie deserted the beaten track of musical entertainment and emerged from the woods of the opening night equipped with just about everything that lurks in the thickets of novelty. It started out in the first place by combining musical comedy and melodrama. Accordingly, when the music and jokes ran out, it turned on a bit of suspense until the comedian and the tenor caught their breath. It even tried pantomime. It

took its locale away from the outworn "house-party-on-Long-Island" set and plunged it into the snows of Northern Canada. It provided a murder and spent the rest of the evening solving it. It employed the brilliant voice of Mary Ellis (exMetropolitan) and the sibilant, halting comedy of William Kent. From this curious collection of experiments, it contrived to be one of the best musical shows that has settled itself upon Broadway in months.

Pigs is the family album come to life. The crotchety old country grandma; the overworked mother and father; the languid uncle who will not work; the gossipy, relentlessly pert daughter who has engaged herself to the son of the house, whose great ambition is to become a veterinary: such is the assemblage. To give them excuse for talking through three acts, a drove of ailing pigs is introduced. The son wants to buy the pigs, cure them, sell for a plump profit that will take the mortgage off the house. Eventually he does so. In the meanwhile, there are two hours of pretty consistent amusement-due in no small part to the expert characterplaying of Nydia Westman, Wallace Ford, Maud Granger and George Henry Trader.

When

The Chocolate Dandies. Shuffle Along burst boisterously on the metropolis a few years back, the wise and the simple tossed their prejudices aside and trampled one another in the effort to get in. It was Negro, it was incredibly swift, it was funny, it was irresistibly musical. It gathered in its train a vast array of imitators of which just one, Runnin' Wild, preserved the tradition. A second offshoot has appeared, fresh off the same family tree and quite in character. In dissecting The Chocolate Dandies, the observer finds the comedy of Sissle and Blake typically comic, the male quartet magnificently melodious, the chorus high in aggregate activity, and the piano playing of Eubie Blake almost an evening's entertainment in itself.

The Haunted House. That strangely combined optimist and cynic, the firstnighter, shook off the lethargy that has consumed him through the mass of inconsequentiality thus far produced this season. He was going to a play by Owen Davis, with Wallace Eddinger in the lead. He relied on the tradition of ably-contrived amusement that these two have reared. He emerged dispirited. The tradition had tumbled.

Since the program pleads with the eviewer not to disclose the solution to the mystery, this department will comply. This department will go farther;