adventures as the home-wrecker in a divorce suit, as wild man in a sideshow, as assistant to Irene, the Hamburger Queen. At last his brief, wild career as wanderer of the roads came to an end and he returned, with a new dignity in his heart, to his domestic hearth, chastened spouse, cheering pupils.

Sidney Howard

He Writes Bluntly

Sometimes I permit myself to write of my friends—nor do I expect to be accused of log-rolling when I do so. In this case, I am writing of a friend whose story Mrs. Vietch: A Segment of Biography is included in his volume Three Flights Up* just about to be published. It is as good a story as Ethan Frome-a magnificent piece of writing. Therefore, I feel justified in speaking of a friend.

Sidney Howard is a Californian by birth. He is around 30 years of age, tall, dark, striking in appearance and possessed of an unusual amount of physical and mental vitality. He has written poetry, plays, short stories and done spectacular journalistic investigations. He was an aviator and an ace during the War; but he came as near being killed in his recent dope investigation for Hearst's International as at any time during the European conflict. Howard is a robust and a romantic gentleman. He likes life dramatic; and it becomes so for him. He married the star of his first Broadway production, Swords. The star was the young and striking Clare Eames. This autumn, he is co-author with Edward Sheldon of Bewitched (TIME, Oct. 13, THE THEATRE); and the Theatre Guild will produce another of his plays in November. A gentleman of parts, you will observe, and a gentleman whose work is worth following.

His education was completed at Harvard, where he studied, like so many others of our young playwrights, under Professor Baker. His earlier college career was in California. It was in California that his first play was produced under the advice and direction of Sam Hume. He then proceeded to Cambridge; from thence to the Air Service and on to journalism. It was he who did "The Labor Spy" series for The New Republic; and another series of his exposés is appearing in that publication now.

Howard is an admiration of mine in the literary world because he is so forthright and so vivid. He writes with a sense of beauty, poetry and rugged simplicity. If he wants to write of sex, he does it bluntly, in a manner Elizabethan; there is nothing sneaky about him. I have always suspected him of being one of the finest of our younger writers. J. F.

*Published by Scribner.

CINEMA

The New Pictures

The Border Legion. It is not often that a secondary player steals the story from the star in pictures. Rockliffe Fellowes stole it from Antonio Moreno in The Border Legion and made the film a welcome novelty. Through the early episodes it seems to be simply another Western yarn in which the hero shoots the nasty old outlaw and marries the prospector's daughter. Mr. Fellowes played his outlaw part so sturdily that, when he died defending the girl from his own bandits, the cheers of the crowd were all for him. Mr. Moreno was rather a colorless character throughout. If the director did all this purposely, he trifled with tradition and emerged with an authentically successful novelty. In any event, he manufactured a good picture, even if Helene Chadwick and her carefully waved hair fooks less like a kidnapped cowgirl than she does like a manicure on her day off.

This Woman. Two men cannot trust her and the third has faith. He will not believe she has ever been in jail for vagrancy. That is the certificate of character which she takes as guarantee of happiness. Marc McDermott is the truster. The other two men are Ricardo Cortez and Creighton Hale. Irene Rich is the woman. She spends most of the feeble film being misunderstood.

The Silent Watcher was called The Altar on the Hill before it shed its buckram skin and wriggled into the camera. Mary Roberts Rinehart reared the Altar. If you are not skeptical about the credibility of Mrs. Rinehart's inventions, the new product will afford diversion. It is all about a Senator's secretary who was loyal. He even went to jail to shield the "Chief." Credibility cracks elsewhere, but the fissures are partially filled in by adroit direction. The big news about the whole thing is that it employs Glenn Hunter.

The Speed Spook is another preparation for very little children. Johnny Hines, who is almost a big boy now, grimaces and hops about effervescently as the speed demon. Edmund Breese, who must have been a good actor before Hines was born, seems a little discouraged in the part of his mechanic. Faire Binney is the girl, a bit bewildered with all the sugar the director has whipped into the part. For the sake of plot, she is set to selling motor cars. Her father is running for sheriff. The opposing motor company and sheriff candidate combine against them and only her hero's device saves the day. It is a racing automobile which whizzes about through town without a driver.

Ships

ART

Manhattan is waxing nautical. No that its population shows any immed a tendency to go down to the sea ships, but the metropolitan eye seeme quite definitely cast toward the ocea and the more or less frail craft that sail it. After all, the city on the Hud son is a sea port and it is quite com prehensible that its children should fee a trifle salty at times.

The most conspicuous manifestation of the marine impulse is the growing quantity of little bottled boats in shop windows. There are schooners and brigs, warships and fishing smacks sailing around and around inside whis key bottles with an apparent disregard for the relative proportions of the necks of bottles and the heights of masts.

The Belmaison galleries at Wanamaker's have undertaken the responsi bility of representing a collection the varied expressions of the marine in Art. There are ship models of all sorts; paintings, prints, watercolors of ships; a carved figurehead; odds and ends reminiscent of shipping.

Most entertaining of all, perhaps, is a set of embroidered pictures in woo!. They are reputed to have been made by sailors during the long and weary hours at sea, for the girls they left behind. The themes are all nautical There is a very interesting decorative quality about these little woolly boats, sailing about the walls.

The October issue of The Arts contains several photographs of the woolly boats on their woolly oceans, giving an excellent idea not only of the naiveté of their treatment but of their high decorative possibilities.

Lucky Snook

It pays to patronize, especially when the prerequisite of patronage is a fine painting freely given by its author.

Last week, in Manhattan, the names of all the lay members of the co-operation Painters' and Sculptors' Gallery Association were hidden away, lotterywise, then drawn forth. In the order of their names' forthcoming, the lay members were then entitled to choose one work apiece from amongst upwards of 150 pieces executed by leading artists of the U. S. The artists had donated their creations as tokens of their gratitude to the lay members for their support of the Association

As the name-drawing began, patrons from many a state stood tensely by to learn their luck. Out came the first name: Albert Snook, of Aurora, Ill., publisher of The Aurora BeaconNews. Without hesitation, Mr. Snook marched to John Singer Sargent's canvas. The Chess Game, and claimed it for his own.

New Plays

Artists and Models. When the first evue under this trade mark appeared ast year (TIME, Sept. 3, 1923), there vere loud legal wranglings as to just How much of a chorus girl's costume a producer can legally eliminate. Disputes also arose as to the exact relaions of wickedness and wit and to what degree the former is admissible. Accordingly, this year's edition was subject to stampede on the opening night. Those who wormed their way in (at $11 a ticket) found that the proceedings were neither as nude nor as ribald as those of the parent production. The players, the music and the comedy were better.

Trini, from Spain, is the temptressin-chief. Barnett Parker, clown of countless Shubert productions, assists the considerable supply of comedy with his London drawl. There were the usual dancers, chorus, color and a diverting score. Taken in sum, it is one of the better, but not one of the best, examples of the species.

George S. Kaufman-"The high spots are quite high. . . and the low spots are pretty low."

In His Arms. Margaret Lawrence is an amazingly attractive person, possibly a trifle plump to be playing a nervous bride but, nevertheless, most agreeable. For her sake, her extensive clientele will enjoy In His Arms. For the rest, it will be simply a comedy that edges comfortably above the average.

Elsie Clarendon (Miss Lawrence) is engaged to a startlingly stern, spectacled young artist (Geoffrey Kerr). Just the week before her wedding, there appears a handsome and extremely affable young gentleman from Holland (Vernon Steele). She cuts dates with her fiancé to motor with this new arrival and then directs the new arrival to disappear. Fifteen minutes before the wedding, he can contain himself no longer and returns. The bridegroom, reasonably and yet quite unreasonably irritated, makes a scene. The bride hurls her wedding bouquet on the floor, swears at him with authentic modern fervor and falls into the Dutchman's arms.

In the competent supporting cast, the saturnine Edna May Oliver squeezes the maximum of merriment out of a shrewd supply of neatly satiric lines. Alexander Woollcott-"The twinkling lady, Margaret Lawrence, is most of the refreshment offered in the rather foolish, but sometimes amusing, comedy."

The Guardsman. As the curtain went down on the opening performance. great sighs of critical relief were heard. The shuffling parade of poor (with one notable exception-What Price Glory?)

productions which has been passing in review this autumn had been halted a second time.

Molnar of Hungary is the author, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne the principals, the Theatre Guild the producers. The play is in a sense a revival.

LYNN FONTANNE

The spectators nodded to one another in gratified delight.

It was presented eleven years ago, under the name of Where Ignorance is Bliss, with William Courtleigh and Rita Jolivet. Pervading ineptitude brought rapid ruin.

As most of the world knows, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne are actor and actress, man and wife. When, in the opening scene, the characters were drawn as actor and actress, man and wife, the spectators nodded to each other that here was a favoring fitness. They continued to nod throughout the evening in increasingly gratified delight.

The actor, feeling that his wife is tiring of him after six short months of marriage, resolves to put both his Art and his happiness to test. He impersonates an officer of the Imperial Russian Guards, invades his own home, sets out to seduce his own wife. In the last act, he confronts her with the results of his research. She insists she knew him all the time. Whether she did or not is a speculation that makes the play that much more entertaining.

Both Mr. Lunt and Miss Fontanne played their portions of the entertainment very near the point where criticism fades before perfection. Dudley Digges and Helen Westley, stand-bys of the Guild, were well-selected second fiddles.

Gilbert W. Gabriel-"The most iri

descent trick the season of comedies has yet turned."

Percy Hammond-"A delicate, sophisticated comedy, fit for observation by the smarter type of drama lover." Heywood Broun-"The object is mockery. Regrets are no part of its mood."

The Firebrand might well be described as History in cap and bells. The author (Edwin Justus Mayerhis first play) has appropriated, with satirical intent, sections of the Cellini legend and made it over into bedroom farce. He has evolved an Apocryphal tilt between Cellini and the Duke of Florence over a pretty model. He has seasoned and complicated it with the Duchess' reckless regard for the young silversmith.

A few moments before the curtain's rise, Cellini commits a murder. The Duke arrives to announce that the murderer must hang-only to be completely diverted from his purpose by the shapely model. He is followed in the action by the Duchess, who desires Cellini's love. That evening, all assemble on the balcony of the Winter Palace and dodge in and out of doors. For the last act, farce turns to comedy-and the play achieves its fullest flavor of finesse.

Joseph Schildkraut clamors, kisses and clowns as Cellini. For those who fancy Schildkraut, there is much of him. Frank Morgan, as the Duke, gives the only other important performance of the play.

Alexander Woollcott-"A jovial entertainment, full of hearty Renaissance humor related in purest Brooklynese."

Cock o' the Roost is a glad play about a loud speaker. He is a youth who cannot abide the minute routine of starting at the bottom. Instead, he deals in Rolls-Royces and apartment houses and by the end of the play he is wealthy. In the process of attaining this blessed state, he talks a great deal about banishing fear and being honest with yourself and the unpleasant state of stupidity in which the kings of business find themselves. There are a couple of girls in the picture and a poor detective-story writer whom the loud speaker rescues from a nervous breakdown. Only the most blandly vacuous and the veriest tyros of the theatre can regard Cock o' the Roost favorably.

The New York Times-"Written against the grain of plausibility."

Clubs Are Trumps. Golf, advertising and tinned soups strung through a tedious evening is the nutshell note by which this play must be described. The hero helps himself to a high-salaried job through his proficiency on the links. By the time these words appear the play will probably have been stored away forever.

Stark Young-"In Clubs Are Trumps,

the theatrical season may boast that it hit bottom."

The Best Plays

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:

Drama

WHITE CARGO Approaching its second year of proving that an exile blends with the people he adopts. In this case, the exile is an Englishman; and the people, African natives.

RAIN-Rigorous exposure of alleged missionary methods in the South Seas, . with the sympathy pinned on a wandering girl whose profession is ancient if not honorable.

WHAT PRICE GLORY?-That part of France which the Marines salvaged from Germany. Generally accounted the greatest of the War plays.

COBRA-The snake makes drama still, even as when Eve first found it in the grass. Mostly melodrama.

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE-Ina Claire congenially occupied in divorcing a husband and remarrying him.

THE WEREWOLF-Daring discussion of topics not usually discussed. Laura Hope Crews as the Spanish noblewoman who fell into her butler's arms by mistake.

THE GUARDSMAN-Reviewed in this issue.

MINICK-Observant comedy of lower middle-class existence and what happens when father-in-law arrives for an endless visit.

THE FARMER'S WIFE-Mr. and Mrs. Coburn in a quietly bucolic pleasantry of middle-aged love-making.

EXPRESSING WILLIE-A modern business man mounts the steed of SelfExpression and there follows a runaway.

THE SHOW-OFF-The American, whose capacity for self-advertising quite swallows his capacity for perfecting the advertised product.

Musical

Color and comedy, girls and music are most dextrously blended in the following selections from the current schedule: Ritz Revue, Ziegfeld Follies, Kid Boots, I'll Say She Is, Rose-Marie, The Dream Girl, Grand Street Follies, Scandals, The Grab Bag.

RELIGION

Cain's Wife

One Frank R. Shipman, in The Christian Century, propounds a question which is a severe test of any man's biblical knowledge. Asks he: "Where did Cain get his wife?"

The Bible says that, until Adam, "there was not a man to till the ground" and that Eve was "the mother of all

CAIN

Whence his wife?

living." Now the only recorded children of Adam and Eve are Cain and Abel. Cain slew Abel.

Mr. Shipman offers the following possible theories to explain the perpetuation of the human race:

1) Cain's wife was made, like Adam, from the dust or, like Eve, from her husband's rib. But Mr. Shipman "would see something grotesque in the idea of a Cain brought up through babyhood, childhood and youth to meet a ready-made bride."

2) Eve may have had daughters unmentioned in the Bible. But "for many years the human mind has shrunk sensitively away from the idea of confusing the beautiful relation of brother and sister with the other relation of husband and wife."

3) The "original autograph" theory -i. e., the Bible as originally dictated by God, contained no mistakes and no hiati, but parts of it have been lost in transmission. But, says Mr. Shipman, "to conclude that the original autograph was perfect and entire, lacking nothing of being absolutely correct astronomy, geology, zoology, biology, geography, ethnography. . . constitutes a leap in literary supposition for which no one can give any reason."

4) Both the Adam-Eve story and the Cain story were ancient folk-tales

brought together for certain literary and moral purposes, but without any idea that they should constitute an infallible chapter and an infallible book "To such a reader [i. e., one who sees the book of Genesis in this light] it does not matter where Cain got his wife."

Why did Mr. Shipman write this article? It was not satire. It was not research. It was not irreverence. On the contrary, it was a reverent parable which endeavored to explain how a man could be a Christian without taking the Bible literally from Genesis to Revelations.

Lateran

In a corner of Rome which has been left behind by the centuries is the church of St. John Lateran. Dozens of churches can lay claim to greater beauty and adornment, but this church, said the Pope in a letter last week, is "the mother and head of all the churches of the city and of the world."

On Nov. 9 the Catholic World will celebrate the 16th centenary of this most famous of all "St. Johns." About the year 324, Constantine the Great, "sentimental before he was great and great before he was Christian," bought a mansion from a rich Roman pagan family, named Laterano. This mansion the Emperor gave to Pope Sylvestre. Within the house a chapel was erected and for 600 years called the "chapel in the Laterano house"; finally, after having been twice burned and rebuilt, it was dedicated to St. John the Baptist and became San Giovanni nel Laterano. It was early regarded as the Pope's own church, and hence as the centre of Roman Christendom. Pope Pius XI will not be able to say mass in his own church on the day of the festival, of course, because he is a prisoner, self-imprisoned in the Vatican, miles away.

A U. S. church-St. Jean Baptiste, Manhattan claims to be the only church in the world directly affiliated with the Laterano church. Visitors to the Manhattan church may receive all the privileges of a visit to the mother church. Thus on Nov. 9 it will dispense, like the Lateran, a plenary indulgence.

LAW

The Third Degree

A smashing judicial blow has been dealt by the U. S. Supreme Court at the so-called "third degree." The substance of Mr. Justice Brandeis' opinion -given when a new trial was ordered in the appeal from a death sentence of a youthful Chinese, Liang Sung Wau, who confessed to having killed, on

Jan. 21, 1919, one Dr. Ben Sen Wu and two other members of the Chinese Educational Mission-is that no court should admit as competent evidence a confession obtained by "third degree” methods. In the case at bar, the defendant admitted his guilt after eleven almost sleepless days of questioning. Said a medical witness, testifying as to the torture Wau underwent: "If he were as sick as that and in as great pain as that, he would do almost anything to have the torture stopped."

Nothing has been more perplexing to lawyers, trial judges and appellate courts than the "sage inconsistencies of the rules of evidence." It is familiar law that confessions given under duress are not admissible. A confession must be voluntary, without fear of punishment or hope of reward. The problem is to fit particular cases to these general principles. The decision in this case should be a valuable guide in this difficult matter.

The appeal was argued before the Supreme Court by James B. Shea on a brief signed by John W. Davis when he was a member of Stetson, Jennings, Russell & Davis. Mr. Shea made the point that no will would be held valid if executed in the circumstances under which the confession had been admittedly obtained.

The decision has been generally approved by the press and prosecuting officials. "In the long run," said the Boston Transcript, "the third degree injures the cause of Justice and the administration of the criminal law."

But police officers, it is submitted, will always be tempted to resort to harsh questioning-not to obtain confessions for use as such in trials, but to get "leads" which will result in unearthing facts from which a chain of competent evidence can be woven.

A New Book

THE GROWTH OF THE LAW-Benjamin N. Cardozo, LL.D.-Yale University Press ($1.75), must be regarded as a supplement to The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921) by the same author. Both volumes represent lectures given at the Yale Law School.

The Scope. The text with which Judge Cardozo begins and ends The Growth of the Law is: "Law must be stable and yet it cannot stand still." An understanding of this text, he points out, requires a thorough consideration of "the philosophy of function" in relation to "the authority of precedent." The chapter headings give the best brief idea of the author's subject and his method of approaching it. They are: I. The need of a scientific re-statement of the law as an aid to certainty; II. The need of a philosophy of law as an aid to growth. The problems of legal philosophy. The meaning and genesis of law; III. The growth of law and the methods of judging; IV. The function

and ends of law; V. Function and ends continued. The conclusion is for "the partisans of an inflexible logic" and "the levelers of all rule and all precedent" to fuse their warring theories into one new instrument of social control.

The Significance. Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes has said that "the abstraction called the Law is a magic mirror wherein we see reflected not only our own lives, but the lives of all men that have been." Judge Cardozo's little book is a felicitous contribution of general interest to the origin, nature and function of this "abstraction called the Law" which records the past and profesies what the future will be. It is written in a style which will satisfy the most exacting professional precisionist and will, at the same time, be clear to the layman and attract all who delight in the deft and gracious use of English.

The Author. Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, aged 54, was born in Manhattan, studied at Columbia University, was admitted to the New York State Bar, was elected (in 1913) to the New York State Supreme Court and (in 1917) an Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals. He is noted for the thoughtful content and stylistic charm of his opinions.

EDUCATION

Campus Campaigning

no

The New Student, lately rejuvenated intercollegiate news-weekly, of visible party bias, last week published its own, semi-complete survey of "the political fervor in the colleges." It found that this fervor seemed to decline "in proportion to the distance of the institution from Washington, D. C." Republican headquarters had reported 300 active Coolidge clubs, the result of expenditures by Chairman Butler. The Davis College League listed 100 clubs. The LaFollette forces, lacking literature, had created no clubs directly, but clippings from the undergraduate press convinced the editors of The New Student that there were as many LaFollette as Davis clubs, spontaneously founded.

"Some of the more active colleges" mentioned by The New Student:

Beloit (Wis.)—was planning to hold a big political rally with speakers for each of the candidates. After a catholic discussion, a straw vote was to be taken. Cornell A speech by Dr. Norman Thomas, Progressive candidate for Governor of N. Y., launched a Progressive club. Republican and Democratic clubs founded a year ago had not been revived when the survey was made. Dartmouth Republicans organized early, canvassed from room to room, rallied in nearby towns. The LaFol

lette club, "first college Third Party club in the U. S.," was equally active." The campaign had been featured prominently in The Dartmouth, three articles of one series being by members of the faculty, on "Why I am for —.” Doubtful claim was made that The Dartmouth was "the only college paper that has come out for LaFollette and one of two in the entire U. S. to take any stand at all."

Harvard-Residents of the college dormitories in which the LaFollette men had their headquarters circulated a petition to have the club evicted. University authorities ordered the club to depart in obedience to an ancient rule forbidding the use of dormitory rooms as club headquarters. Whereupon the Harvard Liberal Club offered the use of its rooms and the La Follette men kept on with their work of directing the silver-haired Senator's campaign in and about Cambridge.

Kansas-Active clubs were "boosting each of the three candidates "on the Hill." Outside speakers of prominence had been brought to the campus by the Republicans. Democrats had flocked to the railroad to hear Governor Bryan as he stumped through the state. Buses were chartered by the Third Party leaders to carry their partisans into Kansas City when La Follette spoke there.

Northwestern-In Candidate Dawes' home town of Evanston, Ill., the campus seemed devoid of Democrats, as reflected in the columns of The Daily Northwestern. LaFollette and Wheeler had their cohorts none the less. Princeton-Following Candidate Davis' visit, both Democrats and Progressives became active. Coolidge partisans were planning to present Senators Pepper and Edge to the University, with General Dawes held in reserve for a climax. Progressives sought to bring Dr. Norman Thomas or some other Socialist to town. The Undergraduate Speakers' Bureau was supplying student orators to meetings in nearby counties.

Smith-A political rally for discussion and tripartite campaign speaking, touched off with a torchlight parade, were what women of Smith had in mind.

Vassar-The women of Vassar summoned to their campus young statesmen and stateswomen from 16 other colleges. There was debate, then an "election," won by Coolidge. A mild sensation was furnished by Curtis W. Bok, son of Edward W. Bok (peace prize man). Young Bok, a Williams undergraduate, arose to define the Ku Klux Klan in its own terms, taking care to state in advance that he was no Klansman. His hearers murmured that he sounded too klannish for their taste.

Yale Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette had addressed the Progressives at one point in the campaign; Newton D. Baker, the Democrats at another. The Republicans had not swung into action.

THE PRESS

Size

Although a work of history was once condemned to go readerless because of a reviewer's remark-it was the only remark, in fact, that he made on the volume that it weighed 14 lbs.; although the publishers of the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica did not, by way of advertisement, call attention to the enormous bulk and displacement of the publication; although few pianos are sold simply on the strength of the fact that it takes eight men to move them, The New York Times, in its issue for Thursday, Oct. 16, issued the following gasconade:

A 52-PAGE TIMES To-day's NEW YORK TIMES contains 52 pages-416 columns-and is the largest daily issue produced by THE TIMES.

The boast is legitimate, as no other paper on Thursday, Oct. 16, more than approached The Times in solidity. The Chicago Daily News, however, with 48 pages was large enough to be a considerable burden to a newsboy;. The Chicago Tribune had 36 with which to swell a business man's pocket; The New York World and The New York Herald-Tribune each provided 32 for the littering of breakfast tables, Pullmans or wherenot. Other papers whose bulk did not forbid their being folded by an active man in any conveniently clear space were The Kansas City Star with 30 and The Boston Transcript with 20.

Practical Mencken

For some years a gadfly, H. L. Mencken by name, editor of the American Mercury, has buzzed and stung at the flanks of U. S. journalists. But Gadfly Mencken does not sting solely to infuriate. Gadfly Mencken is an idealist. He stings, he maddens, he browbeats only that working newspaper men may be awakened to the shame of their "cowardice, stupidity and Philistinism." Idealist Mencken has magnificent ideals for U. S. journalism.

In the past, the Mencken idealism has seemed sometimes over-bitter, over-scornful. Emanating from the studious atmosphere of a secluded Baltimore library, it has seemed far removed from the ugly realities it so resents. Now all this is to be changed. Idealist Mencken has shown himself to be a practical as well as an inspired reformer. Last week the Chicago Tribune Syndicate advertised that Idealist Mencken had offered his service to any and all papers in the land that were desirous of employing "a great literary critic. . perhaps the foremost in America." Hereafter there will be no excuse for any U. S. newspaper

to be without at least one redeeming feature. For a moderate consideration, any city editor can now have a model of sincere, constructive, idealistic thought and writing against which to contrast the "blowsy," "slipshod" language of the news columns, the "drivel" he lets "slide under his nose," the "transparent absurdities," the "trivialities and puerilities." To his vulgar, ignorant cub reporter, a city editor may now say: "Go thou and read our column by Mr. Mencken and be a better boy."

Mergers

Taking a page in a rival or brother sheet, The New York Herald-Tribune last week published an advertisement as big as a banner which was headed "The Most Successful of Newspaper Mergers." It went on to state that "the first six months, the critical period in every merger," are now passed. "The circulation statement of The New York Herald-Tribune shows a net paid circulation of more than 92% of The New York Herald and The New York Tribune as filed separately for the same six months of 1923." It furnished the figures.

THE NEW YORK HERALD-TRIBUNE
Present Daily Circulation....270,159
Before Merger (Sept. 30, 1923):
Herald
.163,864
.132,729

Tribune
Percentage lost by merger.....7-8%

Last year, there were two other big mergers of Manhattan newspapersthose in which the Sun married the Globe and the Telegram the Mail. No advertisement as big as a banner has as yet come from either of these combinations. What price glory? The facts:

TIME, The Weekly News-Magazine. Editors-Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce. Associates Manfred Gottfried (National Affairs), John S. Martin, Thomas J. C. Martyn (Foreign News), Jack A. Thomas (Books). Weekly Contributors-Ernest Brennecke, John Farrar, Willard T. Ingalls, Alexander Klemin, Peter Mathews, Wells Root, Preston Lockwood, Niven Busch. Published by TIME, Inc., H. R. Luce, Pres.; J. S. Martin, VicePres. B. Hadden, Secy-Treas.; 236 E. 39th St., New York City. Subscription rate, one year, postpaid: In the United States and Mexico, $5.00; in Canada, $5.50; elsewhere, $6.00. For advertising rates address: Robert L. Johnson, Advertising Manager, TIME, 236 E. 39th St., New York City; New England representatives, Sweeney & Price, 127 Federal St., Boston, Mass.; Western representatives, Powers & Stone, 38 S. Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill.; Circulation Manager, Roy E. Larsen. Vol. IV, No. 17.

MEDICINE

Rickets

President Clarence C. Little of the University of Maine and Dr. W. T Bovie, Professor of Biophysics at Harvard Medical School, have discovered a cure for rickets. The cure consists of a violet ray treatment, wherein the subject is exposed to ultra-violet rays projected by a Cooper-Hewitt lamp through a fused quartz window. Chickens a kind of fowl peculiarly susceptible to rickets-have been experimented upon with a success which definitely establishes the cure.

Said Dr. Bovie: "The importance of these experiments would be very great even if they applied only to the raising of chickens. Applicable to this, they are also applicable to the raising of children. Rickets, a disease of calcium metabolism, is found in marked or minor form in 97 out of every 100 city babies-babies who are kept indoors in the winter. In the spring. they are thin, lumpy, febrile. They have rickets."

Rickets is a medical term for poverty-poverty of the bones. When the virtuous salts, retrieved by the body's chemistry from fruits and greens, course more slowly through the blood because of the languor of the heart in winter and the lack of sunlight, or are not present at all because fruits and greens have not been eaten, the bones are pinched with poverty. To To make up for this, they swagger and falsely swell, while the sufferer falls off in flesh. The head becomes bulky; the barrel of the ribs warped; the sternum projects. Fever, sweating, temper, sensitiveness that is rickets. In former days, a famed antidote, a preventative, was known. That stood and stands still on many a pantry shelf, is administered in a great spoon after every meal, a green-glooming fluid in a sticky bottle-Cod-liver Oil. This obnoxious tonic possesses many of the vitamins necessary discourage rickets, gives strength to rickety children.

to

Chickens. Subjected to ordinary sunlight, chickens prospered; left in the dark, they developed rickets and died. Exposed to rays from the quartz window, they grew faster than normally; their bones became very stout. sometimes so stout that their growth was a positive menace. In a few weeks, by continued use of the rays, it was found possible to develop fabulously succulent small fowls-"superbroilers." When the milk and celery which fed them had been treated with the rays, they thrived better than those whose food had not been so treated.

The Significance. The treatment has not as yet been used on rickety (Continued on Page 20)