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Is Herbert Quick the
Howells of Middle
America?

The Story. Iowa was no Elysian field about 1890. A third generation still labored to smooth out the social and economic rough-hewing of the first settlers. The graces and sensibilities of the populace were those of thrifty corn-and-cattle men, of boomtown merchants and lawyers and journalists. Politics seethed with hot conflicts between the farmers and the railroads, the people and the state political machine. Woman's influence was just becoming visible.

A tornado sweeps the story on its way by uprooting pretty Christina Thorkelson from her father's farm and depositing her as a secretary in the law offices of Creede, Silverthorn and Boyd at the county seat of Monterey. Creede is one of the state bosses; working under him Christina learns enough of political mechanics to revolt against them and insert a monkey wrench unexpectedly at the state convention. Oliver Silverthorn, Creede's partner, whom Creede sought to sidetrack in the circuit court, is the beneficiary of Christina's thrust and they marry in the end rather perfunctorily.

Through Christina's life there moves the shadow of her mother's youth. Magnus Thorkelson, Christina's father, married Rowena Fewkes, an ignorant squatter girl, the day after she bore a son to her seducer, Buckner Gowdy, now the millionaire landowner of Monterey County. Christina is keenly sensitive to the stigma of this half brother, Owen Gowdy. But Owen wins his standing in society-and a rich patrimony-by dint of a somewhat startling genius for land economics, and the aid of Christina's employers.

A residue of comic relief collects about Uncle Surajah Fewkes, who emerges from the poor house into ludicrous wealth via a patented selfopening farm gate.

The Significance. The Invisible Woman completes a trilogy of the Middle West, of which Vandemark's Folly and The Hawkeye were the first two parts. The whole work, no less this third part than the others, verges upon the heroic, as to both quality and proportions. The Middle West has been chronicled by Hamlin Garland, but not without streaks of sentimentality to blur what might have been the strong lines of his large frescoes. The Middle West has been photographed by the bitter-brilliant young egotist, Sinclair

*THE INVISIBLE WOMAN-Herbert Quick -Bobbs Merrill ($2.00).

Lewis, at close range under a leaden sky; and more mercifully, more delicately, by Willa Cather. Booth Tarkington has written Middle Western idylls, often tinged with gentle parody. Vachel chanted Lindsay has and shouted, Carl Sandburg has mourned and exulted over parts and phases of the Middle West. None of these has ever contrived its epic.

Nor is the epic yet, in Mr. Quick's trilogy. Mr. Quick has something less the building power and much less the veiled iconoclasm of W. D. Howells, New England's classic figure. But of Howells' power for wide and accurate scrutiny, he has enough to warrant a proximate parallel if not an analogy. The Quick trilogy burgeons forth, out of a mind well rooted in human and literary sub-soil, as the richest, most comprehensive fiction that has yet appeared against the Middle Western historical background.

The Author. John Herbert Quick was born to his destiny "near Steamboat Rock, Grundy County, Iowa." After living most of his life in Iowa he is now, at 63, a large-landed resident of West Virginia. His interest and energies-as schoolmaster, lawyer, editor, author-have been intense and abundant, centering chiefly on history, politics and the lot of the farmer.

His public service has ranged from counsel for the Citizens Committee of Sioux City, when he "prosecuted boodlers" in 1894, to membership on the Federal Farm Loan Board (1916) and head of the Far East Red Cross Commission (1920). Besides his fiction, Mr. Quick has written much of a practical nature-on agricultural problems (The Real Trouble With the Farmer), on rural education (The Brown Mouse), on American inland water

ways.

Black feelings

THE QUAINT COMPANIONS- Leonard Merrick-Dutton ($2.50).

To find Leonard Merrick treating of miscegenation is something of a shock, like seeing an amiable young lepidopterist drop his butterfly net and go in for heavyweight pugilism.

Elisha Lee was a large black English Negro. His big soft tenor voice made him rich, enabled him to smoke fat cigars, wear silk socks, fur overcoats, diamond rings, roses. But Elisha Lee was lonely, both as animal and artist. He wanted a white woman to love him. And when he obtained pretty Ownie Tremlett for his wife it was only because she could not resist vulgar luxury in the face of frowsy widowhood in Brighton. They soon hated each other bitterly and a weakling mulatto baby was the core of their hate. Lee

drank and died. Ownie reverted to a frowsy lodging house and dyed her hair.

Then the tale begins again with the mulatto weakling, David Lee, in whom the soul of a poet grew. His poems won him the love of a deformed li country mouse, Hebe, who painte pathetic pictures, wrote him beautifu letters and cowered from his sight for shame of her crumpled body. He cow ered from her sight for shame of he color, and all the more so when she inpulsively sent him a picture of her lovely sister, in place of her own eWhen Hebe discovered David' secret, she loved him notwithstanding When he discovered hers, his bitterness was vile. He recovered, but wither much grace, and this second climax s shaky. The baseless sentimentality with which it breaks off, cannot, however, alter the validity of the black Elisha.

ness.

More Moore

CONVERSATIONS IN EBURY STREETGeorge Moore Boni, Liveright — ($2.50).

From the library edition of his works Mr. George Moore withdrew his book of criticism, Impressions and Opinions substituted the present volume of conversations "to revive a form in which criticism can be conducted more agree ably than in the essay." To 121 Ebury Street, London, he invites his friends: Walter de la Mare, John Freeman Granville Barker, Edmund Gosse, many others. Graciously, in the candlelight by his comfortable hearth, he spins for them the shining web of his prose. Hardy is damned; Balzac exalted; one learns that the writing of George Eliot is "without pleasure," that boile. chicken has never appeared on the table of George Moore, that the Lady of Shalott, is the one poem whereby "poor Tennyson" justifies his existence, that shad, the finest of all fish, has not been eaten in London in the last fifty years "I cannot write," says Mr. Moore. "I have lost my taste for reading; I can only think." Someone recently stated that Mr. Moore had pimples on his sol That, though not easily demonstrable, may very well be. There are none. however, on his intellect, and he thinks in singularly clear and beautiful English.

TIME, The Weekly News-Magazine. Edit ors-Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce. A sociates-Manfred Gottfried (National Af fairs), John S. Martin, Thomas J. C. Martyn (Foreign News). Weekly Contributors-Joa Farrar, Willard T. Ingalls, Alexander Klem Peter Mathews, Wells Root, Preston Lock wood, Niven Busch. Published by T Inc., H. R. Luce, Pres.; J. S. Martin, Vier Pres.; B. Hadden, Secy-Treas.: 236 E. 39 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 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. Larse Vol. IV, No. 24.

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The Harem. David Belasco reived from the French Government e cross of the Legion of Honor for stinguished contributions to the adancement of Art. A few days later, e produced one of the cheapest plays I his career. The critics wrote vaguely avorable reports, possibly thanks to the elasco tradition, possibly thanks to the opularity of Lenore Ulric.

The piece is a water-color replica of The Guardsman with strident coloring where subtlety was essential. A hus

and works busily at his amours hrough a yellow satin bedroom scene and discovers that the masked lady is his wife. Against a bedroom background that would rouse envy in the heart of Cecil DeMille, Miss Ulric displays extensively what Percy Hammond deftly dubbed her "creamy torso." Details of domestic intimacy are dealt about in handfuls. It is all completely artificial, like a luxuriously frosted cake with tasteless layers. Miss Ulric's playing in a part widely afield from he gamineries of Kiki is as engaging s possible under the thankless circumstances.

Alexander Woolcott-"A perfumed and bawdy farce."

Gilbert W. Gabriel-"About as much delicacy as the Mann Act-farce laid on in broad and loosely-stitched strips."

Close Harmony. Dorothy Parker is known chiefly for her satiric agility in verse (Hate Songs, etc.). Elmer Rice is variously familiar as the author of On Trial and The Adding Machine. Together they have turned out a telling transcript of existence as it is endured in the suburbs.

Ed Graham has a wife whose querulous goodness is an echo of a middleclass marriage which has been running twelve years and needs winding up. Next door lives Belle Sheridan, former chorus girl struggling with a shaky husband. Ed and Belle fall in love through the course of one expertly edited afternoon alone. They are about to run tway. At the high point of their adventure, Ed's offensive little daughter is kicked in the stomach by a neighbor's urchin. Ed loses his grip and reenters his domestic temple of despair, psychologically renovated by the crisis. The complacency of small minds is the maddening target against which the play is driven, but poor dramatics often veer the strident arrow of philosophy from its course. Interesting, it may not be popular.

Stark Young-"All compact with parallels and full of grim gaiety, domesticity and dull fates."

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lived and made his living a certain waiter. Between trays of beer he stepped to the smoky center of the floor and sang ballads of the day. Some inner impulse set him to fingering the yellow keys of the piano. He manu

IRVING BERLIN

Down in the dingy dance halls

factured tunes. The strummer-boy era was just opening. He manufactured Alexander's Ragtime Band and put aside his trays of beer. Last winter, he manufactured What'll I Do, to many the most appealing popular song ever written. Last week, he produced The Music Box Revue, called by Alexander Woollcott the greatest he has ever seen. Who is this singing waiter? Who but Irving Berlin?

Detailing a revue is like explaining why the Henderson's dinner was good or bad. There are always the customary courses. In the Music Box, the quality is inevitably excellent, the chefs competent and the distributors expensive. The outcome is this year, as usual, a tidy and entertaining feast.

A scene of waving fans against a black velvet background, an Alice in Wonderland interlude, a live bear, a shift of lights which turns the cast from white to black, the pantomime of a ballet dancer's home, Fannie Brice, Grace Moore, Bobby Clark, Oscar Shaw, Ula Sharon are in the picture.

The music of the erstwhile waiter is the light that lightens it.

Badges. To a nation of puzzleprobers, this ingeniously deceptive combination should obtain an ample hearing. To unweave the plot before your eyes would require several assistants from the circulation department and a committee of subscribers to appear and certify that the narrative implements are without trickery. Therefore let it be said that detectives, stolen bonds, an accused woman, some terrible crooks, shots in the dark and all the rest of the black devices of the melodramatists are in action. Tempered with a fine supply of humor, the proceedings should suffice to interest all but the hardest hearted. Chiefly responsible is the amiably helpless Gregory Kelly. The halting awkwardness, the small cracked voice and all the multiplication of mannerisms he employed in Seventeen are pleasantly in evidence. He plays the graduate of a correspondence school for detectives. Does he find the bonds? Did you ever hear of a correspondence school detective on the stage who didn't?

Percy Hammond-"Another of those trick melodramas with a trick bottom."

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Paolo and Francesca. Stephen Phillips, late master of prose and blank-verse, is probably much better beneath the library lamp than he is in the harsh white spotlight of production. This poetic version of the old, old story enlisted the activities of some of the best of our players, was mounted in discerning luxury and presented to the population for special matinees. It dragged.

Old brother Giovanni marries lovely Francesca. Young brother Paolo falls in love with her. With all due tragedy the lovers finally die. Claude King made rather a cardboard character of big brother. Little brother Paolo glowed under the touch of Morgan Farley but never quite caught fire. Phyllis Povah was miscast. Helen Ware as the acid confidant of old brother gave the most complete interpretation.

The Student Prince. A large male chorus swings steins in the air and opens the college drinking chant. The prince in disguise falls in love with a waitress. Excellent voices, elaborate scenery, a seasoning humor and easily audible music are comfortably combined.

The Little Clay Cart. That curious little back alley theatre, the Neighborhood Playhouse, pushed its memor able Grand Street Follies out of the way to do a Hindu play. A Hindu play sounds formidable, clogged with dead bodies floating down the Ganges and that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, most of the CART is comic. There are courtesans and kings, several scenes, no dramatic pyramiding as we know it.

Rare colorings and scents of strange philosophies mingle swiftly with the laughter. Altogether a shrewd and sensitive experiment.

Princess April. One small and exceptionally amusing young lady, Dorothy Appleby by name; one prima donna of established repute, Tessa Kosta; one chorus that could dance; two or three tunes designed for repetition; and an exceptionally futile book. This is the sum of Princess April. So leaden a liability is this same book, so halting the hilarity, that the production is of doubtful destiny.

Lady, Be Good. When two or three people such as Fred and Adele Astaire and Walter Catlett are gathered together in the name of entertainment, the entertainment must be worthy of the name. Lady, Be Good is very good INDEED. Assisting the leaders is Cliff Edwards, who makes the simple ukelele an instrument of violent versatility, an agile and pictorial chorus, brilliant settings by Normal Bel-Geddes and music by George Gershwin. And, as if this weren't enough, the producers broke nearly all precedent and bought a large stock of new and most amusing jokes. "You're so beautiful," says Mr. Catlett to a certain lady, "that there have been complaints about you."

The Man in Evening Clothes. When a good idea falls to pieces like a human character suddenly crumbling, the spectacle is decidedly distressing. Such was the fate of a good idea in Henry Miller's production. In the first act, the bailiff gave the impecunious count only one suit from all his belongings. He chose his evening clothes and set out to find his fate. Of all the amusing whirligigs of drama that might have come tumbling out of this conception, few were employed.

Cornerstone

Last week, Governor Smith of New York journeyed down the Hudson to Manhattan to lay one of the numerous cornerstones for which the gubernatorial trowel is thought appropriate. It was the cornerstone of a theatre, a new home for the New York Theatre Guild, paid for by the Guild's $500,000 bond issue without the aid of any rich "good fairies." Six years ago, the Theatre Guild consisted only of a few theatre enthusiasts with $500 in cash and a desire to produce plays of a character not ordinarily given a hearing by the commercial managers." Many a movement has had more initial assets, few have had less. In Manhattan, a movement of this kind in dramatics has usually become invisible after six years.

The Theatre Guild grew out of such a movement, to wit, the Washington Square Players, who led a desultory

corporate existence and disbanded at the War's outbreak. Some of the Players came together in 1919, started afresh as the Guild, began producing in the Garrick Theatre. Theatreland cocked its eye at John Ferguson by St. John Ervine, the Guild's second offering; kept the eye cocked when Masefield's The Faithful and Ervine's Jane Clegg appeared the next year; declared that the "art theatre" had achieved new and notable dimensions in the U. S. when the Guild gave Heartbreak House, Mr. Pim Passes By and Liliom among other plays of its third season. With He Who Gets Slapped, Ambush, Back to Methuselah, R.U.R., Peer Gynt, The Adding Machine, The Devil's Disciple, Fata Morgana and still others the Guild continued its conquest of an evergrowing public that looks to it for all that is broadly and deeply discerning in U. S. stage production.

The Guild's Board of Managers, responsible for its choice of plays and general policy, consists of "a banker, a lawyer, an actress, an artist, a producer and a playwright"; that is, in the same order, Maurice Wertheim, Lawrence Langner, Helen Westley, Lee Simonson, Theresa Helburn, and Philip Moeller. Of these, Theresa Helburn, tireless and ubiquitous Executive Director and Mrs. Westley, an accomplished actress of vigorous originality, were the pair chiefly accountable for the birth and rise of the Guild. Finding the theatre "frankly commercial," the Guild has never posed as a society of pure artists.

Some years ago, wealthy, publicspirited Manhattanites sought to create a theatre similar to that which the Guild has become. They called their project the New Theatre and spent much money. The New Theatre has languished, but one of its backers was among those who made speeches over the Guild's cornerstone. This was Otto H. Kahn, Manhattan Mæcenas, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Co. Said he of the Guild Theatre: "It is impressive. . . eloquent . . . that this building was erected not by the munificence of a rich man or the support of the municipality, but by the confidence, the loyalty and the eager interest of those whom you have made your patrons."

CINEMA

The New Pictures

Romola. There was a general readjusting of critical values after the advent of Romola. It began to be admitted publicly, and by great men, that Lillian Gish is the best of all the picture actresses. True, she does not twang the public heart strings as loudly and as often as Gloria Swanson. Yet she has

undoubtedly the most distinguished reord of the sisterhood-Birth of a Notion, Broken Blossoms, Way Down Ear Orphans of the Storm, The White Ster. There are those who say that, with David W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin she completes the trio of the only true artists of the screen.

The Florence that George Eliot for in Italy and fashioned for her nove Romola has been recaptured by th camera. Amazingly beautiful photo raphy of the strange old sleepy city the Arno is, next to Miss Gish's playing, the feature of the narrative. Op ning with a galley-slave ship scene, to escape of the villain, his marriage w the blind Bardi's daughter, his betrayal of her, his denial of his aged father his death, follow the outline of the story.

Greed. Eric Von Stroheim is the boy that used to do the dirty work, th villain. He acts no more. As a direc tor, he still believes in dirty work Greed is taken for Frank Norris's go! digging story, McTeague, and res with realism; Von Stroheim relies reeking pictures. He makes an actor pick his nose. Von Stroheim relies c reeking pictures. The No. 1 actor is a brute (Gibson Gowland) married t a grasping wife. The final episode of death in the desert carries a brutal film to a brilliantly brutal climax.

North of 36. Like The Covered Wagon, it is a Western story; like Th Covered Wagon, it employs Lois Wik and Ernest Torrence for two of the leading players. Unlike The Coren Wagon, it employs cattle instead of prairie schooners; and again, unlike th extraordinary film, it fails notably t mix history and drama in the right pr portions. The play is a saga of the cattlemen, a panorama of miles of prairi where trailed the endless herds of kes horns. A villain-you know he is the villain because he shot an Indian g while she was bathing in the creek-is in the competent hands of Noah Berry

Circe the Enchantress. Mae Mur ray has only one point in life after all and that is to wear gowns. Certain she is not an actress. Certainly th story, even if Ibanez did write it spec ially for her, is the worn-out stencil of the wild woman fascinating the solem godly hero. Anyway, Mae Murra wears gowns.

Christine of the Hungry Heart. simple story pointing a moral usual gets utterly lost in Hollywood. To many tears and a bathing party normal indicate simplicity and the more Christine, dealing in sincerity, is an es ception. It argues the old theme of man's work and a man's wife, and ho much time he should give to each. takes Christine (Florence Vidor) thr husbands to reach her decision,

Jenufa

MUSIC

For the first time in the U. S., lenufa, opera by Leos Janáček, Czecho-Slovakian

In

composer, was Grand given at the Metropolitan. were the persons of the cast; gorgeous the scenery; the music clever, racy, innocent of melody. the title rôle was yellow-haired Maria Jeritza; Mmes. Margaret Matzenauer and Kathleen Howard and Messrs. Rudolf Laubenthal and Martin Ohman supported her. A grand house applauded. Critics commended.

Plot. In a Moravian village lived Jenufa, the prettiest girl in the countryside, in whose grey glance lodged witchery. She was loved by Stewa, village stew, and by his brother Laca, an honorable gaffer, who deplored the Without low-lived ways of Stewa.

virtue himself, Stewa appropriates Jenufa's. Months go by. She gives birth to a difficulty. Jenufa's stepmother pleads with Stewa. Will he not make Jenufa an Honest Woman? No, he will not, for Laca, in scorn and spite, has slashed Jenufa's cheek with a knife that her beauty may be blemished and his brother find her fair no longer. Stew Stewa falls in love with another lady. Laca calls on the He would marry the stepmother. girl himself, he says, but damme, he cannot stomach the child. Whereupon the stepmother, on a black winter's night, drugs Jenufa, steals out hugger-mugger into the dark and drowns the bastard in an icy brook. On the day of the marriage feast, the ice thaws, peasants discover a disfigured bundle in the sedge. Stepmother is led off to jail, but iron bars make no cage for her. Her daughter is an Honest Woman.

Composer. Leos Janáček composed this opera in 1901. It was first performed in Brünn in 1904; received its first recognition when it was produced in Prague in 1916. Janáček, now a celebrity, abhors saccharine melody in opera.

"Madame Jeritza, in the title rôle, a picture of fresh, rustic loveliness, acted and sang with never-failing variety and vitality" (The New York World). According to The New York Times, her Jenufa is "undoubtedly one of her finest accomplishments."

Janáček, the composer, and Jeritza are compatriots. Jeritza was born and brought up in Brünn, the little town in Czecho-Slovakia where Janáček has spent the greater part of his life. She made her operatic début in Olmütz, from there she went to the Vienna Volksoper (People's Opera) and thence to the Hofoper (Imperial Court Opera). She would have come to the U. S. in 1914, but the War intervened and her Metropolitan début was postponed to

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On Christmas day in the morning, bellringers spit on their hands; they catch hold of the ropes that go up into rimed steeples. "Ding dong," goes the first faint and shaken bell; swallows leap out of the belfry. "Ding, dong," peals the carillon, its notes dropping into the air like stones into water.

The poetry of bell effects has always appealed to composers for the piano. In Borodin's Au Couvent, a bell tolls for 18 measures, silvery, gentle, relentless; Debussy composed an intricately sophisticated pattern for bells in his Japanese Temple Gongs; stern bells crash and roll in Tschaikowsky's 1812 Overture; sleigh bells jingle like hard, gay laughter in his Troika (Op. 37, No. 11); bells happily pious tinkle in the Celeste of Korngold's Die Tote Stadt; the profound and icy-hearted Kremlin bell booms in Rachmaninoff's Prelude (Op. 3, No. 2). Many are the other great composers who have written bellmusic.

To play these movements adequately is a difficult technical feat. It requires an attack now crisp as frosty air, now

heavy and lingering to catch the humming overtone of a big bell's voice. On Christmas day, in grey cathedral closes, in the belfries of State Houses, many bells will sound that are too heavy to be swayed by any bellringers, no matter how much they caper or warm their fingers. Biggest of all was the great bell of Moscow, cast around 1734, now used as the dome of a chapel. Other big bells are those of Burma, weight, 260,000 lb.; Peking, 130,000 lb.; House of Parliament, London, 30,000 lb.; Montreal Cathedral, 28,560 lb.; Notre Dame, Paris, 28,672 lb.; St. Peter's, Rome, 18,600 lb.; St. Paul's, London, 11,470 lb.

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Verlaine

Paul Verlaine, famed French poet, loved a girl "with a long, pale face, a lisp and a threat of embonpoint." She had, he said, a capacity for incurable grudges. When Verlaine, jugged for drunkenness, lay in prison in Paris in 1870, she brought him a meat pie. He ate, praised. She had always understood, she said, that rats made savoury eating if a man were hungry. Verlaine divorced her.

Long before this untoward incident, he had loved her truly, had written for her a group of deathless love poems, La Bonne Chanson. One of these, a lover's serenade in the dawn, which begins "Avant que tu ne t'en ailles," was set to music 23 years ago by C. M. Loeffler, an Alsatian-American. It was played by the Boston Symphony in 1902, revised, played again by the same orchestra in 1918. Last week, in Manhattan, it was performed by the Philharmonic under the direction of Willem Van Hoogstraten. Once more the marvelously skilful orchestration, the beauty of the music, cold as the fires of Verlaine's "pâle étoile du matin," was lauded by critics.

Szymanowski

In Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave a concert. Leopold Stokowski, a detached and patrician figure with a perfect back, lifted his eyebrows at the audience, his baton at the orchestra. Unrivaled is the popularity of the Philadelphia Orchestra this year; unapproached the position of Conductor Stokowski. Novelty of this concert was the playing, for the first time in the U. S., of a violin concerto by Karol von Szymanowski which the composer dedicated to "mon ami," Violinist Paul Kochanski. Ami Kochanski was there himself, chin on instrument, to play the solo part.

Toti Dal Monte

Last week, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, Mme. Toti dal Monte, Venetian soprano, made her début. Because of the liberal praise accorded her when, with the Chicago Opera Company, she made her first U. S. appearance a month ago, critics

regarded her interestedly. As Lucia di Lammermoor, ever-distressed lady who goes mad in her attempt to sound like a flute, Mme. Dal Monte cadenzaed, bravuraed, languished, trilled, palpitated. Her hands were expressive, her figure squat, her voice limpid. Loud, long was the applause. "Cordial," the critics termed it, reserving their other adjective, "unprecedented," for dead débuts, for débuts to come.

In London

In London, the Royal Philharmonic Society gave its first concert of the season. Wilhelm Furtwängler, famed German who will fill a guest engagement with the New York Philharmonic this year (TIME, Dec. 8), was the conductor. Old is the Royal Philharmonic Society. When it opened its season 100 years ago, Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C Minor was played for the first time in England.

Offer

To the U. S. Government an offer was made last week. Mrs. Frederick S. Coolidge of Manhattan and Pittsfield, Mass., said that she would give $60,000 for the erection of a small auditorium "for the encouragement of chamber music," to be attached to the Library of Congress. She further offered to make an endowment to increase the music resources of the Library. Herbert Putnam, transmitting Mrs. Coolidge's offer to Congress for consideration, declared that, if accepted, it would fill "a long-felt need."

ART

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem lives Mr. Abel Pann. He paints pictures, he reads the Bible. His works are hung in the Luxembourg, the Chicago Art Museum, the National Museum of Jerusalem. His thoughts are in the Holy Land. Long has he cherished in his brain the images of the kings and prophets of his people in the old time: Absalom's body, slim as a spear, twisting from the bough on which his dark hair tangled; Moses listening rapt to the voice of God. Unlike that nameless artist who exhibited a blank canvas, declaring that it showed the Israelites Crossing the Red Seathe Sea pushed back, the Israelites just passed over, the Egyptians not yet come up-Mr. Pann of Jerusalem paints the pictures that his heart perceives. has set himself the task of illustrating the Bible. Already he has finished 125 pictures, covering Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. Said he:

He

"I have always felt it a reproach that almost every nation has produced its painter of the Bible except the one whose genius created that wonderful Book."

Federal Council

RELIGION

As it does every four years, the brain and sinew of the Protestant communions of the U. S. came all together as the Federal Council of

Keystone

SAMUEL PARKES CADMAN
"The hour has struck"

Churches of Christ in America-this year, in Atlanta, Ga.

Officers. Robert E. Speer, retiring President, opened the convention: "The last four years, in spite of doctrinal discussions, have witnessed steady advance in the coöperative action of the churches. . . . There is no difference in view in the churches as to their main and central business of bringing human life under the lordship of Christ."

In behalf of the delegates, a Near East Relief worker presented Dr. Speer with a gavel. The worker declared this gavel had been made by children of Nazareth in a little shop across the street from the site of Joseph's carpenter shop.

The new President elected was Samuel Parkes Cadman of Brooklyn.

An Englishman, son and grandson of Methodist ministers, Dr. Cadman devoted his scholarly efforts at Richman College, London, to Philology and the Classics. He was ordained at 26, after study at Illinois Wesleyan. In his handling of his second pastorate (at Yonkers, N. Y.), he exhibited a genius for organizing that lifted him high and brought under his hand four Manhattan churches. The Brooklyn call came in 1901, to the Central Congregational Church. He is known as a pulpit orator, widely read, hard of head, a man whose breadth of information (his specialty is the Oxford Movement)

keeps abreast of his breadth of interest (his hobby is collecting antique chinaware and furniture).

Reports. The Council's Committee on Policy made its recommendations. "The need of a great evangelistic upheaval is undeniable. Why should it not come now?"

The functions of the churches "tc meet great human emergencies in their own name" had been resigned to other hands. Was this well?

The educational and research efforts of the Council should be heightened.

The coming four years would call for constant study of "the relations of our American evangelical churches to the churches of other lands"Asia, Latin America, Europe, The East.

The place of women in the work of the Council should be studied.

The Administrative Committee reported on its plans for a great national conference on the Christian way of life. Said Dr. John M. Moore of Brooklyn: "The idea has crossed the sea" (reference to England's conference at Birmingham last spring on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship known as Capec).

Addresses. The delegates lent their ears to the addresses that occupied six days of sessions, morning. afternoon and night.

Sir Willoughby Dickinson: "We must be ready to fight, pacifist though we may be. We have got to attack war as a sin. . . It is to the simple, God-fearing people we must appeal."

Professor Plato C. Durham, President of the Atlanta Christian Council: "We propose to wipe out the Mason Dixon Line from the Kingdom of Heaven. We shall Christianize our race relations."

Bishop Warren A. Candler of Atlanta: "Evangelistic Christianity is the surety of our country and the hope of the world."

Cyrus E. Woods, onetime U. S. Ambassador to Japan (in a letter): "The Japanese Exclusion Act was an international disaster of the first magnitude."

The Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer of Cairo: "Christianity and Islam face each other as rivals for world domination."

Rev. Dr. Adolf Keller of Zurich. Switzerland, and Professor Julius H Richter of the University of Berlin ascribed the poverty of European Protestantism to disestablishment resulting from revolutions and depreciation of currencies.

Judge Florence E. Allen of the Ohio Supreme Court: "War must be outlawed if humanity is to survive." Rev. Thornton Whaling of Louis

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