Later, because this had struck me as an entertaining angle of a very old question, I put it in reverse form to an attractive and discerning elderly lady of my acquaintance. "Can you look back to your twenties," I asked her, "and remember what were the chronic differ

now as they were when bobbed hair and synthetic gin first appeared in good society.

older relatives?"

"We had them, of course," she replied. "But I can't remember any such startling differences as there are today. It seems to me the world has moved a hundred years in one generation."

Allowing for a mellowness born of time in my friend's perspective, there are plenty of indications, nevertheless, of a more than usually sharp cleavage of viewpoint just now between an older and a younger world. And because the younger generation has already been exhaustively discussed, I am sure no one will think it unseemly if the tables are turned for a minute, and some of us who are younger bend a friendly, if not quite reverent, glance on the codes and habits of our elders.

The term "younger generation" may be a little misleading, because many of us are not particularly young any more. But it has come to be applied, roughly speaking, to the people who have arrived at maturity since Moral Values Went to Pieces and all those other terrible things happened around 1920; which is also the year that F. Scott Fitzgerald first revealed the existence of the Younger Generation to a shuddering world. As I say, the Veterans of the Younger Generation are no longer noticeably young. A good many of us have turned thirty. We are rising young business men, transatlantic aviators, slim modern mothers, writers whose views of this and that are finding their way into print. In other words we are on the way to being an older generation ourselves, and this is commonly supposed to have a sobering and maturing effect. Yet in many ways the differences between us and our seniors are just as emphatic

no reverence for authority. Worse yet, they cheerfully corroborate the charge. Worst of all, they are of the belief that the older generation has far too much reverence for authority, and that this in itself is not an admirable thing. The contrasting views were brought out in many a family group a few years ago, by a much-talked-of article which appeared in a dreadfully respectable magazine, and which dealt in terms of unprecedented candor with a noted. ecclesiastic. The article rested firmly on facts, and its only offense was to create, by means of these, an impression that the reverend personage was not above considerations of the world worldly. I want to be clear about the utter absence of anything scandalous in the story, which was lawful criticism of a public man's public acts. It may have been a suspicion of ironic amusement in the writer's tone that called forth pious protests, and sold copies of the magazine to an unheard-of number.

At any rate the older people, in the cases which came to my notice, were all more or less profoundly shocked, even though they themselves did not go to church four times in a year. The younger ones saw nothing to condemn in the article. The interesting part of it was that most of the older people did not question the author's statements of fact, and they would not have quarreled with his inferences if a less exalted person had been concerned. Their idea seemed to be that you shouldn't say such things about a bishop whether they are true or not. And a few innocent ones were firm in the belief that they couldn't be true of a bishop anyway.

Speaking for any group is a risky business, but so far as I can presume

Not only in the case of the bishop but in many others I have heard the older generation express disapproval of any approachably open criticism of prominent persons in print. A favorite

comment of theirs is the charitable and tender-hearted: "You shouldn't say anything about people if you can't say something good about them." This does credit to their Christian spirit, but is not exactly a healthy attitude to take toward men in positions of public responsibility. Is it not just this uncritical veneration which makes things easy for men of the stamp of Harry M. Daugherty and Will Hays? We go farther than that, we younger people who are accused of upsetting the world. We think the older generation's blind respect for authority has done more harm in human affairs than our lack of respect for it will ever do. It has protected the incompetence and dishonesty and paralyzed the things by which progress is made.

I

KNOW of no single source of argument which throws age differences into higher relief than prohibition, which is looming up larger this year than it has since 1918. It seems to some of us that the prohibition tangle is due in no small part to the older generation's incurable passion for making moral issues out of questions which are not moral at all. We are all ready to concede that the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment was a matter of truly ethical import in the first place, because no one could foresee how it was going to turn out. In 1928, however, the question of retaining or modifying the Volstead Act is not one of morality upheld or flouted.

The question, instead, is the plain and practical one of whether it is expedient to leave unchanged a provision of the law which has proved in nine years' experience to be perfectly unen

forceable; or whether it is better to try another method of achieving this remote vision of temperance, to which we all aspire. Yet the older order cannot see

it.

To them the Volstead Act is still mystically bound up with Christian principles and the preservation of the home.

I know nothing about the arid Middle West, but in the Eastern States there is no doubt that the dry cause is buttressed by middle-aged people living secluded lives in quiet, tree-shaded towns. Their children in many cases have gone away to cities and acquired a realistic outlook, but the older members of the family preserve their faith in the efficacy of prohibition, because they don't realize what is going on. I know a librarian in a medium-sized New England city, a delightful if somewhat vague gentleman in middle life, who goes back from time to time to commencement festivities at his college. He still believes that class reunions are dry affairs, and if anybody else refers to carousing on these occasions he says in a bewildered and obstinate tone, "But I didn't see anybody drinking. Nobody offered me a drink."

As his niece exclaimed, "Offer him a drink! As though anybody would! They would lead him away from the scene. It's human nature to protect innocence like that!"

These are the people, too, who know nothing of the noble art of government except what they read in their favorite partisan journal. They have never had the privilege of seeing prominent dry leaders not merely drinking, but drunk, about the legislative halls. They have never seen what was described to me recently by one of those who had been present: a semipublic luncheon in a Middle Western city, at which the president of the Chamber of Commerce pledged the President of the United States in forty per cent alcohol. They don't even know anybody who knows anybody who can tell them about these inspiring sights.

So they hold fast to their bone-dry credo, and are not infrequently pained and scandalized to find their sons and daughters-in-law and nephews rooting for Al Smith.

OMETIMES I have a faint suspicion that, in the matter of prohibition, even the moral outlook of the older generation is not all it seems. I have in mind a charming white-haired lady who calls herself an ardent dry, and has amicable arguments with her family

on the subject. It pains her to hear of their serving cocktails, not because she has any feeling against cocktails, she says, but because they ought to respect the law and the Constitution. She admits that to go without cocktails is no personal sacrifice to her; of coffee, however, she is imprudently fond. Said one of her sons one day: "Suppose a law was passed prohibiting you from drinking coffee. Would you keep that?"

"Certainly not!" she replied with spirit. "If they made such a silly law as that I wouldn't think of paying any attention to it."

A

NY MEMBER of my generation who tries to figure out the psychology of earlier decades is impressed by one circumstance; our elders seem to have been afraid of a great many more things than we are. They were afraid of any and all disturbing truths, afraid of sex, afraid of the human anatomy, absurdly afraid of what somebody might say. This last terror must have hung like a pall over everything they did. And it still disturbs the vision of the older generation.

The rest of us are perpetually astonished to see how they are influenced by a nebulous and utterly unimportant public opinion.

Nearly all of us can look back to our childhood and remember the domestic convulsions which preceded the smallest entertainment, in our own homes and in those of our friends. The charm and brightness of a perfect house, it seems, were not to be wasted on home consumption.

friend knows all about it, and that she

is delighted to have Gerald entertained. That B and Gerald are to each other as brother and sister; that if the three principals in the case know it is all right, and if everybody that counts to them personally knows it is all right, what earthly business is it of anybody else? All of which A may concede without affecting the outcome of the discussion which is always the same.

"But it doesn't look well."
"But what of it?"

When the argument has reached this stage the participants could keep on repeating themselves until Doomsday and not make any more impression on each other than if one were talking Zulu and the other Italian.

The world loves to talk about the wild young moderns and their scorn for the phrase "Thou shalt not." The wild young moderns turn around irritably and shout "Hypocrite!" and they are largely right, but why be so crude about it? The point is, I suspect, that the whole Juggernaut structure of convention which our Victorian grandparents built up rested on this same silly and ignominious terror of what other people thought. Naturally we younger ones cannot feel the same awe of conventions that they do. People have given these old bogeys some alarming wallops in the last decade or so, and a portentous discovery has resulted. They are monsters of straw, with little power to enforce their dictates or to harm.

more

than ordinarily futile to debate, because a whole world separates our point of view from our elders'. Listen to a mother and daughter disputing some point of conduct—the daughter's conduct. It may be a question of coming in late, or of dining several times at the country club with a friend's husband, in the friend's absence, or of taking a sun bath in the backyard in a bathing suit. Mother objects, "It doesn't look well," and in some mysterious manner this, to her, clinches the argument. Daughter says cheerfully, "Well, what of it?"

In the above-mentioned matter of dining out, B, of the younger generation, may argue lengthily with A, of the older generation, that the absent

wicked ways, it forgets some of its own past absurdities. We may practice too much freedom and frankness. (Personally I don't believe it and am making this polite admission merely for the sake of argument.) But when the older generation was having everything its own way in the world, its concealments were as bulky and grotesque as its clothes. I submit the testimony of a lady now in her fifties, who looks back with snickers upon the great moral issue of cosmetics.

"We used to powder our noses and then stand in front of the window with a hand mirror and dab it all off," she says. "We were scared to death for fear a tiny trace would give us away. And we lied to each other about it. We would say, 'Well, I do use the least little bit of powder in hot weather sometimes, just on my nose,' when really we used it much more than that. As for (Please Turn to Page 1181)

66

A

66

CHMED ZOGU is King of
Albania, but Wilhelm of
Wied is still Mpret," began

an editorial of a recent "Nation." And so reading, I read no further but straightway fell into a paroxysm of humility: could it be, I wondered, that large numbers of Americans were able to understand each other on Achmed Zogu and could swap light banter about Mprets? What or how is a man who is Mpret? I asked myself. Is he hors de combat or is he a sine qua non? (I cribbed this last from the "New Republic.") Is he the lucky fellow who slams his hand down on the deck, shouts "Mpret!" and goes game? Is he on the Left or the Right, or perhaps on the Extreme Left? Is being Mpret like being on some kind of a diet? (I mean a food diet, not a political Diet, and, while we're about it, I don't know what a Diet is, either.) Will Listerine cure a man who is Mpret or keep him from becoming a Mpret? What about yeast? How long does a Mpret last?

These and many other questions I asked myself as I lay back in my chair, staring at the ceiling and humming a tuneless lay. The findings, I regret to say, were nil. I knew no more about Mprets than I did when I began. But then my hopes were given a decided fillip ("New Republic" again): I resolved to interrogate the very next "Nation" reader I met.

"Just what," I would say, Mpret?"

"is

"Well, Wilhelm of Wied—” he would begin, but at that point I'd cut him off.

"Lay off Wilhelm of Wied," I'd say. "Who said anything about Wilhelm of Wied? I read all about him in that same number. Come on, now: what is Mpret? Name some other Mprets. Name three, name two-name any other Mpret!"

And then he'd hem and haw and turn all colors of the rainbow. And while I had him well in hand I'd suddenly shout at him: "Well, who's King of Albania? Yah-I bet you don't even know that!"

And before he could pull himself together I'd wither him-I'd knock him flat. "Achmed Zogu!" I'd tell him. And then I'd stalk away, leaving the poor simpleton to ponder his own infirmities.

By the way-how does one pronounce "Achmed Zogu”?

By WALTON MORTON

Although there is no Marathon Dance going on here in Marblehead, your correspondent has managed to keep in pretty close touch with the Marathon Dance game by means of the "Marathon News," which is sent him from time to time by a faithful friend.

The slogan of this little journal is: "We keep 'em moving-day and night." Its price-guess-"a smile." Well, read the front page, anyhow:

TONIGHT IS THE GREAT MIDNIGHT
FROLICS

"Don't fail to have the time of your life tonight at the Midnight Frolics. The greatest bunch of entertainment ever been in any one show in Omaha. If you don't believe everyone has a good time at the Marathon just follow the crowds.

"Everyone is happy, they all have a good time. The contestants are failing rapidly now. Harry Greenberg No. 14 fainted last night and it took all the combined efforts of his partner and the nurse to get him back on the floor.

"And when they hold that sleepy time hour on the floor in plain sight of everyone you get to see the actual training and care the contestants have. . . . Several of the couples are ebbing away. . . . Come on over and root for your favorite couple. They are on the home stretch. Just like the tension of a great race. There's shouts. There's mirth. There's laughter. There's tears. Hurry on down. We'll entertain you from start to finish."

An announcement, "To the Public," and signed, "Fraternal Order of Eagles, Aerie 154," reads: "It is our aim to conduct this contest along the highest possible plane. We wish to establish a record for endurance and demonstrate that Nebraska has the best climate, the best people, and the best sportsmanship."

Now, of course I get a fair kick out of reading about it, but, after all, that's not the same as being there. (I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing in leaving Omaha.) When Harry Greenberg-good old hard-living, devilmay-care, madcap No. 14 Harry Greenberg-hit the floor in a typical Greenberg faint, where was I? "Live dangerously!" That was always Harry's

motto and I am glad to learn that Harry and his crowd are "failing rapidly" enough for them all to be "happy and having a good time." And how about Herman Firstein? "Several of the couples are ebbing away-" and I'll venture to say that no one did any better ebbing than Firstein. Even as a boy, I remember, while other children were cutting nonsensical capers, Herman was going around with a faraway look in his eyes and practicing ebbing; and even at that early age he had already learned how to fail rapidly. He seems to have the knack of getting the crowd on his side at the start, if you know what I mean.

This Marathon, as you must have noticed, is designed among other things to "demonstrate that Nebraska has the best climate." Read about those Marathoners-read how they're "failing rapidly" and "ebbing away." Could you expect any more of any climate? Of course, it hasn't been exactly fatal so far, but tut, tut. Remember that there will be more Marathon Dances and that the climate will be there for a long, long time.

*

1. 2. Another man writes a book about the men who own first editions of the book.

A man writes a book.

3. A third man writes a book about the man who wrote about the men who own first editions of the book.

At this point the chap who writes of rare books for the "Book Review" of the Sunday "Times" suggests that somebody ought to write a book about the third man. And there is, I believe, a similarly tortuous parallel to be found in modern advertising:

1. A man makes soap.

T

HE SEASON is officially open. The huge crowds collected about the ugly brick building at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street on the evening of October 29 testified vociferously to the fact. Motors were jammed in every direction and even pedestrians were brought willingly or unwillingly to a standstill; policemen bellowed and flashlights plopped as limousine after limousine disgorged its expensive-looking freight. And why not? Wasn't

the first performance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House reason enough in itself for all the hullabaloo?

For many years it has been the custom of Mr. Gatti, the czar (at least nominally) of this institution to open the season with some tried and proven work from the almost unwieldy repertoire of this opera house, such as "Aida," "Faust," "Carmen," or one of the Puccini masterpieces, as few people pay any attention to the opera on these occasions, so what difference does it make what is played anyway?

This time the astute general director fooled us and gave, instead of one of the old war-horses, perhaps what is the most perfect and beautiful of all the modern Italian operas-the "Amore Dei Tre Re" of Italo Montemezzi, with our own Rosa Ponselle as the lovely and hapless Fiora.

The more one hears this exquisite work the more one realizes that here is an almost perfect opera. We only use the qualifying almost because we have always been told that nothing in this vale of tears is perfect. In its simplicity, in its dramatic sweep and above all in its glorious music this marvelous little opera of itself never fails to give satisfaction whenever given or however done.

Originally presented here about fourteen years ago with Lucrezia Bori as Fiora it has had various interpreters, some good, some perhaps not all they might have been, but at no time during those fourteen years has the music ever palled or grown stale. Disappearing for a couple of years from the repertoire it made its reappearance during the war with Claudio Muzio and Enrico Caruso in the rôles of the tragic lovers. Shortly after we had Mr. Martinelli as Avito and Florence Easton for a few performances as Fiora.

While Rosa Ponselle does not altogether make us forget the beautiful and touching interpretation of Lucrezia

By EUGENE BONNER

Bori, she gave, nevertheless, a performance of genuine beauty, and her singing of this music was something to remember always. This young artist continues to progress from year to year and is fast becoming a great artist— witness her Norma of last season.

Martinelli gave us his familiar reading of Avito and Ezio Pinza was a splendid old Archibaldo, while Maestro Serafin heaped honors upon himself and his orchestra by his conducting of this lovely score.

The Society of the Friends of Music offered for their opening concert of the season an altogether satisfying program consisting of two of the loveliest and most characteristic works of Franz Schubert, the centenary of whose death has been the occasion of numberless festival performances this year.

The two works played, the choral setting of the Twenty-third Psalm, and the superb E-flat Mass, both belong to the composer's later, more mature period and it is quite certain that in none of his other work is there to be found music of greater clarity simplicity than is to be discovered in these two compositions.

or

The Twenty-third Psalm, written with all the simplicity and melodic appeal of one of those old German chorals or hymns of the Reformation period, touches one by its exquisite purity and sincerity of purpose. The appeal here is direct and universal; no great musical knowledge or training is required to appreciate or understand the message conveyed by either the Psalmist or the composer.

The great Mass in E-flat which was written just five months before the death of the composer belongs in the category of his very finest and most important major works. It is by no means among the better known compositions of the master, though it was heard here a few years ago by this same organization, directed as yesterday by Mr. Bodanzky. It is done, of course, more frequently in Germany, where it is often presented, not as a concert offering, but in the churches, for which it was originally intended.

The performance last Sunday was a very good one, though just a little uneven at times. The chorus sang well

but did not seem quite as certain of its attack as formerly. The soloists were more than equal to the requirements of the work, Elisabeth Rethberg in particular demonstrating to us the fact that not only is she one of the greatest artists on the lyric stage of today but that in the equally difficult and far less showy field of concert she is well-nigh without a peer. Mr. Bodanzky conducted with his usual artistry, although he did make what seemed to us a few unnecessary cuts which couldn't have shortened the performance more than a very few minutes.

P

ERHAPS the most interesting recital

of the season so far was that given by Serge Koussevitsky. Mr. Koussevitsky has long been known here as the chef d'orchestre of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but this time he chose to appear before us as a virtuoso of the double-bass, an instrument not generally regarded as a solo medium.

As a matter of fact this distinguished conductor was known to fame as a double-bass player long before he began to wield the bâton, and while Boston had had the opportunity to hear him in the rôle of soloist, it was the first time he had revealed that side of his musicianship to New York.

The audience, a large part of which came out of pure curiosity to see what could be done with the double-bass as a solo medium, was astonished at the beauty of tone extracted from the unwieldy-looking instrument by the maestro. The upper register had the quality of an exquisitely played cello and the most effective numbers were those utilizing that part of the instrument. Altogether the concert was a revelation of the hitherto unsuspected possibilities of the bull-fiddle and Mr. Koussevitsky's prowess as a virtuoso of the same.

An Extraordinary Story

Rasputin, The Holy Devil, by Rene Fulop-Miller. Translated by F. S. Flint and D. F. Tait. The Viking Press.

HE POPULARITY of this remarkable book is undoubtedly assured by its sensational nature. For whatever reason it may be read, it is worth reading either for its story, as romantic and exciting as any novel, or for the fine picture which it gives of the czarist society in the last precipitous phase of its fall. We are told in the foreword to "Rasputin" that this is the first deep-going study of that weird, demoniac figure. Previous books about him have been based largely on the work of the mad monk, Iliodor, Rasputin's arch-enemy. This, the work of a trained and skillful biographer, is based on the documents listed in the bibliography of sources and appears exhaustive. Reading of Rasputin's early years, one is reminded of a recent fictional character, Louis Bromfield's Prophet Spragg. Indeed the whole story of Rasputin, however credible it may be to Russian ears, reads to Occidentals like fiction, and wonderfully good fiction, too. Rasputin swayed men and nations by his hypnotic eye "small, bright and water-blue." He was never, so Fülöp-Miller thinks, completely the charlatan nor wholly sincere. Probably, like most brilliant hysterics, he was so completely an actor that he did not know himself what he was. He was gentle and crafty. His energy was enormous, his appetites colossal, his abilities considerable. Fülöp-Miller calls him "a preacher and brawler, redeemer and debauchee" who became "the friend of the Emperor and Empress, worshiped as a saint by society. ladies, and revered by politicians, generals and Princes of the Church as the uncrowned ruler of the Empire." It would be useless, here, to give a brief outline of the material contained in this book. Most readers will have a notion of what ground it covers. And the interest of Fülöp-Miller's book lies, anyway, less in the bare story of Rasputin's life, remarkable as that is, than in the admirable picture which it gives of Russian life, and the insight which its author has into Russian character. One wonders if the hideous climate is not

The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg, by Louis Bromfield: Stokes. The stories, some curious and some sad, but all interesting, of an odd assortment of people. Reviewed Oct. 10.

All Kneeling, by Anne Parrish: Harper's. This amusing story of a sweet trouble maker will please those who like their irony very light. Reviewed September 19.

Old Pybus, by Warwick Deeping: Alfred A. Knopf. This amiable if mechanical story of an old man, his sons and his grandson, will please admirers of Deeping's novels. Reviewed Oct. 10.

Silver Slippers, by Temple Bailey: Penn Publishing Company. This is some of the author's usual treacle; harmless diet, but neither nourishing nor stimulating.

The Children, by Edith Wharton: Appleton. This excellent novel about the sad fate of the children of the easily and often divorced is one of Mrs. Wharton's best. Reviewed Sept. 26.

Non-Fiction

The Buck in the Snow, by Edna St. Vincent Millay: Harper's. The latest work of our most popular poetess will delight most readers although it may disappoint the more critical among Miss Millay's admirers. Reviewed Oct. 31.

Goethe, by Emil Ludwig: Putnam. This fine biography adds greatly to the validity of the Ludwig vogue. Reviewed October 3.

Disraeli, by Andre Maurois, translated by Hamish Miles; Appleton. You will enjoy this charming and vivid portrait. Reviewed Feb. 22. Rasputin, the Holy Devil, by Rene Fulop-Miller: The Viking Press. Reviewed in this issue. Abraham Lincoln 1809-1858, by Albert J. Beveridge: Houghton, Mifflin, 2 vols. Although by no means as fine as Beveridge's "Marshall.' this is an important book. Reviewed October 3.

cultured as those of the men, and especially the women, noble, wealthy, educated, who fell, as readily as peasants, under Rasputin's spell. So sensational is much of the material in "Rasputin" that the book might well have a succés

de scandale such as, we believe, "Mother India" had. But, unlike that book, "Rasputin" is the work of an entirely competent and obviously unprejudiced investigator and of an exIcellent writer with with the ability to dramatize into reality the most incredible of scenes.

Far and Wide By MILTON BYRON

The Fringe Of The Moslem World, by Harry A. Franck: The Century Co.

The Turkish Ordeal, by Halide Edib: The Century Co.

The Flavor Of Holland, by Adele de Leeuw: The Century Co.

Winged Sandals, by Lucien Price: Little, Brown & Co.

The Central Americans, by Arthur Ruhl: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
Unfathomed Japan, by Harold W. Foght and
Alice Robbins Foght: The Macmillan Co.
The World On One Leg, by Ellery Walter: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.

Gentlemen Unafraid, by Barrett Willoughby: G. P.
Putnam's Sons.

I classifications

causes

T IS unfortunate that there are so few for books. There seems to be an undeserved stigma attached to travel books which often people to overlook certain volumes in which they would be interested just because they are listed under the head of travel books. It is a popular fallacy that all books about travel must of necessity be dull. We do not deny that this is very often the case, but it is absurd to condemn them all because of the fault of the majority. All wanderers are not scientific explorers; many of them are literary vagabonds whose acquaintance is decidedly worthwhile. The books to be considered in this review are not strictly travel books although that is the general classification into which they all fall. This list is so comprehensive and diversified that it is fairly safe to assume that almost every type of literary taste would be satisfied by some one of these non-fiction books.

"The Fringe Of The Moslem World" is an all-embracing picture of the Near East. Harry Franck, the well-known vagabond reporter, is at his best in writing of this part of the globe which he knows thoroughly. His travels included Africa, the Holy Land and Turkey, and he brings out clearly the differences in these countries. He deals with every aspect of the Moslem world and the narrative is replete with all