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LIFE, LETTERS, AND THE ARTS

PADEREWSKI IN ENGLAND

PADEREWSKI'S English engagement has brought him his accustomed triumphs, and his concert in aid of the British Legion appeal fund won him plaudits both as man and artist from the whole London press. He had previously given two charity recitals at Cardiff and Liverpool, and these were followed a day or two after his London appearance by others at Manchester and Glasgow. In spite of King George's illness, the Queen attended the London recital, during the course of which she called Mr. Paderewski to her box and talked with him for some minutes. The critic of Westminister Gazette says that 'the great pianist proved himself once again, even when the most curmudgeonly criticism has said its worst, a consummate master of his art.'

Mr. Ernest Newman of the Sunday Times, but recently returned from his engagement as 'guest critic' in New York, praises him for the brilliancy with which he overcame the execrable acoustics of Albert Hall. 'On the

ground of his virtuosity alone, Mr. Paderewski would be justly esteemed incomparable,' says Mr. Newman.

But not only can he beat the virtuosi at their own glittering game of legerdemain. There is no other living pianist who can reveal so acute a sensibility to the poetic content of music of the classical and romantic schools.

A Manchester critic who heard the London recital telegraphed to the Guardian:

That a great Polish musician, who is no less great a patriot, should excel in playing Chopin is not surprising, but Paderewski's

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Mr. Percy Scholes, writing in the Observer, was probably the least enthusiastic of the critics. He suggests that a series of Paderewski recitals offers some curious studies in crowdpsychology. He questions - as many thoughtful listeners in concert-halls must question- 'whether the applause of the crowd represents the taste of the individuals who make up the crowd,' and thinks that at a good many recitals the listeners actually applaud themselves into enthusiasm, and complains that at Paderewski's Albert Hall recital neither the best music nor the best-played music got applause.

A BOUQUET FOR THE AMATEUR
SCIENTIST

SIR OLIVER LODGE, who after all is a physicist of immense distinction as well as a student of spooks, comes forward as a champion of the amateur in scientific research. His point is not that the amateur is a better scientific worker than his professional colleague, but merely that he can and often does do good work, and that he possesses the valor of ignorance which sometimes leads to discoveries like the airplane. These utterances are called forth by a proposal to place amateur wireless research under the control of a government department. Sir Oliver, however, having a very wholesome distrust of government departments, points out that, though some regulation may be

necessary, it should be reduced to an absolute minimum.

As the Scientific Correspondent of the Times points out, the amateurs have a good many scientific discoveries to their credit, the reason being that 'they rush in where angels fear to tread.' An example of this profitable 'rushing in' is the work of the Wright brothers in open defiance of everything then known of aerodynamics. Moreover the practical flying men,the aces and pilots, who are usually quite innocent of science, have discovered aerial manoeuvres which a theoretical student would have declared impossible.

Even in zoölogy the extraordinarily far-reaching Mendelian theory of heredity is the work of a Catholic priest who was indubitably an amateur even though his name will live forever in the history of biology. This does not mean, of course, that all the doctors of science must be instantly expelled from their laboratories and their experiments put in charge of the charwoman. What the amateur finds is usually developed and carried on by the professional worker who also has a number of discoveries of his own to his credit. None the less, the amateur must be treated with a little more respect than he has ordinarily received.

THE LEOPARD-MEN

THE extraordinary missionary, priest, and physician, Albert Schweitzer, whose talents range from critical theology through medicine to music, has just published a new book of his African experiences under the title News from Lambarene. Schweitzer is, without doubt, one of the most interesting figures of our century, and certainly one of the figures which does the century most credit. Revolutionary theologian, authority on Bach, concert

organist, missionary, and doctor of medicine, a Jack-of-all-trades who is master of most of them, — he long ago turned his back on the brilliant career that Europe offered him, and at the age of fifty buried himself in the African jungle to devote his life to helping the Negroes.

The Prager Tagblatt publishes a few paragraphs from the new book in which Schweitzer describes the African equivalent of what in European folklore, a few centuries ago, would have been known as werewolves.

'Our talk turned on the society of leopard-men, whose uncanny activities have developed greatly in the last few years. They spread over the whole West Coast of Africa. The Duala missionaries told me of districts which were so terrorized by leopard-men that no one ventured out of his hut after dusk. Two years ago a leopard-man committed a murder in the Lambarene mission station itself.

'Leopard-men have the obsession that they are real leopards and as such must kill other men. In their killings they act like leopards. They go on all fours and tie real leopard-claws or iron imitations to their hands and feet in order to leave tracks like the leopard's, and they tear open the arteries of the throat, as a leopard does. The remarkable and uncanny thing is that most leopard-men do this quite involuntarily. They are made members of the society of leopard-men without knowing it. A magic potion made from the blood of a murdered man is mixed in a human skull. The individual elected to membership has some of this secretly mixed with his ordinary drink. When it is too late, it is explained to him that he belongs henceforward to the brotherhood. No man can withstand this revelation. The belief that the magic drink has magic power which no man can evade dominates them all. In

voluntarily they obey. They are usually compelled to lure a brother or a sister somewhere where leopard-men can attack and slay them. After this they must themselves kill.

'An official in the interior of the Ogowe territory, who received orders this month to suppress the leopard-men, caught ninety of them, but none betrayed his fellows. Instead, they poisoned each other in prison.'

CARICATURING A PREMIER

A FRANCO-BELGIAN diplomatic broil, which no one seems to take seriously except one French Ambassador, has given Paris something to laugh over if it has done nothing better. A few weeks ago a Brussels hostess entertained her guests with a witty little drawing-room revue acted by talented amateurs. One of the most successful tableaux reproduced David's well-known picture of Madame Recamier seated on a chaise longue. Now, as everybody in Brussels knew, Premier Herriot is a learned doctor of the Sorbonne who wrote a doctor's thesis on Madame Recamier which has just reappeared in a new edition. As everybody also knew, the unfortunate Prime Minister has been having an attack of gout.

Consequently this clever but somewhat tactless hostess introduced into the tableau the figure of the burly French Premier with one leg swathed in bandages and the inevitable pipe emitting clouds of smoke.

M. Maurice Herbette, the French ambassador, who chanced to be present, insisted on taking the matter seriously and left the salon indignantly declaring that he would report the incident to his Government. At our last information France and Belgium have not yet gone to war.

MAKING MONEY FLY

So safe, convenient, and customary has travel by air become in Europe that the banks are now using airplanes for long-distance transfers of their gold. Four airplanes recently flew from London to Paris with a cargo of 2600 kilograms of gold, worth more than thirty million francs, which is being transferred from London to Switzerland. This is almost certainly the most valuable cargo ever carried by air. The banks, however, consider air transport safer than ordinary carriage by land or sea, as the chances of theft are almost negligible. The pirate plane has yet to

appear.

A NEW LETTER BY BEETHOVEN

A NEW letter by Beethoven which seems never to have been published before has lately turned up in England. It was found among sixty-five large chests filled with correspondence and with literary odds and ends which had belonged to Miss Georgina Welden, who had combined three careers in one, as a singer, a philanthropist, and a pioneer in the cause of women's rights. The letter was given to Miss Welden by Gounod, who received it from Beethoven's friend, Johann Andreas Streicher, the piano-manufacturer, to whose wife it was originally written. The letter runs as follows:

Monday, Oct. 13, 1807 Would I could have written you about a few more quiet days spent here, but in vain; I appear destined to drain the bitter cup to the dregs wherever I go. If only this were the end! I shall probably lose a sum of 800 florins through a rotten solicitor and a still worse, perjured, pretended friend ['Scheinready received the Government stamp? freund'?]. For has not the certificate al

I beg you to let Miss Trudel, our housekeeper, know that we shall move in from here, bag and baggage, to-morrow, and so make sure that she will be in.

We shall arrive about midday. Should you think it worth while to keep the door and the curtains I will take them, but for as little as possible.

Just let me have a line in reply so that I

may know for certain that the housekeeper will be expecting us to-morrow. Farewell, dear friend.

Your

BEETHOVEN

The translation introduces an obscurity in the first paragraph and illustrates well the difficulties which face every translator. The false friend to whom Beethoven refers was named Schein. The German verb scheinen

means to seem or to appear, and there is a further play on the same word in the next sentence, for the noun Schein also means a certificate. All this is quite impossible to reproduce in English, and by the time it has been explained the crackle has departed from the pun.

INVISIBLE LIGHT

THE famous Hindu botanist, Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, who made a worldwide reputation through his investigation of plant-sensitiveness, has perfected an astonishing new instrument which he calls the 'super-retina.' By means of it he can detect what he calls 'invisible light.' The new light consists of short electric waves which have much the same properties as ordinary light, but can be detected by the eye. Through their means objects which are ordinarily opaque can be made transparent, whereas water becomes opaque.

A WRECK IN THE SAHARA

THE amazing and amusing possibilities of radio are well illustrated by the mis

hap of a Czechoslovak radio enthusiast in Prague. One night, while he was listening to a concert being broadcast, he suddenly heard the music interrupted by a call for help from a ship in distress. In great excitement he sat him down and wrote a letter to Narodny Listy about it.

He told the editor that he had heard the blowing of the sirens, the tossing of the waves, and the screams of the passengers. Apparently it did not occur to him that if the shipwreck had been a real one there could have been no microphones about to receive all this. Nor did he notice that the latitude and

longitude given were in the middle of

the Sahara Desert. In other words, he had not heard the preliminary announcement that the shipwreck noises were being sent out from the London station and were nothing but an imitation of the real thing.

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PRONOUNCING PEPYS

THE Manchester Guardian contributes this to the relief of all those anxious souls who are trying to find a correct pronunciation for the name of the great diarist:

To the careful searching of Mr. Walter Bell we owe the discovery in the baptismal register of St. Bride's Church, London, of the entry: 'March 3, 1632 (-3). Samuell, sonn to John Peapis, wyef Margaret.' That spelling helps a little to settle the pronunciation of the diarist's name. The Watermen's Company has a copy of a letter made by the old-time clerk in which the spelling of Pepys had been rendered 'Peeps.' That pronunciation is now generally accepted. It seems a shame that Samuel was not born on January 1, when he might properly have become the patron of all diary-keepers.

BOOKS ABROAD

Fighting the World, by Count Michael Karolyi. London: Kegan Paul, 1925. 21s.

[Daily Telegraph]

PRIMARILY this volume, which contains Count Michael Karolyi's defense of his activities during the war, is addressed to the Hungarian public. But it has its interest for the general European public, and it has the advantage over most similar works of being written in excellent style, while the English translation by E. W. Dickes is very well done. Count Karolyi headed the movement for the establishment of the Republic of Hungary in the days of the Dual Monarchy's ultimate dissolution. He is now an exile, and has small chance of returning to his native land while the present régime in Hungary — which is largely a reaction against his Socialist and indeed Communist leanings endures. This volume only takes us up to the revolution of October 1918; his subsequent conduct as head of the new republic for a brief period will no doubt be treated in another work. Here Count Karolyi gives an account of his various and consistent efforts during the war itself to induce Austrian and Hungarian statesmen to make terms with the Entente Powers apart from Germany, while there was yet opportunity. Up to the end of 1917 he considers the Dual Monarchy could have been saved as an entity had this course been followed, although its constitution would have had to be altered into that of a confederation of autonomous States. Even in 1918, he claims, Hungary, if it had approached the Entente without regard to Austria, could have made terms which would have involved little territorial loss compared with what has actually been suffered. But he could not persuade the Hungarian magnates who controlled the political machine, and in Count Karolyi's pages the evil genius of his country appears in the person of his own step-father-in-law, Count Andrassy, with his blind Germanophile policy. Karolyi entertained great hopes of the peace efforts of Count Czernin when that nobleman became Foreign Minister under the young Emperor Karl. Why did Czernin's peace policy come to so premature an end? Karolyi considers it was because the Kaiser had made personal communications on the subject to Vienna, and the Austro-Hungarian Ministers feared a direct German invasion if they persisted. It is surely evident, as he urges, that Germany at the time had quite enough enemies on hand without adding to them. But in truth

it is clear from his pages that nothing could have saved Austria-Hungary. A country governed by a group of oligarchs who, so far as they represented anything, stood for the hegemony of a minority, and the steady repression of the majority, could not possibly hope to survive the cataclysm of the World War. Hungary sealed its own fate when in 1867 the Hungarians accepted freedom for themselves and denied it to the other subject nationalities associated with them.

The Portrait of Zélide, by Geoffrey Scott. London: Constable, 1925. 12s.

[Edmund Gosse in the Sunday Times] THROUGH the welter of those uncalled-for ‘Reminiscences' and lumbering ‘Lives' which are the plague of our time, three or four young writers have lately distinguished themselves by producing historico-biographical studies, carefully conceived and gracefully executed. In the plunging mass of books, their volumes stand out small and bright and succinct. It has been a pleasure to me to welcome these particular authors on successive occasions, and I hope to welcome them here again. I need not repeat their names, but it is gratifying to add to the little group that of Mr. Geoffrey Scott, which was unknown to me until I opened the title-page of The Portrait of Zélide. He also testifies, by the delicacy of his irony, by the moderation of his range, by his refinement and reserve, against the wallowing monsters of the hour. He adds to the presumption that English prose, although so dreadfully given over to shapelessness and noise, is 'not quite enslaved, nor wholly vile, but, like Albion, may yet recover dignity. If this is Mr. Scott's earliest publication, he is to be congratulated on the ripeness of his judgment, but whether it is or not, he cannot fail, in the future, to find us curious to watch his progress.

The subject that Mr. Scott has chosen is one that lends itself to the ironic method. He essays to paint the portrait of a woman who is often mentioned in the records of her time but has seldom been expatiated on; a feminine link stretched through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but between two sections of them, so incongruous that her individuality has been snapped by the strain. She unites Boswell and Frederick of Prussia with Madame de Staël and the Directory. But preeminently she is part of the life of Benjamin Constant, yet a part which

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