Bow, has been spending several weeks with the priest and prophet of Noncooperation, observing, and even participating in, his curious daily routine.

Reveille is sounded in the Gandhi household at four in the morning. At this hour the company assembles for an hour of prayer in a sandy 'praying ground' about the size of a tennis court. Everyone squats on the earth and chants Hindu prayers to the strains of a vina and a zither. Unaccompanied singing follows, and then Gandhi himself reads and expounds portions of the 'Bhagavad-Gita.' At the conclusion of this ceremony breakfast rations, consisting of one piece of toast and a cup of coffee, are served.

Until seven o'clock Gandhi busies himself with private work. He is in correspondence with thousands of people all over the world, and besieged with visitors every day. At seven he celebrates another hour of prayer, chiefly for the benefit of women unable to attend the earlier service. At ten-thirty comes the first real repast of the day-goat's milk, five hard little biscuits of whole meal, and oranges divested of pith and pips. Until four o'clock he works, stopping only for a cup of coffee or hot lemonade at three-thirty. At four comes a halfhour of spinning. This activity is Gandhi's new hobby, and he is urging all his fellow Indians, especially the rich ones, to put in thirty minutes a day weaving cloth, and to instruct others in the art so that in times of unemployment there may be work for idle hands to do. His second and last meal, the exact duplicate of his first, is followed by a swim, after which the prophet is rubbed with oil and so, at an early hour, to bed.

'Gandhi is not a handsome man,' sighs the wistful Miss Lester. All his teeth were knocked out in Africa by some of his Indian companions because

VOL. 332-NO. 4304

he was kind to the British. He is thin and wasted; his features bear the marks of his recent imprisonment. Nor does this woebegone appearance belie the inner man Gandhi lacks the sense of joy that some Christians derive from contact with a personal God. Other people weaker than he have freely made use of him as a sort of spiritual crutch, and he has been long excluded from direct communication with his equals. Thus he feels weighing upon him that sense of loneliness which is the heaviest cross any prophet has to bear.

Exit Stravinski

ERNEST NEWMAN, musical critic on the Sunday Times, seldom lets a week slip by without getting in a dig at jazz and the modern composers who take it seriously. Most of us are aware of a difference between the music played by Dr. Muck's orchestra and that furnished by Mr. 'Red' Nichols and 'His Five Pennies.' Mr. Newman, however, goes further. Not only does he hoot at Paul Whiteman; he is even openly disrespectful toward Stravinski, whose curious melodies and rhythms have deafened most of us into uncomprehending silence. 'Stravinski, up to 1914 or so,' says Mr. Newman, 'interested keenly everyone who was on the lookout for possible new developments in music, but during the last ten years at least has steadily lost ground, and is now quite negligible.' This statement is not based solely on Mr. Newman's own research, but on a recent article by Professor Adolf Weissmann on "The Influence of Schönberg and Stravinski in Germany.'

Europe, like New York, has been giving itself over in recent years to the discovery of new geniuses in odd places. Over here our modern critics quiver

with joy at the sight of Charlie Chaplin's feet or at the sound of Al Jolson's voice begging, in the dialect of the East Side, the indulgence of his of his Alabama Mammy. In Europe this enthusiasm is reserved for more recondite manifestations, with, perhaps, all the capricious vulgarity of popular art, but without the style and assurance that animate the American movie and musical revue. As Mr. Newman suggests, Stravinski filled the bill admirably for a while, but novelty wears off as the years go by, and this mountain of new musical form has brought forth only a small mouse which uttered a few syncopated squeaks before expiring completely. Such, at least, is Mr. Newman's view, and he is very disappointed in the Herr Professor Weissmann for feeling that 'something may yet come out of all the fuss and flurry and wandering in the wilderness.' Mr. Newman flatly asserts that no great music will be written until a great composer, well schooled in his art, comes along. And his name will not be Stravinski.

An Hungarian Rolland

BARON LAJOS HATVANY, an Hungarian Jew who left his adopted country just after the Communist reign of terror, has embarked on an epical novel dealing with the activities of Hungarian Hebrews. The projected masterpiece, of which only two volumes have so far appeared, will give a somewhat decadent and affected picture of Hungarian society. Gentlefolk and People, as the book is entitled, describes the life of a Jewish boy named Zsigismond, whose father says, 'My son must be brought what he was born a Jew. My son must make money, much money. He must feel himself a stranger, because it is easier to make money from strangers than from friends.'

up

This speech does not, however, come at the beginning of the book. Baron Hatvany raises his curtain on Zsigismond's great-grandfather, who wanders into Hungary from Moravia and settles down, tempted by the richness of the land. Zsigismond's father, Hermann, is a financier of the old school. Unlike the modern automobile purchaser, he regarded credit as a form of bankruptcy, and when his son negotiates credit loans that bring prosperity to the country he is flabbergasted.

On the score of length and detail, Gentlefolk and People has been compared to Jean Christophe. The fact that its hero goes into business rather than art bears out this parallel. Evidently another novelist has applied the Spenglerian theory that artistic work nowadays attracts only the dodo, and that the 'men of the new generation' are taking up more practical pursuits.

Nature Copies Dostoevskii

THE character of Raskolnikov in Dostoevskii's Crime and Punishment has found a living counterpart in modern Russia. Slovo Okhotov, a nineteen-year-old student, recently immersed in the same Nietzschean doctrines that are supposed to have been responsible for the sins of Leopold and Loeb, was arguing with his comrades and hotly upholding the right of the individual to ignore ordinary moral standards and scruples.

'Would you ever go so far as to kill a human being?' another student asked. 'Certainly,' replied Slovo.

When his friends refused to take him seriously, a sixteen-year-old girl called Zina Zukhova offered herself as a sacrifice, never thinking she would be taken seriously. Not only did Slovo agree to kill the girl, but he also announced that he would drink two

bottles of beer and go to the movies immediately after the murder. His fascinated friends at once arranged the details of the crime. Zina wrote a letter saying that she held no one responsible for her death, and the happy party broke up, having agreed to meet for the murder the next day.

Still treating the matter as a joke, they assembled at the appointed hour, when Slovo astounded them all by arriving with a murderous Finnish knife such as is used by the criminal classes in Russia. Before his friends could stop him, he came up to the girl and plunged the weapon into her heart. Then, true to his word, he consumed his beer and attended the pictures. The next day he surrendered himself to the police. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, since only political crimes are punished by the death penalty, the longest term in all other cases being ten years.

Vienna Made Easy

THE Austro-American Institute of Education has sent us a prospectus describing its scheme for introducing American teachers and travelers to Vienna, and it seems to us so sensible that we should like to pass on the news to our readers. This organization offers a variety of schedules which provide for visits to Vienna ranging from one week to forty-two days. Passage on one-class boats by way of either Germany or France is attended to, and all accommodations in Vienna are included in the very reasonable and absolutely inclusive charge for the entire expedition.

In Vienna instruction in German as well as in history and art is offered, and conducted tours under expert guidance give the traveler a splendid opportunity for intelligent sight-seeing. The summer school and seminary under whose

It is not that any upstanding Frenchman is scared of that ridiculous word 'propaganda.' As M. Blanchard blushingly admits: "The French esteem themselves highly. They have always considered themselves to be a people born under a happy star, and they admit that their intelligence has made them worthy of universal emulation and envy. That is perhaps why, when we hear the word "propaganda" mentioned in our country, we affect the care-free attitude of people who have no need for this type of so-called diplomacy to gain the admiration of others. "We are our own propaganda," many of us reflect with a self-sufficient air.'

But the movies have started M. Blanchard wondering. 'If we conduct our propaganda badly in other countries, foreigners conduct theirs with marvelous skill in ours.' Without going into technicalities, M. Blanchard merely wishes to confine himself to showing how insidiously American. films are corrupting the psychology of

-

Needless to say, 'The Big Parade' is his chief talking point. To the plot M. Blanchard has no objection, but the moral, which he reads as 'America Won the War,' offends him deeply. He imagines ignorant movie-goers in other countries giving all the credit for Germany's defeat to the United States because the experiences of a small group of Americans in France are not continually interrupted by close-ups of 'Papa' Joffre. 'Is it,' demands M. Blanchard, thanks to the Americans that the Champs Elysées is not a part of the Unter den Linden?' Ludicrous.

The situation created by this picture may well complicate the debt settlement unless Frenchmen get to work and show the world that they are not purely comic figures, and that their countryside is beautiful. This sounds splendid. But when M. Blanchard finally exclaims, 'It is up to us to show them the purity of our morals,' we become skeptical. From a box-office standpoint, the scheme is hopeless.

Stork versus Lion

WHILE a troupe of fourteen trained lions were exhibiting their tricks the other day before a delighted German audience in Elberfeld, the show was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a tame stork in the arena. The bird had evidently been nursing a grudge against the largest of the beasts, for, instead of registering terror, it promptly attacked the king of the jungle with beak and wing. The animal retreated before the onslaught dumfounded, slinking away to a corner of the inner cage with his tail between

turned his attention to the rest of the pack, who showed no more spunk than their frightened comrade. They too fled before the assailant, upsetting their equipment as they did so. Soon the other thirteen lions had also sought the safety of the inner cage, where the stork did not deign to penetrate. Left in solitary possession of the field, the stork poised himself derisively on one leg, looked about him with an air of triumph, and proclaimed his satisfaction by a violent flapping of the wings.

It would ill become a writer who has spent so much of his time in the criticism of public men to complain of criticism of himself; but, while disclaiming any resentment, you will perhaps permit me to make two comments on Scrutator's article in your last number on 'The Impertinence of Mr. A. G. Gardiner.'

The flattering researches of my unknown critic into my past reveal the not entirely obscure fact that in the years preceding the war I exercised whatever influence I possessed to prevent what I believed would be a calamity to the world. If Scrutator regards that as a shameful fact, I shall not controvert his opinion.

The second comment is that, whatever the fairness or unfairness of my estimates of Lord Birkenhead and other public personalities I have discussed may be, they have always been under my own name. Yours sincerely,

A. G. GARDINER