teachers will illustrate one tendency which is helping to ruin the press. The burden of his speech was that 'schoolmasters do not attain great positions as contributors or writers in the newspapers.' Why in the name of goodness should they? Do doctors 'attain great positions' as stockbrokers? Do bakers shine as pillars of the Church? Journalism is a trade or profession just as medicine and confectionery are, and when the owner of the Daily Express laments the inability of the teaching profession to excel in the writing profession he unconsciously puts his finger on one of the main faults of the modern press. Why expect a schoolmaster to be a good writer? It would be as sensible to complain that journalists do not rise to great positions in Harley Street. It seems to be taken for granted that, while a man needs a lifelong training to become a good painter or a good musician, a good surgeon or a good steeplejack, anyone and everyone can write. The proprietors of the penny newspapers, being themselves amateurs in the world of journalism, seem to think any amateur will do. So the trained journalist is less and less in demand, and in his place is dragged in any doctor, cabinet minister, gloomy dean, actress, or ex-convict who has a name for sale. Herein lies one of the principal causes of the decline in the influence of the press. Journalism, like any other occupation, needs long and careful training; it is a difficult and exacting profession. When you employ persons without journalistic experience to write for your papers, you may enhance the sensationalism of your pages, but you certainly detract from their authority.

Lord Beaverbrook seeks to enforce his point by reference to the success of certain clerics in the columns of the press. He cites such instances as Dean Inge and Dr. Hensley Henson, and in

quires in effect: 'Why are there no schoolmasters like these?' Some of us may be tempted to thank God there are not, but the real question to ask ourselves is whether a man can be expected to excel in more than one profession. We may grant that Dean Inge is a good journalist, but we may also be permitted to inquire whether he is a good dean. Do the journalistic activities of the Dean of St. Paul's or the Bishop of Durham enhance their reputations as ministers of the Christian religion? It is hard to serve God and Lord Beaverbrook.

There seems to have been some inkling of the difficulty in Lord Beaverbrook's mind when he acknowledged in the course of his speech that Lord Birkenhead is a poor journalist. But he appears to marvel at the fact that politicians are, as a class, bad writers. 'It is obvious,' he says, 'that you may be an ex-premier and yet fail in journalism.' Mark the words we have italicized. The truth, of course, is that it would be much more extraordinary to be an ex-premier and yet succeed in journalism, just as it would be extraordinary to be an ex-judge and yet succeed in the music halls. But our Beaverbrooks and Rothermeres will not see it. They prefer to ignore the skilled worker, and to pay your Lord Birkenheads ten times the normal journalistic fee for writing stuff ten times less effective than the trained journalist would turn out.

And so Lord Beaverbrook comes to the melancholy conclusion that the press caters to-day too much to 'excitement and amusement.' He is right. And how would he redress the balance? By calling in - why had we not thought of it? the schoolmasters. They are to add the leaven which will leaven the whole lump. This matter of the untrained 'stunt' writer is one that lies at the root of the contempt in which the

Fun among the Fascisti

MATTERS have now reached such a pass in Italy that it is becoming almost more entertaining to live under a dictatorship than to enjoy those follies of democracy that so delight our native satirists. Babbitts, of course, are killingly funny, the Kiwanis are far more amusing then a bedroom farce, and Coolidge is good for more laughs than Artemus Ward in his prime. But before we allow the American scene to reduce us to convulsions, it is just as well to investigate some of the products of Mussolini's methods.

There is, for instance, the Act for Disciplining the Imposition of Names. Irrepressible Socialists, deprived of the delights of soap-box oratory, had maliciously begun calling their sons Carlo, after Marx, and Ramsay, after MacDonald. Not only is this to be forbidden, but the opposite tendency is being squelched with equal force. Ardent Fascisti whose children do not seem to be destined for success are not permitted to call their offspring Benito, Farinacci, or any other names from the new aristocracy of might.

Artistically, too, Italy is justifying all that its warmest enthusiasts have claimed. Every governmental and municipal office in the province of Milan is henceforth to have a portrait of the Duce prominently displayed no likenesses of movie actresses to distract moony clerks from their patriotic duties.

The Italian Parliament is contributing its share. Just recently one hundred and twenty deputies who had not found it worth their while to

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attend a session since 1924 were expelled, chiefly because they were availing themselves of their right to free tickets on the railroads. But to the fury of the Fascisti it has since been discovered that more than half of these men have belonged to at least three previous Parliaments and are therefore entitled to free rides the rest of their lives. Until some means can be devised of expelling them from these extinct bodies the miscreants will continue to tour Italy to their hearts' content.

Photography an Art?

a

THE twenty-first international salon of photographic art recently held in Paris has been giving French critics splendid opportunity to try to decide whether or not photography is an art. M. Raymond Lecuyer boldly asserts in L'Illustration that 'the photography is the most marvelous of the writings invented by man since he is come out of the ancestral caverns.' No wonder he urges his readers not to smile as he continues in the same vein for several long paragraphs, laboriously proving in terms that only Sainte-Beuve could understand the beauties of this new pictorial métier.

Luckily, however, we are also regaled with a few facts about the exhibition which set poor M. Lecuyer off this way. To the French photographic society more than two thousand entries were submitted, of which 276 were selected for exhibition. Although twenty-six different nations were represented, it is significant of the preeminence of French photography that no less than seventy-five of the

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pictures chosen hailed from France and her protectorates. Californians will be alarmed to learn that most of the work from North America was of Japanese concoction, though it may have been that some of our Nordic filmmen feared that the French would adopt the same attitude toward our pictures that they have toward our money.

L'Illustration reproduces a number of the best things shown. The United States is represented by a view of Pittsburgh, or some such place, on a foggy day. From France we are shown a Paysage, or swamp, to give the word its literal translation. Norway contributed a study of a beautiful girl in a pose worthy of an Old Master, which is none the less effective because it was taken by a person called John Riise. Germany came up to expectations and produced a 'Study with a Mask,' showing a thin woman with nothing on above the waist except a long string of pearls. The mask hardly counts; it is so much in the shade one can hardly see it, and it has ears and a gaping mouth like a lizard, so we do not miss much anyway. Japan ran true to form with a delicate picture of water lilies, taken, apparently, in the light mist in which so many photographers generally immerse themselves and their subject. As might be expected, a Czechoslovak called J. Funke regaled us with what seems to be a transparent sundial, the size of a matchbox, which is unaccountably opaque in some parts and transparent or translucent in others. He might have called it 'A Study in Light and Shade,' but instead has named it merely 'Composition.'

From the pictures chosen in L'Illustration it looks as if the exhibit must have been worth while; and if the pictures on view are not what Anatole France would call art, no matter.

A Lesson in Deportment

NEOPHYTES in the art of snubbing will do well to make a study of the reception accorded The Whispering Gallery by the British press. While the Daily Mail was making the most of the sensational material in the book, the Times and the Morning Post remained so disgustedly aloof that they probably attracted wider attention and more customers for the work of the rude Whisperer - for the readers of both these journals are wealthy people, debt or no debt. Neither paper stooped to review these amazing revelations; they drew, instead, a veil of secrecy over the whole affair by printing indignant editorials on the indiscretion and incompetence of the author.

The Morning Post, indeed, could not confine its disgust to a single editorial, but obliged with two masterpieces of invective, and topped them off with an angry little piece by Lady Frances Balfour, entitled 'The Whisperer.' So bitter was the tone of all three of these philippics that even an Oklahoma oil magnate would find himself slipping into the Oxford drawl were he to read them aloud.

The only effusion worth quoting from is Lady Balfour's - the others are such primitive lessons in etiquette that we should blush to set them before a group of people who almost never eat peas off a knife. Says Lady Balfour, with a hearty laugh, and a lapse into French that we shall allow our readers the pleasure of translating for themselves:

There are some things which cannot be treated with raillery. The offense against truth and good breeding is too grave. Others, however, are so amusing as to be 'as good as a play.' Among those are the so-called pictures of Lord Balfour. He is a man whose ways are well known, and everything is attributed to him which is incroyable.

The Whisperer purports to have been at a dinner in Mr. Arthur Balfour's house. He

gives a wrong address, but he probably could not find the right door. The conversation began about Bottomley. There is one true word of Mr. Balfour - 'I am afraid.'

On his visit to America Balfour thinks he will be a success, because of 'my benign and ingratiating manner.' Americans like 'a real blue-blood aristocrat.' Has anyone ever heard A. J. B. describe himself to anybody?

The best follows. 'You should n't cultivate a conscience, Robert.' The first time Bob Cecil has been called Robert, and the first time Mr. Balfour has mentioned anybody's conscience.

The talk purports to have been during an air raid. No crashing bomb could have startled Bob Cecil more than when his host seems to have said: 'Take a cigar with you!' Cecil replies: 'It seems to me that we shall be fortunate if we take our lives with us.' Balfour utters another crashing bomb. 'That is no argument against a "Corona."" Neither of the cousins smokes, and any who knows Lord Balfour can imagine his face when asked what is the meaning of a 'Corona.'

The book has been withdrawn from circulation in England. The fact that it is available in backward America is another testimony to our lack of all decent feelings. No wonder Henry James died in the True Faith.

Jannings on America

EMIL JANNINGS, the outstanding film actor of Germany, whose pictures have been shown in repertory in New York, has come to the United States. Before he left he made the following statement to the German press, which we feel is well worth reprinting here: —

'The dollar no longer exerts its fascination of some time ago. To-day it is worth four marks and twenty pfennigs, and so it will remain. Why, then, am I attracted to America?

'For the film artist it is a simple matter. During the last six years I have heard of mammoth undertakings and giant organizations. I see films whose artistic power, tempo, and construction compel my respect.

'It is worth an artist's while to become for a time part of this great stream of life and energy, to see this huge organization with his own eyes. Perhaps it discharges influences which I have never felt. Perhaps it discards as unessential many elements I have believed valuable and important. In any case, it is not right to remain aloof from such a vast, high-strung, and concentrated form of life.

'I have talked at length with American film artists, and my friend Ernst Lubich has written to me often. The seriousness, the complete abandon, with which people give their best energies to the service of the films are visible everywhere. I remember how the late lamented Rudolph Valentino, whose art was the simple and pleasant one of enjoying life, became a different man when he spoke earnestly of the parts he played. I am fascinated by this Hollywood fluid, and I think it must attract every film artist. Until you have felt the light of the American "spots," surely you have missed something in life.

'Of course, I would not stay there forever; a German cannot easily disengage himself from his native soil. But all of us especially we film folk - are too cosmopolitan to be able to conquer our curiosity about foreign

scenes.

'I hardly think it is presumptuous of me to suggest that such exchange of film artists may acquire political significance. New approaches can be laid down and new bridges built. Every German artist takes some of his native land with him when he goes abroad. Perhaps I am destined to take