O the big navy program of the United States Great Britain has responded-indirectly by cutting - cutting down still further her plans for building new war-ships. Evidently the English are not only not going to rush into a campaign of competition against us, but intend to avoid it, if possible. That is a reassuring bit of news from London. If our own legislators at Washington are well advised, they will confine their discussions of the Administration's construction schedule to the question of what is essential to produce a balanced Navy and bring its equipment up to

By MALCOLM WATERS DAVIS

cently on a public mission of thanks to the people in America who gave help toward the winning of the autonomy of the Irish Free State and who sent millions every year to relieve its poor. Yet a less-discussed reason for his visit was rumored from Dublin to be a desire to offset De Valera's attempt to raise money here. The annual report of the Fianna Fail showed that out of the sum of $150,000 it spent in the last election campaign it secured $5,000 in Ireland and $145,000 in the United States. So, while funds from America helped to bring the Free State into being, still other funds from America keep its President on the anxious seat, and, true to form, the aftermath of Ireland's war continues to be fought out in America.

about other navies. Is that asking too much of Congress?

A

MERICA has lately received as guests

two sharply contrasted IrishmenWilliam T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, and his most prominent political foe, Eamonn de Valera. The irreconcilable trouble-making leader of the Irish Opposition-once head of the Sinn Fein rebellion-arrived first. De Valera now directs the so-called Fianna Fail movement, which has almost as many representatives in the Irish Parliament as the Government Party. He said that his trip was not for political purposes-as if any good Irish politician could ever be innocent of such purposes-but to make a study of industrial development in this country which might aid him in his party's program for the economic reconstruction of Ireland "when it comes into power." Belief that this told the whole story of his visit was qualified by a report that he came to start a drive for $450,000 to found a Republican daily newspaper in Ireland-a report on which he refused to comment. But he did say that there is "nothing so important for Ireland as a newspaper that will champion her freedom-and this she has not in a single large paper in Ireland today." Mr. Cosgrave-bringing the story of a nation in which economic reconstruction is actually under way-came re

of despair for safety razor and shaving soap manufacturers. Ibn Saoud, its ruler-the Cromwell of the Moslem Puritans has not only forbidden smoking, the use of alcoholic liquors and perfume, and the wearing of silver and gold ornaments and silk garments, but has made shaving a crime for which both the barber and the man shaved shall be punished. It reads like a conspiracy in restraint of several lines of American trade.

TR

ROUBLE between Poland and Lithuania seems again to be brewing. The issue between them is the possession of the city of Vilna, which Lithuania

ment. (That means the Vilna question.) Meanwhile, they are willing to discuss traffic by telegraphs, railroads, and rivers. Regardless of the frontier, their existence cannot be denied. Only Lewis Carroll or Gilbert and Sullivan could have thought up anything better.

Lithuania made her reply public before it was received in Warsaw-which did not serve to soothe Polish tempers. And Dictator Pilsudski does not look like a man to relish political witticisms, no matter how seriously intended.

TH

HE UNITY OF GERMANY was the object supposed to be in view at a meeting held lately in Berlin by representatives of the eighteen local governments composing the federated Republic. But it adjourned-as Chancellor Marx had hinted it should do-without taking any definite action. The fact is that the smaller states distrust Prussia and fear any possible extension of her power. And none of the delegates wanted to hurt his chances at the coming elections by committing himself to positions that might prove unpopular.

A more effective force for closer unity in Germany may be found in the new Federation for Reconstruction of the Reich, headed by the former Chancellor, Dr. Hans Luther. Behind it are most powerful industrialists and most influential educators in Germanyand they are a group that generally get what they agree on.

claimed as its capital and which Poland A

annexed seven years ago.

After an ostensible peace settlement between them under the auspices of the League of Nations in December, the spokesmen of the two nations repaired home to their respective Governments to take up diplomatic negotiations.

Poland proposed to Lithuania a conference at Riga to discuss traffic across the border. Lithuania refused, holding that there is no recognized border between the two countries. Obviously, it is impossible to discuss traffic across a border which is denied to exist. The Lithuanians argue that the present frontier is only a temporary one, fixed by Polish force, and that it would have to be rectified as part of the peace agree

the

the

Af

MANULLAH KHAN, Ameer of ghanistan, now visiting the capitals of Europe, may come to America.

Up to two months ago the Ameer had never seen a railroad or a steamship. Arriving in Rome, the absolute ruler of sixteen million million subjects confronted Western civilization without a blink of surprise.

The Ameer pleased Fascists, for he is known as the "Mussolini of the East," and his consort pleased every one.

The dramatic interest in his tour will center in his visits to London and Moscow-for Afghanistan, on India's northern border, is the buffer state between the British Empire and Soviet Russia in their conflicts of interest and policy in

central Asia.

I

N Germany, the other afternoon, seven little children were playing along an icy shore. Here was a new floor-a new ground for their adventurous feet. No one knew where it had come from-soon it would vanish-only for a little time could they play at walking over water that lay glistening like diamonds beneath them. Here was a whole new world, and somewhere, out a little farther perhaps, the palace of the Ice King.

But all this splendor was too brief. They had barely caught sight of it and embraced it when it was transformed before their very eyes. They were no longer on a great floor of crystal. The crystal was breaking into pieces and into more pieces. Now they were on a crystal boat- -a boat of ice so cold that they crept close together in wonderment and awe. Even as they moved it became two boats, with three children sailing in one direction and the four others headed out to sea.

The afternoon sun was gone. The water dashed against the tiny crafts, flew into the air like fountains and fell upon the children like frozen lace. Beauty and excitement, cold and terror, followed each other, then darkness, and through the darkness, snow.

The big people lived up to their trust. They sent out boats with whistles and rockets on them. They discovered and rescued their children, and brought them

Miniatures from the Life

By IBBY HALL

the streets of Brooklyn on his way to ask for a job as he had been in those desperate days of the Great War. But not quite so nimble. For his foot slipped one day, and he sprained his ankle climbing over the propeller to the pave

ment.

The newspapers printed his picture, with the result that he was haled into the police court. His second wife had found him at last, and was out for justice. He had deserted her; he had returned to his first wife, whom he had deserted in the first place. And who was he?

He was the son of a Jewish tailor who had found life too narrow for him and the trade of making gentlemen's pants too mean. His dreams, his airplane, and his freedom came crashing down at once. And then his first wife was called to testify. "I have entered no complaint against my husband," she said, serenely. "Why should I answer any questions?”

There is a law outlawing any bigamy that goes unreported for five years. It was nine years ago that the hero had returned to his first wife-who entered

behind?) appeared in the middle of the road. There was no doubt about it. The little girl held her breath in a delirium of joy, but the bus driver didn't feel so happy. With one hand on the horn he approached the deer. It was a terrible noise-enough to frighten reindeers and Santa Claus out of the world forever. Perhaps the deer felt it. Who knows what went on in his mind? Doubtless to himself he was the sole champion of woods and hoofs, of snow and stars and all things wordless. The Ideer lifted his head and stood still for an instant. Then he charged this horror of civilization coming down the road.

It was a brief tragedy. The deer lay silent by the roadside. The horn of the motor-bus had stopped and the driver counted the children to make sure none was hurt. But there was a little girl aboard who could not be comforted. Through her hysterics and anguish of mind, she kept calling out protestingly to an unheeding Heaven, "But what will Santa Claus do now, another year?"

son of a Jewish tailor in Brooklyn had managed to create for himself another world, so touched with romance, and so tangible at last, that one woman was content to inhabit it with him?

'HERE is a road out of New York, winding over hills and past rainbow lakes, that is almost unreal in its loveli

ness.

One of the small hamlets this road will bring you to is called Cross River a few houses, a white church, a river, and a crossroads. On week days in the morning a large bus rolls along one of these roads carrying its load of children to the school. The holidays are over, the Christmas trees have met their ignominious end, all the tinsel and glamour of the season has become a dream. But not to every one.

The other morning there was a little girl aboard the school bus who hugged dear memories of Santa Claus along with her books and lunch-box. Suddenly, out on the road ahead, the miracle happened. One of that famous reindeer team (how had he ever come to be left

an old couple moved into a new apartment. The apartment had four rooms in it-which was quite large for two people whose one idea seemed to be to stay close together. Their neighbors knew them for a quiet pair, gentle towards life and each other, and with nothing to trouble them. The sunny apartment was neatly kept, they never complained, and once in a while they were seen going together to the bank.

The other day gas leaked from under the door out into the hallway and down the stair. Inside, they were found still together. They had lain down meekly enough, no doubt, grateful that there was gas and to spare-that death would pay no more attention to them than life had done. At the last the old man had had his moment of rebellion and had struggled to get nearer to the door. Perhaps she had tried to follow him, for she had fallen part way from their one bed.

On the bureau the reporters found a little book, the one they had carried so carefully to the bank. Across its last page some unknown official hand had written firmly, "Account closed."

HE average Anglo

Saxon

play-goer who is accustomed to expecting a definite, clear-cut story when he goes to the theatre and wants nothing else will not be particularly enamored of Sean

O'Casey's "The Plough and the Stars" as presented just now by the Irish Players at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York.

Mr. O'Casey belongs to the school of realists who present life as they see it, without sentimentalism, without preconceived religious theories or social ideas, without propaganda; and who for this reason usually write plays which don't get anywhere in particular-there being no place to get!-but which give a picture of existence from an ironical and supposedly detached point of view. Mostly such plays consist of poignant, loosely knit scenes-group photographs, so to speak.

"The Plough and the Stars" is a formless tale of life in the Dublin tenements report has it that Mr. O'Casey was once a Dublin motorman-and depends for its drama on its vivid depiction of human frailties and the conviction it imparts of the pathos and childishness and hopeless inability of humanity to agree on anything. In a sense, it might be said that Mr. O'Casey views only Irishmen this way, and not all humanity, for "The Plough and the Stars" is Irish through and through. But the conviction remains, nevertheless, that Mr. O'Casey sees all humanity precisely as he sees Irishmen. And that he is not exactly a Pollyanna.

The play begins in 1915, during the second year of the Great War, amid the hopeless political confusion of Ireland; and shows what happens, over an interval of a year, to a group of people who live in a brick tenement-house in the

A Review of the Stage

Dublin slums. These people are carpenters, laborers, fitters; their wives, daughters, and neighbors. There isn't any closely knit story, for the threads of these people's lives make up the strands of the plot; and the plot itself is hopelessly tangled up with the interminable arguments of the Irish; with ignorance, humor, whisky, politics, Socialism, consumption, heroism, thievery, and death.

The main thread of the story, however, is simple. Jack Clitheroe, spurred partly by vanity and partly by patriotism, despite the quarrels and entreaties. of his young wife, Nora, joins the Irish Citizen Army and is killed in the street fighting of Easter, 1916, leaving his wife insane in the garret of a tenement-house where one of the neighbors lies shot on the floor a woman-killed by mistake, as a sniper, by the British. Interwoven with this tragedy of Nora and Jack which incidentally is the least convincing thing in the play-are the fortunes of all the people in the tenement; from Mollser, Mrs. Gogan's consumptive daughter, to Fluther Good, the carpenter, the Covey, the fitter, and Peter Flynn, the laborer-a trio as magnificently hottempered, and generally unable to get along with one another, or agree on the along with one another, or agree on the slightest thing, as it has ever been our good fortune to see.

To our mind, indeed, the fortunes of these three gentlemen, and the various adventures in which they find themselves involved, along with the incessant quarreling that goes on between them— quarreling and baiting and backbitingthe fortunes of these three provide the

genuine interest

of the play. "The Better 'Ole" or Kipling's "Sol

Three"

holds nothing any better than this trio of the Dublin tenements.

Once a tightly drawn plot is not demanded, and a clear realization

comes to you that the dramatist is merely depicting life as he sees it, you will be a rare theatre-goer, indeed, if you cannot settle back with huge enjoyment to the absurd and grotesque adventures of these three Irishmen their drinking and quarreling in the public-house, their pilfering of the stores in the wake of the street fighting, their card game in the tenement garret with the sound of the musketry still going on outside in the streets.

There are moments of pure drama in the play, of course. People are shot, and die; musketry rolls off-stage; Jack Clitheroe is killed and his companion-inarms takes refuge in Nora's attic. There is a full measure of tingling, melodramatic suspense. And the play leaves the general impression that the people who genuinely suffered in Ireland's fight for independence were the bystanders who had nothing to do with it.

But the thing that remains in the memory after all this is done is the magnificent talent of the Irishmen for irritating one another; for being as pigheaded and as fluently and loquaciously ignorant and wrong-headed as possible; and for remaining at the end each precisely of the same opinion as he began. In fact, the feeling with which one departs is that, above everything, Mr. O'Casey has drawn a genuine picture of Irish character as he sees it—a picture that could be timeless and dateless and has as its only defect the confused background resulting from the choice of Easter, 1916, as the moment to show us his characters. F. R. B.

Hangman's Holiday

(Continued from page 167)

girls as vulgar as she had been at that same age, many men as dull as her husband had been; and, instead of being a solemn occasion, it was hilarious.

A man in the crowd pulled out his watch. It was two minutes past the hour.

Suddenly there was a noisy exchange of curses, the indefinable sound of knuckles against cheek, and a girl's excited cry.

Two young workmen, fragrant with cheap gin, were fighting clumsily, while a vivid-lipped girl who seemed to be the basis of their quarrel conventionally implored "some one" to stop them.

Half a mile away, in the death house down by the edge of the Hudson, the woman was being brought into the execution, staggering between two matrons.

A newspaper photographer who had been admitted on the false representation that he was a reporter, and who had heard the warden say that he would ask the witnesses, as gentlemen, not to smuggle cameras into the death chamber, bent over and placed on the floor a tiny camera specially built for this occasion.

While the guards expertly strapped the limp, exhausted woman in the big oak chair, and the executioner placed the electrodes on the bared right leg and at the back of her, head, and decently hid her swollen face behind a heavy leathern mask, the photographer focused his camera furtively.

So, while the crowd at the gates cheered on two drunken brawlers and a photographer snapped his forbidden picture, 2,200 volts and 15 amperes of electricity swiftly melted out the life of a woman who had done murder, scientifically transformed her in the space of a minute and a half from a prayer-mumbling being to a cadaver.

It was over in a few minutes; and Gray took no longer. The reporters walked out into the night's refreshing chill, and presently the crowd at the gate saw a red flare-a tabloid's signal, fruit of days of "hushing"-burn brightly for a moment or two far down at the turn in the road near the prison office.

One of the waiting reporters leaped on the running-board of a car, screamed for the crowd to open a way. "They're dead!" he cried excitedly. The scufflers separated abruptly and the crowd turned away from them.

A dozen men fatuously remarked, "Well, I guess it's all over now."

"How'd she take it, fella?" one asked, and the shaken, hoarse man within said, "She was crying pretty bad."

The guard let him pass, but the car could not pick up its momentum, and the crowd engulfed it. Boys and young women, eager-eyed artisans and heavyfaced matrons, thrust forward, calling a hundred variants of the same question.

The other cars that followed were slowed down similarly, their occupants likewise interrogated for a scant second.

"They had to carry her in," those in front called back excitedly and inexactly to those less fortunately placed. "She broke down. She was cryin' to beat hell. She fainted. She tried to fight 'em off."

They waited till every man had emerged, and three who came out afoot were nearly stripped of their clothes by horror-hungry crowd. the tugging, importunate hands of the

Then, slowly, the crowd broke up, went home to sleep and rise early for the newspapers.

Justice was served. According to the philosophy of the law, the world had been served with a deterring example. And the newspapers sold two or three hundred thousand extra copies.

Man's Business and the Woman's

(Continued from page 169)

butcher bills under his nose as an antidote to his "dreams." It is not intelligent, even though the pet scheme be a pure chimera. Wifehood too readily degenerates in America to a materialistic plane; I have a longing to see (and to cage for a museum!) the wife of the American man who burned with the same flame of faith as he in some idea, invention, or project, no matter if poverty nipped them for years. The annals of American inventive and business achievement are wreathed with the examples of men-like Charles Goodyear, for instance-who gave their all for years upon years in the face of ridicule

and seeming hopelessness; but I have found too few wives who shared this inspired penury, and some whose faithlessness in their husband's idea made the path a great deal harder.

I would like to see, as a backfire against the materialism of America, more rather than less striving to "put across an idea;" but I would like to see wives and sweethearts think of men in terms of the idea that is driving them, rather than in terms of the house, furniture, automobiles, and other possessions which they visualize too easily, as the fruits of marriage. I would like to see the ideas to be put across by men scrutinized by woman's special faculties and made into a joint idea which can fire both with enthusiasm. I would like to see a wife interested in the processes of mind and heart which her husband puts into his career, rather than the things she can buy with the profits from his labors.

It is a common occurrence in America for men to fail in business, the news coming like a thunder-clap to the wife, who has had not the slightest warning. If she had known her husband, she would have seen the storm brewing even if he had never told her; and sometimes she might thus have prevented him from physical and mental ruin, as well as financial catastrophe. The very existence of a pride which inhibits a man from telling his wife of business stress and impending disaster is a significant commentary, not on the husband, but on the wife; certainly on the set of standards which animate both. These standards are dangerously false; they would be ridiculous and rare on the Continent; they are of a piece with materialism and divorce evils in America. After all, it is a fact that forty-one per cent of American corporations show a deficit at the end of the year-a significant measure of the stress men are under even in "prosperous" America.

American business life, to be sure, renders the familiar Continental daily partnership of man and wife in small business a rarity if not an impossibility. This throws the chief burden for the fusing of interest upon the wife; but the modern American girl has, in so many millions of instances, a business-office experience that the problem is at least somewhat simplified and taken out of the realm of the impossible. No man wants his wife "nosing around at his office;" no man enjoys retailing the day's petty details (nor hearing the household's petty details, either). These are not the kind of things I mean at all. I refer, first of all, to a mental assistance

and grasp of precisely what the man is doing; but even more to the study and nurturing of the man's psychology in relation to his work-his soul, one might almost say, for American men do, in amazing degree, put their souls into their work. The American wife had better follow that soul into man's work, or realize quite clearly that their souls are apart.

W

E talk sentimentally of America's great comradeship between the sexes, but to what degree it is a myth. has realistically been exposed by Sherwood Anderson, Scott Fitzgerald, Hergesheimer, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser. It has often seemed to me as if American wives or wives-to-be ask the impossible of their men. They ask material success, which means incomes of $4,000 or over, and they also ask that men play in woman's garden of leisurely interests and culture. It is enormously difficult to do, for the winning of material success by a man demands almost invariably, not only his whole soul and energy, but sometimes all that his wife can supply as well. As President Butler, of Columbia, asserts, we are living in a complicated civilization to which most of us are not adjusted; and when a husband by his efforts tunes himself up so that he includes himself in the class of two out of one hundred men in America who can earn more than $3,000 a year he almost invariably overdevelops one faculty at the expense of others, to the impoverishment of wife and family and society as well. The woman who chooses wifehood as a profession, rather than an independent career of her own, has the serious task of applying an intelligent, sympathetic corrective to the evil of man's over-specialization; which she can do only by getting very close to his work and his aims and his psychology. Business today is man's religion and art and science, and any intelligent observer can see that much of the genius which in other eras made painters, writers, soldiers, and musicians is today going into business; man is giving to it at present a quality of emotional, intellectual, and ethical vigor which, despite all the Marcelline-like cavilers, is a truly great achievement. The "man's game" of the present day is business, and if nine-tenths of women are going to make wifehood their career, as they are, we have got to develop in America a wifehood which will count in man's life more than a "neck to hang pearls on," as a friend of mine puts it. It has got to be a joint enterprise, and a better-rounded one.

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