"The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands."A British film; heartily recommended. "Beau Sabreur."-The so-called sequel to "Beau Geste." Lots of sand, but no ginger. "Chicago."-A meaty, amusing melodrama with a big performance by Phyllis Haver. "The Circus."-Charlie Chaplin. Drop everything and go.

"The Crowd."-In this issue.

"The Divine Woman."-Greta Garbo looks lovely and tries hard.

"Drums of Love."-D. W. Griffith is himself again.

"Four Sons."-A big Fox feature. Lots of fine work, lots of hokum.

"The Gaucho."-Douglas Fairbanks in an outsize

picture.

"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."-Laughs and pretty girls and pretty vague.

"A Girl in Every Port."-Victor MacLaglen gets all balled up, and so does the plot. "The Jazz Singer."-Al Jolson and the Vitaphone are thrilling; the picture isn't much. "The Last Command."-The mighty Jannings, with a good story, good direction, and good support.

"The Last Moment."-In this issue. "The Latest from Paris."-In this issue. "Love Me and the World is Mine."-Directed by Dupont, who should know better. "Simba."-A fine, wild animal picture. See it. "Soft Living."-In this issue.

"The Student Prince."-A Lubitsch production, and a good one. Ramón Navarro, Norma Shearer, and Jean Hersholt.

"Sunrise."-The year's best picture. "That's My Daddy."-Reginald Denny is always likable. "Wings."-A splendid war picture, marred by the well-meant efforts of Clara Bow.

T

HE three great men in the world," fervently declared a Californian of Italian descent as he bought more stock of the Bancitaly Corporation, "are the Pope, Mussolini, and Giannini."

The last of these, Amadeo P. Giannini, fifty-eight years old, six feet one inch in height, and weighing 180 pounds, one of the most vital, distinctive personalities in the business world, has just dashed off another exciting page in American financial history by acquiring for his Bancitaly Corporation the Bank of America, one of the country's five oldest banks. Giannini interests have been in New York since 1919, but this purchase brings them into Wall Street seriously for the first time.

In California and in many families which stem back to Italy the amazing story of Giannini and his institutions is as familiar as that of Lindbergh and his exploits. And the legend will spread much farther.

At the age of twelve this son of an Italian immigrant was attending school during the day and working in a San Francisco produce firm most of the night (from one or two in the morning until the opening of school). At nineteen he was a member of the firm, and at thirtyone he had retired with a comfortable fortune. Casual but highly successful real estate operations brought him on the board of directors of a bank. When some of his suggestions were rebuffed, he put them into practice himself in the Bank of Italy, which he founded in 1904. He became locally famous at the time of the 1906 earthquake by scooping his cash and securities out of the flames, resuming business while the ruins still smoldered, and being the first to lend funds for reconstruction. He augmented this fame by storing up gold before the panic of 1907; his was the only bank in the State then that could pay every demand for gold.

Today the Bank of Italy has 289 branches in 165 California cities and towns, with 5,000 employees, 60,000 stockholders, and 1,500,000 clients, including 150,000 school-children depositors. It is the biggest American bank outside of New York, its deposits totaling nearly $700,000,000. Most of the profits go to the employees, and Giannini hopes that eventually they will own the bank. His hopes are seldom vain.

At the request of the Italian Chamber of Commerce, he purchased the New York East River National Bank, later amalgamated with the Bowery Bank, for the Bancitaly Corporation, a holding company formed specifically for that purpose. The Corporation has evolved into the greatest of all investment trusts, with holdings in banking and other enterprises all over the world. The sensational rise in the price of its shares has made thousands rich.

Retiring from the presidency of the Bank of Italy in 1925, Giannini has since devoted most of his time to the Bancitaly Corporation, and one of his chief labors has been to prevent its shares from going too high. In California, particularly, thousands of men and women purchase them with every cent they can beg or borrow, and the possible consequence of the collapse of such a bubble are not pleasant to contemplate.

"I don't think they are too high now," he told the writer few days ago, "but I am afraid they will be. It's a terrible responsibility to have so many people believe in you."

Personal generosity on a colossal scale has better news value than business achievement, and Giannini is consequently most famous, outside financial circles, for his ideas about wealth.

"I could have piled up fifteen or twenty millions," he said, and the estimate was a modest one, "but what's the use? That much would be a nuisance. I'm happy. What would I do with more?"

Last year he gave $1,500,000 outright to the University of California. His personal fortune probably does not exceed $500,000.

What investors who have followed his career think of his ability is well illustrated by the rise in the price of the stock of the Bank of America since the first airing of the rumor of its acquisition by the Bancitaly. Four days before the deal was announced the price was below $400. A week later it had mounted to $636.

The Bank of America is to absorb the Bowery and East River Bank and the shares of the combination are to be distributed to Bancitaly stockholders, so that nominal control will be widely distributed. The transaction, moreover, does not represent the invasion of New York by the Giannini interests. They (Please turn to continuation, page 431)

THE Mississippi was rising sullenly -ripping jagged crevasses in even the most stoutly built levees, inundating wide areas of farm lands, making thousands homeless.

At one of the many towns facing the crisis, a break came spreading ruin through the streets. A government steamer rescued 900 refugees, but the four telephone operators refused to forsake their posts. The telephone company notified the operators that they were not expected to stay. Friends warned them to leave at once. They decided to remain on duty, and the exchange was the only thing in town that continued to carry on.

COMPANIES

The world hears little of "the spirit of service" until times of emergency and disaster when a flood on the Mississippi or in New England, a storm in Florida or St. Louis commands the attention of the whole nation. But behind the scenes this spirit is always present. Each hour of every day, telephone calls of life or death importance speed over the wires of the nation-wide system, and telephone users confidently rely upon the loyalty and devotion to duty of the men and women who make this service possible.

"Get the message through." That is the daily work of the more than 310,000 Bell System employees.

A

CROSS the hall from Grand

mother's room was a chamber furnished with her own belongings-pieces made in the early eighteen

hundreds by her farmer and cabinetmaker father, and a great old-fashioned feather bed where, as a special treat, little Anne, Grandmother's namesake, with her brother and sister, were sometimes allowed to sleep. What fun to climb up and sink deep into the feathers! Then, best of all, Grandmother came in to tell the same beloved little stories that Mother had once snuggled down into that same bed to hear. They were all of her own father's and mother's younger days, when New England was a wild country of wolves and Indians, and even children faced real hardships.

Grown-up Anne still lives in the Connecticut home of her childhood. Grandmother has gone, but her namesake has never forgotten her stories-quaint little

Illustrated by Frank W. Peers

was snow; snow filled his mouth and his eyes and his nose, but he held on tight to his little dinner-pail and thought: "Well, anyway, I won't starve."

Presently Farmer Jones came slipping along the crust from the next farm.

"Somebody's old hat," he thought, and gave Great-Grandfather's hat a kick. Then, to his surprise, he noticed a hole, and when he looked down there was a little boy's head!

He had Great-Grandfather out in a jiffy.

"What were you going to do if nobody came along?" he asked.

"Why," said Great-Grandfather, "I was going to eat what's in my little dinner-pail and then see what happened next."

When the teacher heard what a brave boy he had been, she was glad to excuse him for being late. And when lunchtime came I'm sure the things in that little dinner-pail tasted extra good!

The Wolf

FTER your great-grandfather grew up

yet so remote from our own.

Feather-Bed Stories

As remembered by Anne M. Rust,
an Outlook reader

Great-Grandfather's Little Dinner-Pail

Ꮤ

HEN your great-grandfather was a little boy, he lived on a farm in Massachusetts. Houses were far apart then, and he had to walk more than a mile to school.

One morning he woke up to see a deep snow with a crust on top. But he couldn't stay home from school for that. His mother bundled him up extra warm, gave him his little dinner-pail filled with good things to eat, and he started off.

Everything looked queer and different -the fences he knew so well were buried under snow, and drifts made strange little hills up and down everywhere. But it was fun to slide along on the top crust, and he was feeling very gay when suddenly down he went, right through the

crust, and into snow above his head.

The funny thing was that his hat stayed on top just at the spot where he had fallen through.

All he could see

mother, they had three little children. Their house was far away from neighbors, so whenever Father went away Mother and babies were left all alone.

One night, when Great-Grandfather was in Boston on business, Great-Grandmother put her children to bed in a room opening out of the living-room, and sat down before the big fireplace, listening, and hoping her husband would get home that night. It was cold, and one of the little glass panes in the window was broken, but Great-Grandmother had stuffed it with an old hat.

Presently she heard a strange noise outside. As she couldn't see through the frost on the panes, she stole over softly and took out the hat. Then what do you think happened? A wolf touched his cold nose to her face!

Quickly Great-Grandmother stuffed the hat back in the window, and, running to the fireplace, she built a great blazing fire, for wolves are all afraid of fire. All night the wolves howled and prowled outside, but Great-Grandmother

1 The stories in this department are the favorite tales of various families which have been handed down to each succeeding younger generation. The Outlook will be glad to receive and to pay for any such stories which our readers remember from their own childhood and which are found available. They should be told as simply as possible in the language one would use in talking to a child.

only piled on more logs and hoped and prayed that GreatGrandfather would

not come home that night-for the wolves would surely eat him.

It was a long, long night, but next morning the wolves had gone back to the woods, and that afternoon Great-Grandfather came home safe and sound. As for the little children, they never knew a word about it till long afterwards, for they had been fast asleep all the time!

W

Great-Grandmother lived, long ago, there were not only wild beasts but Indians-good Indians and bad Indians. With so many wolves and bears and savages around, farmers always carried their guns along when they went to work in the fields.

Sometimes at haying time, when he needed extra hands, Great-Grandfather used to ask one of the good Indians to help. One day when the men were busy haying the good Indian called to GreatGrandfather to come nearer him. When he did, the Indian said he saw some strange bushes down by the river that had never been there before. GreatGrandfather looked, and he thought so too. He took his gun, and they both watched. Presently the good Indian said he had better shoot straight into the bushes quickly.

Great-Grandfather took aim and shot, and a great tall wicked-looking Indian leaped up, stood a moment, and fell over backwards, dead. His bow and arrow fell beside him. He had tied branches of trees around him to look like bushes and was creeping nearer and nearer the house. Very likely, more bad Indians were hiding in the woods ready to spring out, but the sound of Great-Grandfather's gun had frightened them away. Great-Grandfather

Although everything he could for that Indian as long as he lived, he never felt he could pay him enough for saving him and his family from a terrible death.

did

Our Own Theatre List

(See page 423)

"Coquette," Maxine Elliott.-Comedy, tragedy; youth in a small Southern town; Helen Hayes and excellent cast; first choice for tears and humor. "Escape," Booth.-Galsworthy's melodrama; an English gentleman, escaped from prison, plays hare to the constables' hounds in many exciting situations; Leslie Howard; what would you do if he took refuge with you? "The Ivory Door," Charles Hopkins.-Fantasy; mediæval fairy tale, telling the truth about human nature; Henry Hull and good company; one of the best things in town. "The Doctor's Dilemma," Guild.-Farce, comedy; including a death scene; Shaw's fling at the doctors and people who think their Own morality the only one; Alfred Lunt; better than ever. "Trial of Mary Dugan," National.-Mystery, murder, melodrama; circumstantial evidence turned inside out before your eye, convincingly acted; you won't move.

"The Royal Family," Selwyn.-Comedy; home hubbub of a family of famous theatrical stars; fairly well acted; so funny that it sometimes isn't real enough to be as good as it should be. "Porgy," Republic.-Folk-play; Negro life along Charleston water-front; real Negroes; a gorgeous thing, if simply for its pastel colors and primitive music.

"The Shannons of Broadway," Martin Beck.Comedy, melodrama; vaudeville actors running a small-town hotel; James and Lucile Gleason; good hard-boiled sentiment and some music. "The Queen's Husband," Playhouse.-Modern light comedy; royalty in a mythical kingdom; Roland Young; Sherwood's most subtle humor. "Marco Millions," Guild Theatre.-Satirical comedy; O'Neill's beautiful spectacle of Marco Polo's trip to Venice and China; the immature West meeting the wisdom of the East. "Strange Interlude," John Golden.-A psychological novel put upon the stage; a new kind of drama; Tom Powers and Lynne Fontanne in O'Neill's finest.

"Our Betters," Henry Miller's Theatre.-Ina Claire in a drawing-room comedy by Somerset Maugham; entertaining, deft, and excellently acted.

Business and Finance

(Continued from page 428)

have been there for nine years. In practice, however, Giannini policies will control the Bank of America and the Giannini influence will be felt much more powerfully in the financial district than it could have been through the Bowery and East River.

The important Manhattan bankers respect the newcomer highly. They appreciate the sociological effect of his entrance. In the eyes of the rest of the country, New York's financial leaders have been a rigidly exclusive class, holding themselves aloof from the rest of the business world. Now Giannini, the son of an Italian immigrant, becomes one of them.

The big bankers are glad to have Giannini among them for other reasons. They are glad to see an institution with the background of the Bank of America pass into his virtual control. Many of his business-getting methods are novel and striking, but his banking policies are as sound and as conservative as any in the country, and the recent history of the Bank of America has not been too happy. They feel, too, that his general influence will be a healthy one. Wall

TEXAS

"... it costs to raise a cow

about what it does a chicken..."

INCE that homely aphorism was

SP

printed in the Texas Almanac of 1858, values have grown in the 265,896 square miles of this largest state.

The "Lone Star" still is the leading beef cattle producer, but with land values forcing ranch and Long Horn into stock farm and Hereford. Industry and agriculture, too, have taken many forward steps.

For construction work during 1927, I. C. C. permits indicated greater railroad building in Texas than in any other section of the United States.

Texas has petroleum, gas, lignite and timber, superabundant; raw

materials, on a larger scale, for practically all major classifications of manufacture; aggressive population, surplus wealth, fast growing industries; cheap power, great cities and fine ports. Texas offers opportunities for investors... typical of the New South... as stable as American investments can be.

As investment bankers, in the South, Caldwell & Company have had long experience in judging sound, attractive security values based on Southern growth. We shall be glad to make suggestions embracing municipal, railroad, utility and industrial offerings of the South.

We bank on the South

CALDWELL & COMPANY

506 UNION STREET, NASHVILLE, TENN.

Street banks are, on the whole, thoroughly admirable, but they all do not have the same inspired, single-minded, and sincere leadership that is enjoyed by the Bank of Italy.

If there is any danger inherent in the growth of the Giannini institutions, aside from the possibility that superlative confidence may be translated into excessive speculation, it is that the leader will be unable to maintain his influence over his far-flung interests, that some of his subordinates may get out of hand. Giannini believes devoutly that this is no danger at all.

"I have the greatest organization in the world," he said, "the ablest and the most loyal. In the Bank of Italy alone are a hundred men who could run almost any bank."

The great banker has retired twice already, once when he left the produce

firm and once when he left the presidency of the Bank of Italy. He says now that he will retire in 1930, on his sixtieth birthday, and devote the closing years of his life to rest and travel. But no one believes him.

Rest for this cyclonic individual seems out of the question, but it is not impossible that he will travel-from San Francisco to New York. As a California banker and the guiding genius of the greatest investment trust of the world he may in the next two years reach almost the limit of possible achievement. What would be more in keeping with his career than for him to move his headquarters to New York and, setting out on another adventure, try to win for himself or, as he would say, for his organization, position south of Fulton Street as preeminent as that which he holds today in California?

a

A

who

EUROPEAN celebrity celebrity comes to America and plays the lecture racket for all it is worth is not necessarily a charlatan or a hypocrite. He may merely be making hay while the sun is propitious. You cannot fool all the people all the time, because for all the people sensations must be short-lived, and even a European celebrity who operates on the motive force of the sublimest hokum cannot have a very long life on the lecture platform. Partly out of baffled emulation, even his victims will humorously justify the celebrity who gets it while the getting is good. You write down such a celebrity as a charlatan or a hypocrite only when his idealistic pretensions are shriekingly at war with his ardor for the American dollar.

Count Hermann Keyserling, metaphysical philosopher, who has been conducting a more or less profitable quest for self-realization and self-perfection, author of "The Travel Diary of a Philosopher" and "The World in the Making," director of that symposium called "The Book of Marriage," and head of the School of Wisdom at Darmstadt, is neither a charlatan nor a hypocrite, whatever impression he may convey. If a conflict does seem to be raging within him between pretense and reality; between what he represents himself to be and what he says he seeks, on the one hand, and what he is and what he truly wants, on the other, that conflict is only evidence of the contradictions within him which he is with more or less effort attempting to resolve. In view of the fact that he is seeking self-perfection, he is admittedly some distance from that perfection which he has set as his goal.

ount KeyserlING-he is Count by virtue of title and lands in Estonia which were confiscated in the Russian Revolution is now engaged in a lecture tour at the reported price of $1,000 a lecture. The price is incidental. He arrived in New York the first week in January, heralded by a reputation as intuitive philosopher, as metaphysician, as one who bespoke harmonization of the individual as a condition precedent to self-perfection. He came as one whose vision was bent inwardly, not on material rewards and significances. Through "The Travel Diary of a Philosopher" we

By HARRY SALPETER

had learned of his great gift for reproducing in himself the psychic states of Confucian and Buddhist priests. We had learned also of his contempt for materialistic America. We knew that he was Teutonic, but the image which advance notices conjured up for us was that of a mild and contemplative Yogi sitting under a banyan tree and indulging in that harmless concentration on the umbilicus which is supposed to induce the rapt condition known as Nir

vana.

Within a few days after his landing I discovered what was wrong with that picture. To begin with, it was too simple. I may be inclined to an opposing kind of simplicity. Physically, he is a giant. Merely to visualize him in a condition of relaxed meditation, of surrender to pure thought, is ludicrous—no matter how consistently he may have proved his capacity for pure thought. He is tall and broad-shouldered, energetic, restless, vital. There is in his body the strength of the Teuton and in his face something of that quality we have been taught in the West to identify as Tartar craft. His face is that of the good liver, in the sense in which that phrase is generally understood. I am speaking merely of appearance, which, as Count Keyserling must know, is so often at variance with reality. It is easier to picture him as a feudal lord with a whip among his slaves than as a philosopher of any school.

In

He spoke rapidly, in bursts, in an English which, however grammatical, was yet so individually accented that it was difficult to understand what he meant. He seemed to expand or contract as I expressed comprehension and agreement, or doubt and distrust. the first case, he would almost beam upon me, showing me his strong teeth and laughing loudly; in the other, he would withdraw ever so slightly. His anxiety about the publication of my interview with him seemed eminently unmetaphysical; so also did his desire to keep the page of a morning paper in which was published his photograph and the account of his arrival. I did not think that philosophers cared about such things.

B

EFORE the interview had proceeded

for any length I was to discover what egotism resided in this reputed world philosopher. "What philosophy do you bring to America?" I asked him, and he answered in this wise:

"I have no philosophy in the abstract. I am conscious of a spiritual reality apart from facts. I see on the spiritual plane. I bring spiritual reality-the reality of the soul as opposed to the eighteenth-century conception of the abstract man. . . . It is the inmost soul in every man which is unique. It is the value of that soul which we must appreciate. . . . No human being can be classified so long as he has a soul, for the soul is unique, and so I don't like to be regarded only as a philosopher."

He had intended to retire into a Korean monastery, but changed his mind. During the interview he referred to the possibility of ending his days in seclusion and contemplation, in a monastery perhaps. "How soon will you retire?” I

asked.

"I will not retire so long as I see that I am necessary to the world. One has to live in the world for some part of one's life. I want self-expression. I am striving to give my soul expression, and because my gift is that of understanding that gift turns out to be something like philosophy." In his "Travel Diary" he has given this justification: "The impulse which drives me into the wide world is precisely the same as that which drives so many into monasteries: the desire for self-realization." And on the following page: "I began to become 'Personality.' And thus I recognized how wise Pythagoras and Plato had been in extending their wanderings right into the later stages of their mature manhood. The inevitable process of crystallization must be averted as long as possible; as long as possible Proteus must remain Protean because only men with a Protean nature are called to the priesthood of metaphysics. I therefore determined to return to the world." Sublime resignation! He informed me that he wrote the fat chapter on India in "The Travel Diary" after having been in that country but one day, indubitable proof, I suppose, that he possesses the intuitive gift, the exercise of (Please turn to continuation, page 440)