· THE \ A NEW ,(OK f[ . ,,"0. H m :. 'ï'1fl --'-- -- "'=. fÞ :: ...:: mJ . <,\'\ \\ .. o ....,,, {" / 0 0 . "t'\ o . "-"- THE TALI( OF THE TOWN J.V otes and C om1nent T HE liner Washington sailed up the North River last week, bring- ing home a more than usually Inixed bag. On board, according to the Tzrnes, were Robert Montgomery, the Princess Serge Mdivani, Fritz Kreislel, Thomas Mann, Donald Budge, Rich- ard '-'T atts, Colonel William Hayward, Mary Heaton V orse, Gypsy Smith, the evangelist, half the cast of "The Wom- en," and two hundred Mormon mis- sionaries. Only a war, pal, could round up a mob like that, and there are..stran- ger ones to come before the exodus is over. We like, in fact, to think of the ."t#' --: L" ( , .. · · J ( . , /) - ---"'-- ...-"""---. ----------- , ì i -, day wheJ! that last transatlantic ferry -ghost shìp or Flying Dutchman- turns up with all the little expatriates; long lost, but home now in the end. \Ve can hear the stirring roll call: Berry Wall, Maxine Elliott, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Ezra Pound, Elsie de Wolfe, T.. S. Eliot, RaymoI1d Duncan, Anne .!ld Julian Green, Roszicka and J ancsi Dolly, J oséphine 'Baker, Mr. and. Mrs. Herman Rogers, Kay Boyle, Panama Al Brown, so on and on, down perhaps to half the cåst of "The Sun Also Rises" and the two hundred young ladies who danced once before Adolf Hitler. A great day for America that will be. Break out the flags, LaGuardia. Sound the loud bassoon. W HEN we first entered the Emer- ald City, as a child, we walked hand in hand with Dorothy. The place has never lost its green wonder. \Ve realize, however, that today's child, ap- proaching the Land of Oz clutching the big, motherly paw of Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, must be experiencing a quite dif- ferent set of emotions. The program notes, so full of the difficult F'acts of Production, seem to us a hazardous in- troduction to the country round about Oz's kingdom. Before the modern child has laid eyes on the Scarecrow, he has been informed that Ray Bolger's straw suit is inflammable and that Mr. Bolger, during the filming of the pic- ture, had to keep a fire-extinguisher handy. Before he has glimpsed Doro- thy, he has been ad vised that Judy Gar- land wore out eight dresses, that Bert Lahr's lion skin weighed fifty pounds, and that Billie Burke (that good witch) played one \vhole scene with her ankle 1n a cast. Hollywood, the hard-working, ever faithful to the spirit of childhood! Per- haps a good wÌtch playing a scene with ..a bad ankle isn't so far behind L. Frank Raum at that. P RESIDENT RALPH C. HU1:'CHINSON of Washington and Jefferson Col- lege, in Pennsylvania, has started a course on "the Second World War," intended to give his students some idea of what they're likely to be in for. This, .r\ . ,. o ' I, ' , " I . . ., ;1 ,,. (ihJf1 - as it happens, is a project we've consid- ered ourself from time to time, and once we even got to the point of drawing up a list of the textbooks we'd probably use. . We offer it to President Hutchin- son with our compliments: "\Vhat Price Glory? ," by Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson, "All Quiet on the Western Front," by Erich Maria Re- marque; "D nder Fire," by Henri Bar- busse; "'The Case of Sergeant Grischa," by Arnold Zweig; "Johnny Got His Gun," by Dalton Trumbo; "Paths of Glory," by Humphrey Cobb; "A Fare- well to Arms," by Ernest Hemingway, and Laurence Stallings' shocking and magnificen t collection of war photo- graphs called "The First \V orld War." Take them away, Doctor. T HE challenger had been knocked down five times when the bell rang ending the second round, and hardly anyone believed he'd come out for the third. It must have been a tense moment in Detroit; we were tense ourself as we listened to our radio. Suddenly, however, the tumult at the ringside was magically stilled, and the Voice of God spoke, calmly. "I am reminded," it observed with bloodcurd- ling refinement, "of something once said by Ralph Waldo Emerson." The remark thus attributed to Mr. Emerson had to do with better mousetraps, and the speaker went on to say that in his opinion it was also applicable to the products of the hat company he hap- pened to be representing. He finished and turned the microphone back to the announcer at the ringside, but the fight was never the same to us after that. We couldn't get our mind off the Sage of Concord. "Keep away frÇ>m him, Em- erson!" we kept whispering as the col- ored man shuffled in, a mousetrap in either hand. W E have been following the ef- forts of the American Commu- nist Party to explain away the Soviet- German .agreement, and on the whole- they have seemed heroic if not altogether rational. "Truly the Soviet Union has scored another triumph for human free- dom-destined for the brightest page in world history," we read in an editoritl in the Daily Worker, and a little later, "America will greet the Soviet U n]on' s action as a service to world peace and freedom." Very likely, we thought, but not as likely as that next year's May