Beginning with this issue, we are planning to reproduce each week as our frontispiece a painting or etching by a first-class living artist. For this week we have selected "The Cove," by Niles Spencer. We are followers of no special school. We hope merely to select from the work of our modern painters a picture that we find interesting enough to pass on to you. FRANCIS RUFUS BELLAMY, Publisher MALCOLM WATERS DAVIS 231 ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief ASSOCIATE EDITORS DIXON MERRITT HAROLD T. PULSIFER WILLIAM L. ETTINGER, JR., Advertising Manager The Outlook is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature THE OUTLOOK, October 26, 1927. Volume 147, Number 8. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscription to countries in the postal Union, $5.56. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1927, by The Outlook Company. ROM time immemorial, that shop has served its customers best which has sent its agents to India, China, Persia, Italy, France-to find and buy those things which its customers had no means of discovering. LIKEWISE, in the world of ideas, that periodical has in the long run been of the most service to its readers which has discovered and presented those things from the world's thought which its subscribers wanted to know but had no means of finding out. OR instance, we have heard much FOR of Al Smith and the "Solid South" -what it would do to him, and what he would do to it. With this issue we print the first of a series of articles by Mr. Merritt, himself a Southerner, whom we have asked to tour the Southern States and find out the facts. A GAIN, every one is interested in books. We have begun in this issue a new kind of literary department, which, with the co-operation of leading book-stores from coast to coast, will hereafter report on what books people are reading and discussing everywhere, and give to our readers some idea of what they will find if they care to read these books also. UR aim in reviewing the plays OUR which are most worth while has been along the same line-that ideas potent enough to draw thousands of people to a single theatre night after night are worth reporting to you. S nearly as we can do so, we propose increasingly to bring such things to your attention. Every one is interested, for instance, in finding out what changes the new psychologists think we should make in bettering the education of our children. Most people would like to know how America appears to the mind of our most sensitive poet. What steps are our churches taking to meet the situation brought into the open by Judge Lindsey? These are some of the things that you will find in these pages in the near future. EDITORIALLY, of course, The Outlook has always clarified and interpreted the happenings of the world with candor and intelligence. Particularly, however, we wish to assure you that our best efforts will be devoted, through the most able writers, to discovering and presenting the things you want most to know. The wild and poetic loneliness of the fisherman's life on the North Atlantic coast is dramatically told by this purely American artist. The judicicus arrangement of a few simple masses of black and gray is the only means employed Volume 147 The Outlook October 26, 1927 THE WEEK down the tariff barriers of Europe, unify latest evidence of the tendency is a pow- The chemical accord follows upon the completion last year of a Continental iron and steel association. And Great Britain, not a member of the iron and steel group, is part of the new chemical organization. Into it the present members propose to bring Italy and Switzerland also, making it the strongest unit of its kind in the world. It is to deal in dyestuffs and fertilizers. Both the chemical and the iron and steel trusts aim ostensibly at greater economies and more efficient production. But it is no secret that they plan to pool resources, apportion and restrict sales in European markets, fix prices so far as practicable, and go aggressively into the South American and Far Eastern and other markets in which the industry and trade of the United States has won a new position since the war. The French move to triple and quadruple tariffs on American products, while granting special favors and low rates to Germany in exchange for like concessions, was another evidence of the same trend in Europe. And, although France has agreed to return to her former duties on goods from the United States pending the discussion of a new commercial agreement, the significance of her attitude is none the less clear, and understandable. Europe is facing a formidable economic force in America. Since the war there has been no doubt that Europeans recognize it. As fast as they can, they are preparing to regain and safeguard as much as they can of the place they formerly held. The result may be to break W HILE there may be a difference of opinion as to the prospects of rubber growing in the Philippines and in Africa, there is none as to the Amazon Valley. Brazil is the native home of the rubber plant, and the possibilities of extending production are almost unlimited. -given time and capital. Henry and Edsel Ford have both. They have accordingly obtained a concession for an enormous tract of land (three to four million acres) on the Tapajos River, in the State of Pará, Brazil. This is far up in the Amazon Valley and is watered by tributaries of the great river. To develop it means establishing settlements, insuring sanitary conditions, and an immense amount of preliminary work. Most of the land is virgin jungle. It will be interesting to watch the two vast experiments in systematic rubber growing, one to be carried on by Harvey Firestone, the other by Henry Ford, the former in Liberia, the latter in South America. The two men are friends of long standing, and both are immense consumers of rubber for automobile tires. The rubber situation has changed greatly since the Stevenson restriction plan was announced by the British Colonial Secretary five years ago. This plan proposed to reduce exports from British rubber-producing colonies when prices fell and to restrict production at the same time. American consumers of rubber regarded this as a threat, and one result has been to promote all this American activity with a view to our own future supply. Another unlooked-for result of the Stevenson plan has been that Number 8 the world price of rubber has fallen instead of rising, despite artificial advances in the price of the output of the British Indian possessions. Already the Firestone Plantations in Liberia have got beyond the test stage and will be an actual producer in a very few years-beginning probably on a small scale three years from now. The Ford experiment has plenty of financial backing, and it is fair to hope for large results in time. Thus the Stevenson attempt to "rig the market" in rubber has balked its own end. We are not likely to have to give up cur automobiles for lack of rubber to make tires. The Televox Arrives o control distant machinery by means of prearranged sounds transmitted over the ordinary telephone Mr. R. J. Wensley, an engineer in the employ of the Westinghouse Company, has just perfected an interesting piece of apparatus, called the "televox," which apparently does about everything but think. When the public read in some of the newspapers that this apparatus would permit a housekeeper at her club to call her own servantless home on the telephone, receive an answer from the televox installed there, ask it to connect her with the oven on her electric stove and start the oven heating, then order it to switch her to the furnace, ask the furnace how the fire was and order the televox to close the drafts, blame could hardly be laid with justice if the statement elicited an incredulous smile. Anyway, one asks, how much practical good would such an obviously complicated apparatus actually be in the average case? The new televox will do all these things and more; it will do just about as many tricks as a hundred-thousanddollar circus dog, but that is not what it was primarily invented for. Of much more prosaic nature but greater economic worth is its ability to control certain kinds of distant machinery, especially unattended electric power substations, a point which will be most fully UNING-FORKS constitute the key to the televox. Set up a row of tuning-forks ranging over, say, half a dozen octaves, and sing some note. One, and only one, fork will respond by taking up the vibration-the fork of corresponding pitch. The same phenomenon may be produced by singing into the strings of a piano. When the distant telephone call is made, the televox at the and stop it. The facetious will see in had the intelligence to leave an explanatory affidavit behind her when she went out for her little dip in the Channel. Suppose some one else had got the true story in the papers first! It is to her credit that she has exempted Gertrude Ederle and Mrs. Corson from her intimations of fraud or receiving undue assistance. Now she will be attacked only by those she didn't name as innocent. Poor Dr. Logan has been solemnly rebuked by everybody, and admits that she is sad and sorry. Precious few have the sense of humor that enables them to relish being hoaxed. Nevertheless it is admitted that hereafter Channel-swimming competitors must have reliable official chaperonage in their swims. Perhaps the reason why some of the contestants were not watched by judges or newspaper men was that the public had become altogether indifferent to this form of athletic competition. The Channel, the public feels, has been crossed sufficiently by men and women mothers and non-mothers. Give the poor Channel a rest! Women's Week in women aviators occupied a larg share of public interest during the mid Idle week of October. parents to control the baby in the crib THE adventures and misadventures A Hoax as an other end, previously attached to the DR. DOROTHY LOGAN has learned that telephone there, automatically lifts the receiver, connecting the caller with a series of tuning-forks. The operation is too complex to detail here in its every step, but the essential point is that when. the caller sends over the wire the exact notes required, by means of a pitch pipe (or, if he has a good sense of pitch, he may sing them), the forks will vibrate in such a way that the desired operation is performed. The performances require far more current than the telephone will furnish, hence relays of the type used in radio (vacuum tubes), and in turn less delicate relays, are actuated. By this invention a man seated at an ordinary telephone in Oshkosh could call up a dumb piece of machinery in Kalamazoo and set it to work, regulate it, control it, a hoax may be a boomerang. A hoax is almost always a poor form of joke, and usually it is the last thing in the world to be of any educative value. Dr. Logan was impressed with the idea that some of the Channel-swimming feats were humbugs, or frauds. So, just to show how easy it is to fake records, she framed a fraud herself, and after her claim to have beaten Gertrude Ederle's time had been accepted as genuine and preparations were afoot to present her with a $5,000 prize, she "blew the gaff," in the old-time thieves' slang phrase, and admitted that her wonderful swim was a pure fake, with little swimming and plenty of assistance. The hoax might have been a serious affair for its originator if she had not Ruth Elder, an attractive public en tertainer, frankly out for personal an professional publicity, is a pilot who ha had at least more experience at airplan controls than Levine. With George W Haldeman as expert and navigator, sh gayly and courageously took off on flight from New York to Paris for course which, if completed, would hav been the longest oversea flight (abou 3,500 miles) from America to Europe She hoped also to win the honor of bein the first woman to cross the Atlantic i a plane. As it was, the American Gir bearing Ruth and George, did, we be lieve, beat the over-the-water distanc record. The attempt at this time of year wa dangerous, to put it mildly. When fa out at sea, after the plane had been bu feted by storm, Ruth and Georg had to climb out on the exterior plan to release fuel and thereby countera the weight of sleet-the same troub that bothered Lindbergh. A feed pip broke, and Ruth and George wer forced to descend. By a chance of th kind that people call miraculous (as wa the rescue of Hawker, the first to try th transatlantic flight), a Dutch tanker, the Barendrecht, picked them up and took them to the Azores, where Ruth was fêted, and had the time of her life. As we write she is on the way to Paris. Mrs. Frances Wilson Grayson, who had been waiting for fair weather conditions to fly from Old Orchard, Maine, to Denmark, also took off, and also had a mishap this time at the very start. Her plane, the Dawn, was badly balanced and had to return. Mrs. Grayson on October 18 was planning to try again, if weather permitted, but many good judges consider such a flight at this late season exceedingly dangerous-"suicidal," some say. The one successful, though short, woman's overseas flight in mid-October was that of the Viennese actress, Lilli Dellenz, who sailed in a Junkers plane from Lisbon to Fayal, in the Azores (where she met Ruth Elder), whence she plans to make a try for Newfoundland and New York. Meanwhile a highly creditable aviation achievement (a mere man's affair) was that of the Frenchmen, Costes and Lebrix, who made first a fine flight from Paris to Senegal, in Africa (2,700 miles), and then a memorable air voyage from St. Louis, Senegal, to Brazil. On or about the first of October it was announced by the press that the flying season was over. Not for women, it seems, nor for southern waters. Foreign Loans ENATOR GLASS, of Virginia, has been SE objecting to the practice of the State Department in examining and passing upon proposals for private loans by American bankers to foreign countries. He believes that when any such proposal has once been examined by the State Department and sent back to the bankers without objection, the natural effect is to create the impression that the loan has the approval of the United States Government and is in a way guaranteed. He regards this practice as a usurpation by the Executive of prerogatives of Congress in regulating commerce with foreign nations. The State Department has explained that it does not guarantee anything in any such proposals. All that it does is to see whether such a loan, if made, would be inimical to the interests of the United States. A loan might be sought in the United States by a country that has not paid its debts to the United States. Or a loan might be sought for Wide World TWO MORE WHO OUTWITTED THE ATLANTIC Ruth Elder and her co-pilot, George Haldeman hostile armaments or for the monopolization of products that this country needs. All the State Department can do is to suggest to the banker that such a loan does not seem advisable. If the as that followed in Great Britain, France, and other nations. State Department finds no objection it M says so, but does not necessarily approve the loan as a good investment. The practice has been explained by the State Department as having originated under a ruling laid down by former Secretary Hughes in 1922. In that ruling Secretary Hughes specifically said: "Offers for foreign loans should not . . . state or imply that they are contingent upon an expression from the Department of State regarding them." It is reported that, in view of the misunderstanding that may arise, this practice may be discontinued. But it is also explained that there is nothing unusual about it-that it is practically the same The Powers Soothe the Balkans ARAUDING Macedonians who crossed the border from Bulgaria into Yugoslavia and killed the Yugoslav General Kovachevitch within the frontiers of his own country seemed last week, to some observers, to have created a danger of war between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The wires between the two capitals of Belgrade and Sofia were buzzing, and public excitement gave easily disturbed correspondents an occasion to write home with anxiety. Other observers, remembering how weak Bulgaria is compared with Yugoslavia and how little the Great Powers want trouble in the Balkans, remained calm. This week the tiny tempest had blown |