IF EDISON WERE GERMAN-!

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MUNICH daily newspaper, the Allgemeine Zeitung am Abend, amuses its readers by explaining satirically why Thomas A. Edison's career would have been impossible if the great inventor had chanced to be born in Munich. Unlike most European satire on American subjects, this is all directed at Old World conservatism and betrays a note of distinct admiration for the New World.

'Edison began his career as a selfmade man by becoming a newsboy, when he was twelve years old,' says the 'A. Z.,' as the Allgemeine Zeitung is familiarly called. 'He couldn't have done that in Munich. It is true that we allow a twenty-one-year-old boy to direct a gigantic trust, over here, but you have to be twenty-five before you are allowed to sell newspapers.

'Edison improved his trade in newspapers by crying his wares. The Munich police would have put a stop to that pretty quickly!

'Edison began his career without a penny. That would never do in Munich. For if he had stood on a street corner to sell his papers he would have had to pay from a hundred to a hundred and fifty marks for the privilege.

'Edison would have had no use for his inventive gift in Munich. He would not even have been allowed to arrange a camp stool to lay his newspapers on.

'Edison is lucky because his fortune lay elsewhere. In Munich Edison could never have become Edison.'

To which it may be as well for an American magazine to add the fact that Mr. Edison has never visited Munich at all!

in method, belongs to the American party system, to that regular mechanism of presidential elections which is carried nowadays to the utmost extreme of precision and ruthlessness. The mechanism alone can be relied upon to make a president out of a lay figure. That has been done many a time; but the whole business was created and has been developed for the special purpose of "selling" the for the special purpose of "selling" the man of the moment to the American democracy, and, obviously, the game

From Mucha, Warsaw

A POLISH VIEW OF THE
UNITED STATES

'LOOKING the "Prospects" over before making a budget.'

Gringoland seem like contradictory terms to those who dislike the Yankees, or who have not lived in Yankeeland long enough to understand the idiosyncrasies, the past, the present, and the future of the people. But as a matter of fact, at this very moment the United States is contributing to the artistic life of the world three highly important qualities: order, organization, and economy of detail.

'Day by day the atmosphere becomes more and more favorable to the development of art. American art is beginning to be democratic: that is to say, within reach of the majority of purses and the majority of intellects. The rich men of Wall Street have begun to take a direct interest in the development of a native American art.'

Señor Zegri points to Mr. Otto Kahn as the finest example of these new 'Mæcenases of Wall Street,' and credits him with having 'lent direct financial support to every important theatrical movement in the United States during the past twenty years.' He points to increasing American importations of art and artists from abroad and points to the even more rapidly increasing exportation of American artistic efforts the plays and novels of Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O'Neill, and Sherwood Anderson, for example.

the United States produce a

the "self-made artist"; and the Latin nations who have sneered at the Yankee Colossus's infatuation with business will very probably see their intellectual market places invaded, before this century is over, by art Made in the U. S. A.' YANKEE MACHIAVELLIS IN THE FAR EAST

Armando Zegri in Reportorio Americano, a literary weekly published at San José, Costa Rica. He answers his own question Costa Rica. He answers his own question thus: 'Probably, though under quite different circumstances and in quite different surroundings from those the famous Italian knew.

'Those who, from a distance, watch the political activities of the Yankees must not forget that the cannibal spirit of imperialism is offset by the fact that Yankeeland is destined to have a great Yankeeland is destined to have a great artistic future. I know that art and artistic future. I know that art and

pearance than in reality,' is what Jacques Chastenet, in the French conservative Revue Politique et Parlementaire, calls the commercial treaty between the United States and the Chinese Nationalists which recognizes China's right to fix her own import duties. "This move,' he continues, 'is well within the tradition of American diplomacy in China: directly, or through the charitable works they subsidize, such as religious missions, the Y. M. C. A., etc., the Americans, disguising their actions as

IN

MORE 'FLOWERS OF AMERICAN

SPEECH'

N THE October LIVING AGE, under the caption Flowers of American Speech,' we reprinted from Punch some brief drawing-room colloquies between 'fair New Yorkers' and mystified British admirers. One New York girl after a 'delightful dance' observed to her male partner, 'Gosh! That was great. Now we'd best park our frames a spell after that.' Another young woman from the States, bored by an Englishman's taciturnity, chaffed him on being a 'rather dim bulb to-night.'

A more elaborate satire upon colloquialism in America is found in a recent number of the Sunday Dispatch (London). For this purpose 'Mr. Silas H. Plonk, the well known chewing-gum magnate of West Sixty-Seventh Street, New York, who is doing "Yurrop,' is made to write a letter to an acquaintance in London as follows:

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'Say, siree, why don't you can all those jokes about Prohibition? All you book lice over here in lil ol' London who are handing out wisecracks about our national institution Prohibition are going too far, and so I'm just going to give you the air of the gate, and say right here that half you ginks who slobber the stickfuls in the Press about our Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution ain't got no more idea about it than a snake's got hips. Nope. I'll say nart. Mister Hoover stands solid for Prohibition, and he gets my vote ker-plonk because he ain't solid ivory from the neck up.

'You seem to have the idea that Prohibition—that heaven-sent boon to a great free country has failed to register. Waal, that's what it ain't done nothing else but. And, what is more, Prohibition has pulled a fast one.

'Not that we wanted it or that it was necessary, for we're not a nation of wet smacks or snuggle puppies who wanna live in speak-easies. Boy. When I was a youth at home and they used to carry my father home on Saturday nights we never used to think he was intoxicated. We sure thought he was dead. And that's the goat's bleat all right, all right.'

HE veteran British journalist, H. N. Brailsford, just returned from his recent American trip, reports to the readers of the New Leader, London weekly paper with Labor sympathies, a complete break-down of the American prohibition break-down of the American prohibition law. It is, he says, 'one of the most painful scandals of American public life.' For, he explains, "The machinery of the law has proved itself utterly unable to enforce prohibition. One sees alcohol on middle-class tables almost as often as one sees it in England, and a very superficial acquaintance with New York reveals the clubs and even the restaurants where cocktails or wine (from a coffee-pot) can be obtained. Deaths from alcoholism are more numerous than they were before the States went "dry." Drinking has become a romantic adventure, and nowhere on this side of the Atlantic have I seen after dark so many young people of both sexes drunk beyond all self-control as in New York. The smuggled stuff is dangerous poison, and the trade in it encourages every form of dishonesty, corruption, and violence. The poor, it is true, are compulsorily sober (for the smuggled stuff is costly) and the flaunting "saloon" has disappeared.

'The law cannot be enforced because, in the Eastern States at least, it is in advance of public opinion. Hitherto, how ever, neither party has ventured to face the facts.'

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'BETTER THAN NO LIQUOR AT All' A NEW VERSION FROM PRAGUE RATHER amusing companion piece to the item above is provided by the Czechoslovak newspaper, Prager Tageblatt, which attempts to explain the exact meaning of prohibition.

'If a European employs the word prohibition, he means simply the American law which completely forbids the use of alcohol.' The American, on the other hand, means 'the whole complex set of conditions that has been created by the prohibition law, which is far from implying the entire loss of the joys of alcoplying the entire loss of the joys of alcohol. There is a current saying which makes this clear: "Prohibition is better than no liquor at all." In German: 'Prohibition ist besser als gar kein Schnaps.'

'AMERICA' OR 'THE UNITED STATES'

objections to the exclusive assumption of the name 'American' by citizens of the United States, some of which have been published from time to time in THE LIVING AGE, the following letter to the Times (London) will be of interest:

'I fear your correspondent is under a misapprehension with regard to the national designation of the United States of America. There are other United States, as, for example, Brazil and Colombia, but there is only one America, which is the name applied by the best writers and speakers for a century and a half to the great English-speaking republic on the North American Continent, and a quarter of a century ago was officially prescribed by the State Department for all Embassies, Legations, and Consulates abroad. "United States" is, in general, a Federal designation, for domestic use, similar to "United Kingdom" in Great Britain.

"The circular instruction about the use of the title, issued from Washington under date of August 3, 1904, directed that thereafter in correspondence and in printing official stationery and cutting new seals the adjective used shall be "American" instead of "United States." It may be added that the word "American" has become "the fixed and approved practice of the Department of State in its correspondence." Nearly twenty years ago the American Ambassador in London, the late Whitelaw Reid, was moved to write: "Why anyone of any nationality should wish to dispute our title to 'America,' when each country of the Western Hemisphere has a title of its own, passes my comprehension." He was so anxious to remove all possible misconception that he even reprinted and distributed the address he delivered on the subject, which was cordially approved by his diplomatic colleagues, the Brazilian, Argentinian, and Chilean Ministers of that day.

'It is, as I have suggested elsewhere, a great pity that the leading geographical societies of the world could not get together and, if a separate designation for one-half the planet be really necessary, rename one of the continents Columbia and the other Isabella. As an American poet and scholar, the late George Cram Cook, once wrote: "We misnamed the land. If our half-sphere of this star-speck, the earth, was to be named for any one of the microscopic specks that crawl upon it, it should have been for that brave, believing gentleman, Columbus, whose name is the name of a dove." But America, as the name of the nation, is surely now too universally acknowledged ever to be displaced.

'Your obedient servant,
BECKLES WILLSON.'

The author of this letter is connected with the Canadian Legation in Paris, and should therefore be unprejudiced.

ISITORS to Germany in the past have been too prone to be satisfied with seeing only the northern sections of the country. The result is

that many come away with the impression that Germany is a flat country, inhabited by Prussians. This is true, but it is not the whole truth. Some of the finest Alpine country in central Europe lies in Bavaria, and the Bavarians are a people with a jollity all their own. Yet even those travelers who penetrate as far south as Munich neglect such attractive spots as the neighboring Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the more usual pleasures of the city.

one rather than another; half the pleasure of visiting them lies in the possibility of discovering a new town, unmentioned in the guidebooks.

THIS is mountain country whose es

sence is hospitality, mountain country which is at once impressive and

easily negotiable by the amateur sportsman. As in the Austrian Tyrol just beyond its southernmost borders, the villages are neat, clean, and friendly. In winter, this neatness and cleanliness becomes positively glistening; snow, lying thick on hillsides and on the peaked roofs of houses, lends a purity to

the scene which makes one catch one's breath. And life in these mountains has remained simple enough so that one may enjoy winter sports without the often overpowering gaiety of the larger, better known resorts, and with the feeling that one is, in a sense, exploring.

The German Alps are best reached by going straight to Munich, where every experienced traveler can always find something of interest with which to fill a few days, and proceeding thence to Lake Constance. From here one can work gradually eastward until the whole country has been traversed, to one's amusement and profit.

Photo Ewing Galloway

FRANCE BY THE BORDEAUX GATE

100 few travelers are familiar

To the service maintained То

by the French Line steamers between New York and the attractive, little-visited city of Bordeaux. It is customary to enter France through the Norman ports of Le Havre or Cherbourg which are only three hours and six hours respectively from Paris -and to rush immediately to the capital. But the visitor who enters the country from the south, by a port like Bordeaux, is more likely to learn his France 'right-end to,' and to realize that real Frenchmen can live quite happily twelve hours from the Eiffel Tower.

For amusement, one may wander up the crowded rue St. Catherine and watch the city shopping: attractive store fronts; push-carts with patient dogs curled up beneath them; pretty, black-haired, bright-eyed women; flower-vendors with insistent voices 'Des mimosas, des jolis mimosas, à vingt sous la botte!' One may go out toward the Parc Bordelais to see the vaches landaises: a kind of bloodless bullfight in which sleek black cows, from the pine forests

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ORDEAUX, interesting enough in itself, is also an excellent headquarters from which one may reach a dozen untouched regions. If one must choose, one may well strike eastward toward the Auvergne, across that prosperous land between the rivers Dordogne and Garonne for which men have fought since the days of the Romansthe Entre-deux-mers, rich in all that makes travel interesting, but thus far neglected by travelers. Here are wide green valleys, bordered by low ridges which carry farmhouses of gray stone upon their crests. Here people roll their r's delightfully. Across the meadows run stiff rows of poplars bordering a straight canal, and towns are built beside still mill-ponds by the river.

Bordeaux, summer or winter, holds something for everyone; and when you ask how to satisfy your particular desire, you will be answered by a bluff, cheerful, ruddy-faced people who speak in a singing accent that is surprisingly similar in tone and charm to an Irish brogue. In summer, the city is a trifle warm for anyone but a native. The comfortable coolness of winter, however, makes it ideal for the traveler who wants to avoid the crowd.

For the gourmet, there are all the delights of the cuisine bordelaise, from truffles brought down the Dordogne from Bergerac, to the famous stuffed tomatoes that are only to be eaten at their best in Bordeaux. These are to be found in numberless restaurants. Let us name only a few: Chapon Fin, Dubern, Hôtel de Bordeaux (where you may eat in the same edifice that housed the Government of France when it retired from Paris in 1914), all close to the centre of the city; and a smaller, too little known restaurant, back of the Marché des Capucins, called Jeanne et Madeleine.

of the landes south of Bordeaux, chase vaulting 'cowfighters' about a sanded arena to no one's great harm and everyone's amusement. Or, in the winter season, one may hear excellent opera in the Grand Théâtre, which the Bordelais insist served as Charles Garnier's model for the Opera in Paris. Seated in the fresh evening air in the brightly-lighted Café de Bordeaux just across the square from the impressive building, watching well-dressed couples stroll by, listening to the chatter at one's elbow and to the faint chords of the auto horns from the Cours de L'Intendance, one feels that he has been made welcome to a cheerful, comfortable city; and one wonders why Henry IV, when he held Bordeaux, offered to give anything at all for Paris.

One passes first through the village of La Réole; then across rolling wine country to Bergerac where, if one goes to the proper café, and stays there long enough, one is almost certain to see people with noses just as long as Cyrano's. The 'white road of France' leads on through vineyards clustering about their châteaux, past Roman villas, along aisles of giant chestnuts that are just beginning to flower in February. One stops at Périgueux, to see the Byzantine splendor of the cathedral of St. Front. From Périgueux one proceeds to the lively little town of Brive'Brive la Gaillarde,' the bold, whose defenders fought well in