behind them. A few small objects rings, bracelets, small silver platethey managed to fit into their traveling bags and take with them, and these, in many cases, have since found their way into the hands of those less needy than their original owners. But the great bulk of the works of art that had been purchased from the artists and fine craftsmen of all Europe by a ruling class which was perhaps the richest and most highly cultured in the world remained in town houses and great country estates - the first prey of a class-mad proletariat.

Like the French Revolutionists one hundred and thirty years before them, the Communists seized these rich private collections of sculptures, paintings, furniture, tapestries, ormolu work, and gold and silver objects, and placed them in State museums. The emigrés, shaking their fists from a position of safety on foreign soil, called it robbery; the Communists, confiscation. As the years passed and the Soviet régime weathered all efforts at counter-revolution, the dispossessed aristocrats gradually gave up hope of ever seeing their collections again

until early this winter a big Berlin art dealer, Lepcke, suddenly announced that a sale would be held in the German capital of four hundred and forty-seven works of art from the Leningrad Museums and Palaces, on behalf of the Soviet Trade Delegation.'

It seemed like another case of the unfortunate thief who, after a highly successful robbery, was going to get caught at last when he tried to dispose of the stolen goods. Advance catalogues of the objects to be sold were eagerly examined by Russian emigrés; works from their own former collections were identified; and, as the day of the sale approached, the same trains that carried excited British, Dutch, French, and American art dealers toward Berlin carried also a little group of Russian aristocrats, hopeful of catching the thief at last, and regaining part at least of the goods that were rightfully theirs.

The sale, announced so suddenly, had actually been in preparation for more than four years. The Soviets found that the harvest that the workers had reaped with such ease in the halls of aristocracy had crowded their museums uncomfortably. In a proletarian country where beggars filled the streets, they had more 'bourgeois' works of art than they could properly display, and no money to keep them in good condition. The obvious solution was to sell off enough to enable them to care for the rest, with a little to

spare. Accordingly, four years ago, they called in Herr Hans Karl Krüger of the widely known Lepcke Galleries in Berlin to select for them works which he believed would bring a good price in the German capital. Individual Russian works of art had long been finding their way to foreign markets, but always privately and without stir. This sale was to be the first officially sponsored by the Soviet Government, whose proud boast had always been that it has never parted with a single piece from the National Collections, even to fabulously rich would-be purchasers from America. Apparently it bore the stamp not only of Russian official approval, but of that of the German Government also. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German Ambassador to Moscow, it is said, gave constant help and advice to those selecting the paintings and sculptures to be sold in Berlin, to the end that objects with the greatest chance of profitable foreign sale might finally be chosen. Such extra-ambassadorial activity would be incomprehensible, were it not widely known that Germany is leaving no stone unturned to bring Berlin into the full centre of great international auctioneering circles.

Nearly five hundred objects. valued at three-quarters of a million dollars, were finally taken from their show cases in Leningrad and sent to Berlin. When the sale opened, the five hundred and fifty seats set up in the sumptuous Lepcke Galleries were far from sufficient to provide for the crowd of participants that had gathered, prominent among them the group of angry Russian emigrés who were later to play a major part in the proceedings. Scattered throughout the auction room and outside the building was a strong detachment of police.

Eighteenth-century French furniture; paintings by Boucher, Canaletto, Teniers, and Greuze; a Lemoyne bust of Marie Antoinette; an eighteenth-century Gobelin from a Raphael painting; several pieces of furniture by the German craftsman, Röntgen; and dozens of other works went at good prices. That most of the pieces presented were French, Belgian, German, or Dutch, with very little that was purely Russian save a few silver vases, bears witness both to the intense nationalism of the Soviets and to the highly eclectic taste of the former Russian aristocracy whom they drove from power.

The sale proceeded briskly and without incident until Lot 265 was reached. This was a traveling medicine chest with

cut glass and gold fittings. Its sale was protested by Prince Dapisha Kotromanitz, on the ground that it had been his property before the Soviets seized it; and the auctioneer announced that this piece would be reserved. At the same time a number of other Russians, among them a group headed by Prince Yusupov, the self-confessed murderer of the monk Rasputin, obtained a court injunction to prevent the sale of other works, which they asserted were rightfully theirs. In most cases they were able to present pre-war art catalogues as proof of previous ownership. In one instance, however, such a pre-war catalogue worked to the benefit of the auctioneers rather than to that of the despoiled Russians. Princess Kotchoubey, who protested the sale of a Cima Madonna, admitted when confronted with the catalogue that the picture put up at auction was not the one which had previously been in her collection.

The upshot of the affair was thatgreatly to the disappointment of the cosmopolitan crowd of collectors and dealers nearly a quarter of the total number of objects originally offered were withheld from sale pending final decision by the courts. German judges are left to decide a ticklish question: whether a foreign nation which recognizes the Soviet régime has the right to order restitution of goods which that régime confiscated at the time of the revolution.

If they decide against restitution, as seems likely at this writing, it is probable that the world will very quickly have an opportunity to buy further spoils of the revolution; for the Soviets claim to have more than five hundred untouched treasure houses far richer than the two or three whose mere overflow was placed on sale in Berlin. If, on the other hand, the courts decide to allow the claims of the Russian aristocrats, the Soviets are left with a heavily bejeweled white elephant upon their hands.

The case will be followed with great interest by Germans in particular, who see in it a possible precedent should they ever wish to sell abroad the art treasures seized by the German Republic from the Hohenzollerns. It will be followed also, as was the sale itself, by all those who see in it one more proof of the platitude that not war or revolution or an outraged proletariat can prejudice the existence of a really fine work of art - So long, cynics will add, as a single potential buyer remains on the face of the earth.

THE STILL, Small Voice oF

F

FRENCH APPROVAL

RENCH newspaper comment on affairs of the day is likely to be liberally seasoned with attacks on the policy of the United States toward Latin America. Only occasionally is a rare voice raised in defense, but there is one such in a recent issue of the Revue Politique et Parlementaire.

What would become of Haiti, San Domingo, Panama, Nicaragua, without the financial help of the United States? What can a young republic, recently born into political life, do without financial or economic organization and without government? Is it not dangerous to remind people who have just begun to breathe the air of freedom of the rights they possess by reason of their independence, before they have been educated, informed of their duties, and prepared for public life? Isn't it better, after all, to see that these people avoid civil war, poverty, and misery, when this can be done by the simple expedient of offering political and economic guidance until their country is able to direct its own affairs? Is it not beneficial to all these regions to build them roads and harbors and railways, to bring life and progress within their borders, to improve transportation, to better relations of all kinds, to open banks

and to dig mines?

COMRADES! 7

It is to the interest of all these little states, and to that of the whole world, that the United States should manage the Panama Canal. It is clearly to the interest of the South American republics

that North America should undertake and direct the construction of transcontinental highways and railroads. It is certainly significant that all these peoples are irresistibly drawn by the United States into the rising movement toward increased progress, toward a higher civilization, toward intellectual as well as economic and technical reforms, toward all that goes to make more satisfactory the material and moral existence of peoples and of individuals. 'If you make men happy you will make them better' - for, in the last analysis, when one studies the Monroe Doctrine one finds in it a human element as well

WINE

M. Poincaré's suggestion that the United States may ultimately be willing to make concessions to her debtors in order to facilitate reparations is, according to the Sunday Times, 'a dream which in the present state of opinion across the Atlantic has no hope of fulfillment.'

A Too PERFECT RECEIVING SET

supposing for an instant that reparations and war debts can ever be separated either in fact or in the European mind.

Publicists in the United States have argued that the one has nothing to do with the other

[says the editorial writer], but, whatever may

be the wish, the fact is that the two matters are and must remain firmly connected in the minds of all the European countries concerned. The one will not be settled without the other, and, therefore, whenever one comes to the fore the other immediately accompanies it.

Le Rire, Paris

The sooner Europe grasps this fact the better. For the present, at all events, and probably for some time to come, these debts have got to be faced, and it is infinitely preferable that they should be faced with a good grace. Great Britain early acknowledged her immense obligations, and has borne the burden of payment with a grin. She has set an example to the other debtors. She, at least, has very clearly understood that no amount of tears or cajoleries or threats on this side of the water will have the slightest chance of modifying the American attitude. On the contrary, it will probably have a hardening effect, for no one likes a whining debtor. The only thing that can bring about concessions if they are to come be a change of heart in American opinion itself, and that is the more likely to occur in proportion as Europe pays up without complaint.

will

JAPANESE AND BRITISH VIEWS

ADAM YAYOI

MADAN

YOSHIOKA, President of the Shisei Hospital and the Tokio Women's Medical College, records in the Japan Advertiser her views on American civilization after a three months' tour of the United States. American women, addicted to smoking, spoiled and petted, do not appeal to her. She feels that 'the American people know how to teach, but think that they have nothing left to learn,' and that 'to acquire their present giddy height of material prosperity, they have had to discipline themselves not to think in any except practical ways.' Furthermore, there are so many "greatest in the world" things in America that the people are inclined to look down on the rest of the world.'

All this she regards as a symptom of national decline.

More sympathetic is the view of Mr. Wickham Steed, editor of the British Review of Reviews. Addressing a club luncheon in London, he insisted that, Englishmen must definitely reconcile themselves to the idea that Americans are after all foreigners. 'If we treat them with the respect we should accord to a great foreign nation and study them as carefully as we should study France, or Germany, or Italy, or any other important country, we shall then begin to understand them as we do not to-day.' In his opinion, the main difference between Americans and British lies in what they take for granted. Englishmen can not understand the things Americans take for granted unless they go over very respectfully to learn their language and find out what they are thinking about. 'If we go. to them as a great foreign nation we shall find that they are the jolliest lot of foreigners we ever met. If we go there thinking they are blood cousins we shall be disappointed.' 'ADVERTISING SENSE'

ALL

received so much 'boosting' as Deauville, a seaside town whose intrinsic charms are exceeded by those of scores of rivals?

Even French lawyers, it is pointed out, possess a very pronounced sense of advertising, as witness what follows. Two important trials were fixed for the same date, one at the Paris Assizes and

FROM COLUMBUS TO ECKENER

the world is interested in what is described sometimes as 'advertising sense,' sometimes as 'publicity instinct,' or again as a keen understanding of 'news values.' The Paris correspondent of the Sunday Times (London) thinks that Americans may consider themselves leaders in the science of advertising with a certain amount of justification. He admits that even in Great Britain, where advertising is now developing with great strides, that claim is generally allowed. Yet, he declares, there is much to substantiate the view that the best 'sense' of advertising, particularly advertising on the grand scale, is possessed by the French. Where in the world, for example, is there a vacation region so marvelously advertised as the Riviera? And most of it is free advertising, too. Is there another pleasure resort on the globe which has

the other in the Upper Garonne, leading counsel in the first being Maître Henry Torrès, and in the second Maître de Moro-Giafferi, who some time ago defended Landru. Apparently these two eminent counsel no more wanted to compete for front-page space in the newspapers than would two theatrical vedettes. They appreciated that, with simultaneous trials, each would get only half of his usual allowance. So the Paris trial was put back a month, and the Upper Garonne trial proceeded spectacularly on its way.

play a part, do not get in the way.' The poem is entitled Bally-Hooy and follows:

We meet with many men acrost the seas,

An' some of them is nice an' some is not,

There's some as prove an awkward job to please, An' Bally-Hooy's worst of all the lot.

We never get a ha'porth's change of 'im,

'E sits at 'ome an' hugs 'is bloomin' coffers

That war 'as filled with dollars to the brim,

An' good advice to Europe
daily offers.

So 'ere's to you, Bally-
Hooy, in your 'ome in
U. S. A.,

You're a marvel at the
gentle game of rakin' in
the pay;

We gives you your cer

tificate for that, but

note it clear,

We'll jog along much better if you will not interfere.

We take our chance at doctorin' our ills

An' ask no 'elp from you

nor free advice,

For we 'ave swallowed worse an' 'arder pills,

Nor whined to you becos

they were not nice. So take a tip from them as knows wot's wot,

An' remember when you feels the urge to 'oller That we don't admire a race just 'cos it's got

A double-fisted grip upon

the dollar.

So 'ere's to you, BallyHooy, an' the way you bang the drum. As long as you've the breath ter preach your voice is never dumb; Wot matter though your 'ome affairs are lookin' very queer?

You gently close your eyes to them. Your job's to interfere!

We don't ask 'elp from friends unless it's free. For, strange ter say, our pride still stands at

the Sangiano forest. Through the Inn Gorge lies the village of Campfér, a mile and a half over the snow. Oberalpina and the highlands of the Suvretta Valley are worthaday's trek. Elsewhere in the issue, under the World Travel Calendar,' will be found many of the most attractive sporting events in Switzerland this winter. St. Moritz, however, provides such a wealth of entertainment that its own programme is briefly reviewed here:

JAN

SKIING IN THE BERNESE OBERLAND

Ewing Galloway

ANUARY: First half- Exhibition by professional skating champions, Ice Stadium; hockey games between St. Moritz, Swiss national, and visiting teams; curling matches for Suvretta Cup and Martin Cup; curling match for Engadin Challenge Cup among curling clubs of the Grisons; international hockey matches; toboggan races on the Cresta Run for Yaralla Cup, Bacon Speed Cup, Marsden Speed Cup, Festitics Cup, etc.; bobsleigh and boblet races on Sunny Corner Bob Run; Sweepstakes and Tita Cup bobsleigh races. Second half- Jan. 18th20th, St. Moritz Ski Races and Jumping Contest; Second Ice Gymkhana, Ice Stadium; daily hockey matches; toboggan races for the Curzon Cup, Cresta Run (2 days); Boblet Derby for the Lady Curzon of Kedleston Cup; ladies' bobsleigh races for Tauchnitz Cup. FEBRUARY: First half-Feb. 3rd, 7th, and 10th, Eighteenth Great Inter

national Horse Race

Meeting, lake at St. Moritz, with skiMeeting, lake at St. Moritz, with skijöring, flat racing, trotting, and military races; Seventh Annual Dutch Skating Festival, only Dutch skates used; second exhibition of skating professionals; curling matches, hockey contests, races for various cups (daily). Second half — Feb. 16th, Slalom Ski Race for Batschari Cup; Feb. 17th, ski jumping, Olympia Leap;

Bobsleigh Derby and Races for Olavegoya Cup; Grand National for Toboggans, Cresta Run; ski races for visitors. MARCH: Mar. 5th, Annual Ski Race of the Ski Club Alpina, from the Corviglia Hut; curling matches; races for luges and toboggans, Village Run of the Kurverein; Ice Gymkhana; Boblet Races for the Schumacher Cup.

IT WOULD be

ridiculous to attempt mention of every Swiss sport centre. A few of the most popular are Villars-Bretaye, where 'Luging' ("Tailing Party': a long string of small sleds tied behind a horse sleigh) is much practised; Adelboden, a tiny and quiet hamlet in the Bernese Oberland; Pontresina, in the Engadin, with five huts of the Alpine Club tempting to overnight expeditions; Arosa, housing the British Ski Club, Curling Club, Obersee and Inner-Arosa

Ewing Galloway

Skating Rink Companies, Ice Hockey Club, Hunters' Association, Art Union, Chess Club, Rifle Association, Ski Club of Arosa; Gurnigel in the Bernese Oberland, the ski-runner's Elysium.

Near Lucerne is the Rigi, one of the most famous mountain viewpoints in the world. Towering at the northern extremity of the Alps, the Rigi (Rigi-Kulm) is more and more frequented during the winter. When fog lies heavy on the plains, the Rigi stands in sunlight at least eight hours a day. At Rigi-Kaltbad are hotels served all winter long by the Vitznau-Rigi railway.