from Le Bourget is the new giant searchlight of Mont Valerien, which is the most powerful land lighthouse in the world and can be seen at a distance of ninety miles away. This, with the smaller Saint-Affrique light near Dijon, and the regular lighted airways between Croydon and Le Bourget, is used for night flying on the London to Marseilles route.

Red lights mark the roofs of hangars and other buildings at Le Bourget, while a lighted T-shaped vane shows the pilot landing at night the direction the wind is blowing on the ground. Frequently, the pilot drops a rocket before landing in order to illuminate the entire field, although flood lights and small projectors are turned on from the contrôle.

many of us were somehow firmly convinced he would arrive, his unexpected coming, after so many wild rumors, took most of the watchers by surprise. A

THE LE BOURGET BEACON

B. B. T. Corporation of America

STANDING NEARLY NINETY FEET HIGH at the extreme northeastern end of the flying field, this beacon, of the B. B. T. type, guides pilots approaching the French airport at night by flashing the Le Bourget code signal 'BM' at regular intervals.

able to distinguish the airport, but we were told by our more skeptical colleagues that we were 'hearing things.' When the sound was heard again, this time louder, and a shadowy monoplane began to take form in the darkness, no doubts remained. A mighty cheer, of mingled relief for his safe arrival and joy at what he had accomplished, went up to meet the young American.

There were long vigils at Le Bourget for Commander Byrd and his America crew, Captain Haldeman and Ruth Elder, and other flights. Thousands of Parisians remained at Le Bourget all one night, fearing that the gallant Commandant Beard,' as they called him, and his companions were lost. On the occasion of the Haldeman-Elder flight, many of us waited at Le Bourget from shortly after midnight until almost six o'clock the next evening, when the message was received stating that the flyers had been rescued by

a Dutch tanker.

I have mentioned these flights because of the stimulus given by them to air travel all over the world. Even Europe, with its airway systems, was affected by them. Before, it had been primarily business men who patronized the European lines; to-day, all classes have become vitally interested in flying. The successful ocean flights, then, have been a sort of guarantee for the safety of air travel.

One has only to glance at our newspapers to see the many things that are happening daily in American aviation, and realize that we shall soon have a 'Le Bourget' of our own on this side of the Atlantic.

S

By Paul Gaultier

NEVILLE rests indolently on the banks of the Guadalquivir. With the Moorish elegance of her yellowed palaces and churches, standing above the yellow waters of the river, is combined the charm of her flowers and her women

those slender Andalusian women who, as they pass on their way to church with mantillas over their heads and tall shell combs in their hair, are perfumed

with the mingled scents of orange and jasmine, of myrtle and of rose. For in Seville there are flowers everywhere: in gardens with flower beds studded with bright bits of tile; in open squares; in the windows and courtyards of the discreetly retiring houses that border capricious, wandering little streets.

Crowded with churches and convents, Seville is a pious city. And every year,

with an ardor which has come down from the days of Moorish rule, she celebrates the sorrowful story of the Passion against a sumptuous background appropriate to a people in whose blood some of the warmth of Africa still remains.

She puts so much pomp into it, and her lavishness is so great, that many visitors think they are witnessing a masquerade when they watch the famous

sistence of a Ribera, who

way of the Northerner. They answer the Andalusian's need for having holy scenes enacted before his eyes, made into concrete objects for his fervor. The abstract is not enough for him, as it was not enough for the people of the Middle Ages, who wanted Biblical scenes clearly depicted for them in their cathedrals. The Andalusian's speculation needs Andalusian's speculation needs some foundation in daily life, some image which speaks to the senses. He must convert his joy or his bitterness into a visible manifestation. Processions, bullfights, the theatre are the realization, the crystallization of his pleasure and his pain. The violent realism of a Valdès Real, who in a famous painting shows the worms attacking the decomposing body of an archbishop; the cruel in

age which must make an extraordinary appeal to the senses, since his sensuousness is more than usually ardent.

This is what explains the pomp of Spanish cathedrals, particularly the cathedral of Seville: the grandiose altar screen of carved wood coated with dull gold, rising to the height of the vaulting itself and occupying all the rear of the Great Chapel; the exaggerated magnificence of the Royal Chapel; the side chapels with statues, paintings, and altar screens jammed together behind opulent wrought-iron grilles; the vast sacristy filled with masterpieces. The people believe in the power, the splendor, the wealth of the Church more than in its dogmas.

This, too, is what explains the wanton passion of Andalusian dances: the provocative hip-swayings, the ostentatious magnificence of the bright-colored shawls, the blood-red flower stuck in black hair, the boldness of glance and gesture. Carmen still comes out of the tobacco factory every evening.

From this also comes the need for contrasts to stimulate the senses, a need which Seville gets from the Moors. One discovers, hidden behind an unimpressive, crenelated ochre wall, the fairy chambers of the Alcázar rooms bordered by little arches covered with endlessly interwoven arabesques, surrounding marble fountains where water whispers softly. Below the massive silver reliquary of Saint Ferdinand, who regained Seville from the Moors, one sees a group of wood or lead coffins, macabre in the extreme. And did not Don Miguel de Manara, the prototype of Don Juan, found an asylum and leave it a good deal of money, all in expiation

of the dissolute life whose marks may still be seen in the flaring nostrils of his funeral mask? Here, as everywhere in the city, piety and passion are contrasting neighbors.

It is he, the Andalusian, who inspires these long Holy Week processions, headed by a great crape-veiled cross and moving forward to tearful music punctuated by the regular beating of drums; these endless files of penitents escorting the great floats or pasos of their brotherhood each parish has its own on which are life-size representations of the different scenes of the Passion the Garden of Olives, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Entombment. These are followed invariably by the clergy in black surplices, and finally by a richly garbed Madonna whose mantle, with a long train of velvet and gold, droops to the ground as she rides on a platform lit with a thousand flickering candles and surmounted by a canopy studded with silver and gold.

There is no suggestion of vulgarity in the attitude of the people; a glance is sufficient to remove all doubt as to the piety which moves them. Grave and contained, they jam the streets and spread like a tapestry against walls and windows; and they remove their hats and incline their heads as the stirring images move slowly by. Is it not sincere piety which calls forth at the approach of the images these strange chants, verses of four or five lines in honor of the Virgin or of Jesus, which are suddenly thrown out above the mass of humanity by unknown voices shaken with sobs at the sight of the divine agony? Is it not true piety which moves the ladies of the city to offer their loveliest jewelry to adorn the Madonna of Sorrows? Is it not true piety that makes these fine-looking soldiers march in the procession, mounted or on foot, their faces intent on the more-than-human mission they are fulfilling? Is it not piety which moves these penitents, however droll their garments may seem, some of them barefoot, to accompany the holy figures on the long

HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE

procession through a city bowed in silent obeisance?

If one prays with the mind, can one not pray also with the lips and with gestures, actions, attitudes? Of course I do not know the thoughts of those who march in the procession and of those who watch it; the fact that they are there, that their attitude indicates the solemnity of their feelings, is sufficient to make me feel that even if there is no spoken prayer, they are praying after their own fashion. Their presence at such a ceremony, sacred or profane, and, more than that, their participation in it, is something at least. Does not one's bodily participation in the ceremony signify that one has lent one's mind to it also? Otherwise, bowing to an acquaintance in the street, offering flowers on

431

someone's birthday, kissing someone you love, would all be meaningless. Feeling, though distinct from action, does not exist without action, and this is most true in the case of religious feeling.

That is the lesson taught by Holy Week at Seville, or rather the lesson Seville teaches best during Holy Week; for Seville teaches the same lesson at all times to all who visit her. In piety or in passion, she makes no distinction between feeling and its expression. At once passionate and disciplined passionate with the Arab blood that still courses in her veins, disciplined by Catholic custom and experience, - Seville owes to these two qualities the supreme elegance which marks every moves she makes: mysticism and sensuality in strange alliance.

The Hispanic Society of America

By John Bakeless

Written Especially for THE LIVING AGE

"The violence of those who are right,' says Daudet, 'must triumph over the violence of those who are wrong.' The Royalists, of course, are right. The are right. The Republicans are wrong. Voilà! It is all so very simple.

HE king business' was Ambassador Page's contemptuous description of the sacred and ancient institution of monarchy in those remote days before the War, when kings still claimed to rule by divine right. It was a typically American phrase, and a typically American attitude; for to the THERE ce. In fact, there never would

American mind there has always been something a little odd about the monarchical system: kings belong in fairy tales and history books; they have no place in the twentieth century.

Even queerer to Americans seems the idea that, in these days when almost all the kings have toppled from their thrones, anyone should want to put them back.

Yet in shrewd and thrifty modern France—which which has had experience with three republics and many monarchies there is still a party, noisy and influential if not very numerous, that has been demanding a king ever since the Third Republic began. It is a paradox. And no less paradoxical is the fact that the firebrand who leads them is Léon Daudet the son of the gentle and whimsical novelist, Alphonse Daudet, the one French author who comes closest to the Dickens touch and style.

have always been Royalists

have been a Third Republic at all if the Royalists in the convention which set it up could have agreed among themselves. But while they were trying to choose between the Bourbon royal line, the Orléans royal line, and the Bonapartes, the Republic was established. Time has somewhat simplified matters. The Bourbon line ended in 1883. Prince Victor Napoleon, the heir to Napoleon's throne, was once described by a cruel wit as 'the eaglet whose whole life is spent in moulting.' No one has ever expected him to ascend a throne of any kind. All the enthusiasts who want a king, therefore, have concentrated their enthusiasm have concentrated their enthusiasm upon the House of Orléans.

Until his death, two years ago, their candidate was the Duc d'Orléans - or, as Daudet, Maurras, and their followers preferred to call him, Philippe VIII the great-grandson of King Louis Phil

NOW it is possible to disagree with ippe. Banished from France as a boy,

the French Royalists for an American it is pretty nearly impossible to do anything else. But it is equally impossible not to admire their beautiful frankness; for the Royalists are not in the least backward in avowing their objects and the means whereby they propose to attain them.

'We don't want to upset the Republic,' observes Daudet's sworn ally, Charles Maurras, tranquilly. 'We want to cut its throat.' And again: 'We are not a political party. We are a conspiracy.'

because of his claim to the throne, he spent his life in exile from the country that his ancestors had ruled; and even when, at the age of twenty-one, he offered himself as a soldier in the French army, he was clapped unsentimentally into prison by a severely practical French Government, which was taking no chances on coups d'élat. When he died, a childless exile in Sicily, his claims passed to his brother, Jean d'Orléans, better known as the Duc de Guise, who

if he should ever ascend his wholly theoretical throne - would presumably rule as Jean III.

as possible, and they believed in the rule of a strong man. They set up a little weekly paper, L'Action Française, which, like Vaugeois and his colleagues, drifted slowly into avowed Royalism. Léon Daudet was not yet of this little band.

temper and boxed the ears of the War

Then, in 1904, M. Syveton lost his

Minister. Now in affairs of state there is certainly something fatal about ears. Several centuries ago some indiscreet Spaniards cut off the ear of one Jenkins, a British sea captain who turned up in Parliament a little later carrying his ear, neatly pickled, in a box- and thereby brought on war with England. Then there is that legendary Spanish officer who is said to have boxed the ears of the Moroccan chieftain, Abd-el-Krim, provoking that fiery tribesman to revolt in 1921. But worst of all was the deplorable lack of self-control displayed by M. Syveton, who, in the Chamber of Deputies, on the fourth of November, 1904, assailed General André, the Minister of War. For this single boxing of the ministerial ears led to the murder (or suicide) of M. Syveton himself, and to an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the Republic, which led to the downfall of the Ligue de la Patrie Française, which last event finally convinced M. Léon Daudet that it was necessary to do away with the republican form of government.'

In this endeavor he has been wholeheartedly engaged ever since to the no little disturbance of all France. If M. Syveton had withheld his blows from the ears of General André on that fatal day, that erring soldier would have retained his dignity; Léon Daudet might not have been convinced that monarchy was needful; French politics of the last twenty years would have been vastly less lively; le Roi would have even less chance of ascending the throne than he now enjoys; and contemporary French letters would lack some racy pages, seasoned with a wicked French wit, and splashed with a venom which is wholly delightful to all save the victim.

M. And thave a

DAUDET wants a king. He in

⚫ tends to have a king. He has been vehemently demanding one for years and years and years; and, all the while, that