The Atlantic Monthly

Boston can again be proud of its mouth-piece and intellectual field-marshal. The present issue is a strong one and ably pricks three contemporary American bubbles; Truth in Advertising (by Don Knowlton), Huey Long (by Frank R. Kent), Radio City (by M. R. Werner); and it tramples on two that have already undergone quick deflation, notably in "The Veteran Racket" by Lawrence Sullivan and "From Insull to Injury, a Study in Financial Jugglery" by N. R. Danelian. There are also the confessions of Edith Wharton.

In "Our Political Monstrosities" Mr. Kent traces, with extraordinary insight and no mincing of words, the measures by which "cheap and shoddy fellows" viz. Huey Long, achieve real political power in a great state; how they work their publicity, and what can be done to stop them. The triple-screw steamturbined kingfish is shown up by a Voltaire come for judging. It is all "stagestuff," one knows already, but this article shows how it is staged and how received. The thick-skinned Longs and "Big Bill" Thompson are not able to differentiate between the kind of publicity they want when running in the primaries, and when in the Senate or the Mayor's office. They spend their time, as does an appreciable percentage of our legislators, in concocting frontpage publicity, for their state papers if they are "small-shots," and for nationwide publicity blankets if they are Hucy Longs. And the literate morons lap it up, the intelligent must suffer. But in the end they stop themselves. "Like Hoflin, they become obsessed with their own drivel, they take themselves seriously, grow dull and tiresome." Or else they overplay their hands, poisoning themselves with their own publicity. It is possible that this is already happening to Huey Long. If this article demonstrates no other sad truths, it shows, with Machiavellian clearness, that Huey is no hard-working rough diamond, but rather a physical embodiment of the law of cunning and the law of force.

Mr. Werner, who has done some fine work for the Hound and Horn now takes over the rather easy duty of a thinking man, that of showing up Radio City. This is probably the last word that need be said on this thing, the Radio City, "conceived in the lush days. . . the posthumous child of Coolidge Prosperity". It is a strong one, and wastes no time salaaming to that super-dreamer, Mr. Rothapfel. The cool reception of Roxy's first programs may have disillusioned John D. Rockefeller as to the merits of his distribution of "God's Gold"; the Art spread thick all around may have bothered President Butler at certain times; but it will not bother New Yorkers, for it is a quite unnecessary building, as there was "already a superfluity of real estate in New York, and a paucity of art," and there is still a chance that true Art and the Metropolitan Opera will yet come into their own. When the owls hoot and call in the top stories of the Rockefeller Center in the years to come, New York may give birth to a quieter and more shapely baby.

Scribners

The leading article in this month's Scribners, "America's Real Job," by James Truslow Adams, will be automatically damned in the eyes of many by its title. It is undeniably another of those "popular" explanations of the depression; but it attacks the problem in considerably more adequate a manner than most of its predecessors. The point of view is far from radical; however, it is not stagnant and reactionary, but constructively conservative. The ideas are often the modern parallel of those in Burke's "Letter on the French Revolution," and as such constitute an intellectual pure decidedly needed by some of the Economic theorizers of the day.

With a volte face almost breathtaking in its completeness, Mr. Adam's contribution is succeeded by a short story from the ubiquitous pen of Earnest Hemingway entitled "Homage to Switzernot obtrusively so, and is refreshingly brutal. While actually containing nothing but a few sentences of conversation, loosely connected, the tale is singularly incisive and clear cut in the total effect. It comes in welcome contrast to the usual run of magazine effusions.

Dr. William Lyon Phelps concludes the issue with an interesting review of "Ann Vickers." Space precludes much comment; one quoted sentence will suffice: ". . . as Sinclair Lewis is so constituted that he must attack what seem to him oppressors or hypocrites or respectable solemnities, this is a book with a purpose."