Here, sighed the Vagabond to himself, if surely a small bit of France transplanted to American soil. He gazed about him wonderingly. He had just emerged from the auditorium of the Geographical Institute where a militaristic French movie and a super-patriotic news reel--both entertaining after a fashion--had been shown. Through the doors poured dual streams of middle-aged Cambridge matrons, Mutt-and--Jeff pairs of Radcliffe girls, a sprinkling of Brattle Street subdebs, some dapper, be-mustached French instructors, and a handful of Harvard men. The latter seemed like some of Thurber's male animals in a war between the sexes. In the lobby the matrons were efficiently shunted past a line of tables where the essentials for knitting woollies for les types were hawked by enthusiastic sales-ladies. Also on sale were what appeared to be blue, white, and red-striped knitting bags. On the walls were displayed innumerable French newspapers and magazines. At other tables been more matrons were plugging tickets for Les Jours Heureux, a play to be given soon by L'Alliance Frncaise. And from every corner, from each table, from almost every double-chinned throat came the meticulous machine-gun syllables of France. There was good and bad French, Parisian and Cambridge French, plus a minor torrent of Berlitz, Quebec, Linguaphone, Minneapolis, and Sornbonne French. Ah, thought Vag, just like those immortal days in Paris--he heard a particularly grating bit of Brooklynese patois and corrected himself-or rather those hours at the American Express office. Altogether, he felt sure that La Marseillaise should have been heard faintly in the background.

The French Talking Films Committee presents today at 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, and 9 o'clock in the Geographical Institute "Double Crime Sur La Ligne Maginot" and a French Movietone newsreel of "Le Quatorze Juillet."