Bayreuth

NCE again for a few short weeks the little old Franconian town of Bayreuth is the Mecca of all those that prefer to take their Wagner straight. Once again one may hear, at intervals during the afternoon and evening, those trumpet calls blown from the balcony of the FestivalTheatre on the hill announcing the beginning of the opera or the different

acts.

For many years rumors had persisted to the effect that the performances at the Wagner Festspielhaus were steadily falling away from the high standard set by the mighty Richard. Vari

ous reasons were as

signed, the fact that the singers were inferior, owing to the inability of the management to keep pace with the huge salaries paid great singers elsewhere, and the idiosyncrasies of the ageing Frau Cosima who insisted in supervising, not always wisely, the productions of the various works of her dead husband.

However, whatever may have been the case before the war, the Wagner festival performances at Bayreuth now seem to have taken on new life. Never having had the opportunity in former days to attend any of the performances here, it is impossible for us to make any comparisons between the representations then and those of the present day. Nevertheless, in the matter of all-round excellence it would seem a matter of sheer impossibility to excel such performances as are now being given of "Parsifal" and "Tristan und Isolde."

For any one attending a Bayreuth festival for the first time, a more fitting introduction could scarcely be imagined than "Parsifal." For SO many years the half-mystery surrounding this work, owing to the fact of its not being allowed on any other stage, set it apart from all other operatic works. When finally it was pirated by Heinrich Conried and produced at the

By EUGENE BONNER

Metropolitan Opera House in New York, everybody who had been unable to make the pilgrimage to Bayreuth rushed to hear it and promptly proceeded like nice, obedient sheep to bow down low-far lower, to tell the truth, than there was any necessity of doing. The fact however remains, and that

RICHARD WAGNER FESTSPIELHAUS BAYREUTH

indisputably, that "Parsifal" in its native shrine at Bayreuth is entirely a different affair from the same work elsewhere.

The atmosphere of this absolutely unique theatre and audience puts one in, I wouldn't exactly say a devotional mood, but certainly in a much more serious attitude towards the work than is the case ordinarily. Then (how Wagner knew his theatre) the really mysterious and beautiful effect of that invisible orchestra! Surely nothing could be more impressive than those first notes of the Prelude floating out into the darkened hall from their

unseen source.

In the matter of stage presentation and management, the "Parsifal" as presented here this year is far ahead of any production we've seen so far in any other opera house. Of course the moving panorama is kept, but it was done without hitch. a The Grail Temple is much in the old style, but the enchanted garden, with its monstrous, semi-transparent flowers, really seemed

magical and unreal, while the transformation scene was beautifully done.

some

Gotthelf Pistor was a sympathetic and handsome Parsifal, revealing a voice more than ordinarily good, while Frida Leider, while making a what motherly Kundry, sang with a glorious outpouring of tone in the second act. Ludwig Hofmann as Gurnemanz, Theodor Scheidl as Amfortas and Lois Odo Böck as Klingsor, satisfactory in every respect, completed the cast of principals. The work was conducted by one almost too well known to Americans in gen eral-Dr. Karl Muck.

The performance of "Tristan" the following day was one of those rare occasions when the entire company, singers, orchestra, and conductor seemed to join forces to give of the best that was in them. On such occasions the imperfections that exist simply should be ignored. From the point of detailed criticism they can be noted if necessary, but they don't in the least matter.

Nanny Larsen-Todsen was the Isolde. This fine artist gave a touching and vocally superb performance, though it was with regret that we noted that she had discarded her red wig and emerald-green robe of her Metropolitan days for the much more conservative outfit of a blond wig and a white robe with a yellow mantle.

Tristan was done by Gunnar Graarud, heard a few weeks ago as Menelaus on the occasion of the Vienna première of "Die Ägyptische Helena." His Tristan was a very beautiful impersonation, while vocally he is one of the best artists Germany has produced in many moons.

It was, they say, an occasion never to be forgotten by any of those who took part. It was almost as if Wagner himself had a premonition that this was the last time he would ever hear his opera. Six months later he was dead.

A

MERICAN lawn tennis as personified in its governing body, the executive committee, at last came to grips with William T. Tilden, 2nd, in earnest, and after a long debate that lasted into the small hours of the morning, plucked him from the list of players sanctioned to enter tournaments held under the aegis of the Association, which, of course, means all amateur tennis. It was a decision the consequences of which are difficult to foresee, but to the man up a tree there would seem to be consequences of moment. What Tilden himself will do, whether he will retire, reviving his theatrical work as a permanent occupation, or whether he will permanently join the ranks of the critics no one knows but Tilden himself. He has said that he would apply for reinstatement at the next regular meeting of the committee, but to the same man up the same tree this looks like a futile proceeding. It has taken time enough for the Association to get up the courage to throw Tilden out, and that decision once having been made it seems extremely doubtful that there will be any revision. Tilden has said that he will not turn professional. He is too shrewd to become entangled with C. C. Pyle, it seems, and he apparently is not taking on the burden of building up professional tennis through any other organization.

Had Tilden been willing to appear before the committee in his own behalf there undoubtedly would have been some fireworks, but he chose to go to Longwood there to continue his writing. Leaving behind him, in letter form, his own interpretation of the player-writer rule, he failed to make good his implied promise to open up the whole question of amateurism in the tennis ranksfailed to suggest that it might be unhealthy for tournament committees to present an outstanding star with the latest make of automobile, failed to suggest that tennis expense accounts must be quite a factor when men are able to leave their business for something like eight months in the year. It had been expected for some time that he would do that very thing, for the history of Tilden's career on and off the courts has given him something of

By HERBERT REED

(Right Wing)

a reputation as a fighter. Undoubtedly Tilden knows as much as any man about certain abuses that have grown up around a game so jealously guarded for so many years by the powers that be, and that was unmistakably getting out of hand.

I do not think that Tilden can any more avoid playing tennis than he can avoid writing about it. It is certain that he will not give up writing about it, and as a matter of fact, I doubt if he ever intended to. Just how he will go about playing the game is a problem that can be solved only by himself, and so far he has been silent on that subject, and probably will be until the next meeting of the committee that has barred him. It seems rather a shame to lose for tennis his great ability in coaching some of the up and coming younger flight of players and it is to be hoped that some way can be found to keep his contact with the whether he ranks as a professional or as a man in that misty mid-region between what the Association calls an amateur and what Tilden himself calls an amateur. He has done quite too

Underwood

HOLCOMBE WARD

much for the game to be thrown away like a worn out glove.

His disbarment, even though he has not made the expected charges against other players, opens up the whole question of gate receipts. It is hardly to be argued, I think, that the public both here and abroad, has not been just a little spoiled by the great number of tournaments in which stars are

advertised to appear. It so happens that Tilden has been the biggest drawing card of the lot. It was unmistakably so when he appeared at Auteuil, and it is unmistakably so whenever he has appeared in this country. And just at the moment there is no one in sight to take his place as a circus attraction. Maurice McLaughlin was a great attraction in his time, probably the greatest prior to the advent of Tilden. "Maury" was red haired, and "Maury" was freckled. He had a pleasant smile, and terrific speed--the first of the lot to send over his second service as fast as the first. It was downright audacious tennis. And Tilden's is also down-.

right audacious tennis. game,

That is the

sort of play that fills the stands, whether at Auteuil, Forest Hills, or Wimbledon. It would seem, then, that outside of the established tournaments, other events put on in the interest of stellar play would languish for at least another year, and until such time as Junior Cohen, Doeg, or some other of the youngsters develops enough "color" to draw people who are more interested in salient personalities than they are in the game itself.

Perhaps, after all, that might not be such a bad thing for the game. Perhaps it would be a good thing to place a little more emphasis on the championship than on the champion. Perhaps the time has come when the champion should be a man who cannot spend quite so much time at the game. This was true of the old champions. Here were men who were engaged in business in which publicity cut no great figure. It is true that tennis men even of the long ago threw business into each other's laps, which was natural enough. But most of these men would have gotten along rather handsomely without any connection at all with sport More than one man has given up tournament

golf simply because he had to neglect the game or his own means of livelihood. And a few have given up tournament tennis for the same reason.

Dr. Sumner Hardy it was who brought the quarrel between Tilden and the powers that be to a head, and yet Dr. Hardy has done perhaps more than any other man to bring out the young stars of the Pacific Coast. More than once he has weaned a youngster away from baseball and turned him loose on the public courts in Golden Gate Park. Mr. Garland has helped mightily in the same way, and there are other men who have brought out boys in their knee-trouser stage, and started them on the road to expert tennis play. Richards was to some extent self-taught, but undoubtedly learned quite a bit from Tilden and was undoubtedly headed for the national tennis supremacy when he listened to the advances of Pyle. If, now and then, the pupil became just a little too prominent their sponsors are hardly to be blamed. The whole pity of it is that the decision should have come at such a time, applied to a player who was leading the American Davis Cup team in a foreign land. That is a blemish on the Association that will take some time to wear off.

Second thoughts are long, long thoughts, and one of these thoughts put forward by men who love the game is that the Association, having quite frankly allowed Tilden to play in France because of the gate receipts, might have postponed the ban and allowed Tilden to play out his year. It is too late for that now, of course, but had such a decision been made there is no doubt that the committee would have gained somewhat in dignity. It is hardly a pleasant spectacle to find a United States ambassador compelled to step into a situation that was past control of its governing body.

Tennis, therefore, it seems, is apt to have at least a temporary revision downward. The suggestion has been made that one simple rule would put an end to more or less indefinite touringsimply that the players pay their own expenses as do the amateur golfers. Bobby Jones plays far less tournament golf than does Tilden tennis, even aside from the preparation and early rounds for the Davis Cup. It is suggested, too, that this rule be not applied to expeditions in quest of the cup, but that it cover all tournaments not of an international nature. I think this sug

gestion will be carefully considered by the executive committee of the Association. And in the meantime the player-writer rule, the cause of all the trouble, still stands.

The whole affair has made an unpleasant impression just at a time when inroads into the amateur ranks from other sources than professional baseball, seemed to have come to an end. Of course the trainer at college is generally a scout for some one of the big league teams, but since professional football has not been a howling success, there has been less of a problem confronting the average athletic director.

AT

T least one lesson of the Olympics apparently has been learned. According to semi-official announcement there will never been another trip on a floating hotel, with ship's discip.ine over the athletes. Quite frankly the English system of individual responsibility for preparation and condition is to be followed. The English runners lived in Holland as simple tourists, and, although they had a manager, that manager, the capable Harold Abrahams, was more guide, counselor and friend than he was a manager. In the American sense he neither manager was coach. This is an ideal that has long been sought by followers of sport in this country who have always deprecated the machine idea. The Englishmen have proved that it gets results. It is true of course that in many cases

nor

the English contestants are a little older than the American, but it is quite probable that the American boy can handle himself quite as well if allowed to be an individualist somewhat earlier in life than has been the custom. This is especially true of track and field athletics in which fast friendships, and sometimes enduring friendships are formed on the field of action. It is pleasant to have the impression confirmed by the home-coming athletes, that no matter what might have been the bickerings among the higher-ups, the men on the field not only found stiff competition but also had a good time.

TOUR modern football player keeps

YOUR

himself in condition practically all the time. It was Bob Zuppke, the caustic but quite delightful Illinois coach, used to say that the Eastern football player was given to the soft life in the Summer. That certainly has not been the case this season with the West Pointers, at any rate. Hammack, the Army's best guard, went with the Olympic team as a wrestler, Cagle, the star halfback, worked on his father's cotton plantation in Merryvale, La., Murrell, fullback, shipped to South America as an able seaman on a Munson liner, while Hutchinson, the outstanding candidate for Harry Wilson's old position at halfback, hardened up by swinging an axe in a Minnesota lumber camp. Piper, another halfback candidate, put in the off season in the Illinois corn belt, while O'Keefe of Brooklyn, another promising back, was in charge of a boy's camp. Every member of the squad indulged in some form of hard labor.

California's victory in the eightoared event at the Olympic Games carries along splendidly the tradition established by the Navy oarsmen at Brussels in 1920, and maintained by Yale in 1924 at Paris. California's victory was especially notable since from the very beginning of its season away back in the early spring Pete Donlan and the man behind him never failed to meet and beat off every challenge of the finest eights on both sides of the water. The Oakland estuary is not the best place in the world to prepare a crew, and in this respect the University of Washington has a distinct advantage, which redounds all the more to the credit of the coach, little Ky Ebright.

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LTHOUGH never anarchistic, the revered "Atlantic Monthly" has thrown more than its share of bombs into Wall Street and some of them have been stuffed with well-fused high explosives. Its publication of Professor Ripley's attack on corporation officials who concealed facts from stockholders and profited thereby, blew away a good many veils of secrecy. The explosives he set off under the promoters and bankers who revelled in the issue of non-voting stock, cured them almost entirely of the practise.

The latest issue of the "Atlantic" unlooses another bomb, the purpose of which is to drive the bullish comments of President Coolidge and Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, and their successors, out of the stock market. Ralph West Robey, in an article entitled "Capeadores in Wall Street," states fairly explicitly that Messrs. Coolidge and Mellon have rushed to the rescue with words of optimism whenever the "Coolidge Bull Market," now in its seventh year, was faltering.

But the bomb has been something of a dud. It has fizzled enough to attract a good deal of attention in financial and in political circles but it has shaken no foundations.

There are various reasons why it missed fire. The most obvious is the respect which Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Mellon enjoy. Somehow it is a little difficult for even their enemies in either the financial or the political communities to picture the President and the Secretary of the Treasury dashing out to jack up security prices. Although Mr. Coolidge has not expressed himself on the matter recently, it seems most likely that he would view even the mildest speculation with distrust. It is a practise absolutely antipathetic to his customs and standards.

To some one unfamiliar with the influences on security prices and the popular explanations for their fluctuations, Mr. Robey's case might be fairly convincing. Both the prominent gentlemen who are the heroes of his article have expressed frequent opinions as to the condition and the future of the money market and of industry. These

By THOMAS H. GAMMACK

opinions were nearly always optimistic and Mr. Robey quotes comments from leading financial pages to prove that they were published just in time to restore the confidence of speculators and start the market upward again.

The most notorious instance of what Mr. Robey calls "intervention" came in the form of an Associated Press despatch of January 5, 1928, which stated that "President Coolidge is of the opinion that the record-breaking increase in brokers' loans is not large enough to cause unfavorable comment." This followed the Stock Exchange's announcement that these loans had increased during the month of December by $341,071,018. In the opinion of a good many leading bankers this increase justified real uneasiness, not to say alarm, and the President was criticized sharply in public and more sharply in private.

His statement furnishes the strongest link in Mr. Robey's case. Brokers' loans are a measure of the volume of speculation and it is hard to believe that the President of the United States should try to answer the very difficult question as to whether or not too many citizens are buying stocks on margin. Persons close to Mr. Coolidge insist that he was only passing on opinions offered him by officials of the Treasury Department and that he was entirely unaware of the speculative inference that would be drawn from his curt statement.

The explanation of his friends is probably the correct one but, in any case, the comment probably must be set down among his blunders. His sometimes over-optimistic reviews of business conditions, on the other hand, can be defended on the grounds of sound policy. The same can be said of Mr. Mellon's giving publicly his not always correct judgments on the money

market.

It is clearly the duty of the President to report to the country on conditions as he sees them. No one else, certainly, is in a better position to understand what is going on. If he thinks industry is prospering, he should say

But, Mr. Robey would say, these expressions of opinion were always so timed as to support a tottering stock market. That may be so, but he does not present a convincing case. On several occasions, expressions of optimism obviously did not stop a decline in stock prices. On several occasions, when the market was at its worst, it received no encouragement whatsoever from Washington.

Nor is it at all certain that the words of President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon were as powerful as he believes. Financial writers may be justified in giving their views as to what put prices up or down but, if they are at all intelligent, they realize that the decisive influence is seldom clear. Imports of gold, we all realize now, were responsible for inflation during the latter half of 1927, but few realized it then. The explanations offered at the time make amusing reading today.

So much for the evidence Mr. Robey offers. It simply won't convict.

The problem which he discusses, nevertheless, is one which will always be of tremendous interest. It might be phrased this way-Should a high authority of financial matters tell? If he doesn't, he may be concealing facts. or opinions which the public should know. If he does, he influence opinion too strongly in one direction or the other. The question faces almost daily not only the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, but presidents of banks and corporations and almost every one whose opinion is taken at all seriously.

may

Any one who can help to answer these questions either generally or specifically will be a real benefactor.

OR that ever-growing class to

F%

whom the bartender is but an old crony's tale and for that ever-diminishing class to whom he is at distorted memory, I remark that, like the screech owl, he was one species but two distinct phases. One was the blackguard, scummy and foul as a cesspool. The other was the philosopher, flowing and clear as a spring.

Each of them, because of what he was, contributed more than did the strong waters he sold to making the saloon a popular club. Perverts, particularly a class of sex perverts not commonly recognized as such, who gained satisfaction by wallowing in filthy stories about women, stood at the blackguard's bar. Men who sought to escape from the actual and enter into the ideal by the door of alcoholic stimulation stood by the bar where the philosopher dispensed crude wisdom.

There was, in a section of Nashville's business district frequented by working men, a philosophical bartender. Unlettered, he was an educator. Calling himself irreligious, he exerted over at least some of his patrons a moral influence. He had a mind for discerning the truth and a tongue for speaking it. He went out of business in 1909, when State prohibition came. Since then, until yesterday, I cannot remember that I had seen him.

I sat down as near the rear of a street car as the jim-crow law would easily permit. Clear at the front, I recognized the back of the old bartender's head. (Yes, I was occasionally at his bar in quest of wisdom and other things; and a bartender, more than any other artist, is forced by the nature of his work to turn his back to the crowd.)

Not a hair had turned, so far as I could tell, in nineteen years. Taking the seat beside him, I inquired, "Don't you expect ever to get any older?"

"No," he answered, "I don't expect it, but it will come. None of you writing birds ever did know the meaning of words. Glad to see you, though. I was thinking about you t'other day. Unless my memory is crooked, you are one of the fellows who used to think that this

Bartender

By DIXON MERRITT

country could get rid of lawlessness by passing a law."

The fact is that I was not one of those fellows but I would not for the world intimate that the old gentleman --he is that was crooked in any particular. He always had a knack of making his statements in such way that they could not be contradicted. So, by silence, I entered a plea of guilty.

"Well," he went on, "the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act did not eliminate lawlessness, did they?"

"No", I agreed, "they say there is more lawlessness now than there was before."

"And they are wrong," he asserted, "as they nearly always are. There isn't any more lawlessness, and there isn't any less. Just enough to allow for a ten year change in human nature.

"The difference is that men see the lawlessness that we have today and have forgotten the lawlessness that we had yesterday. So we have a bunch of fanatics, just as sincere as your bunch was, who believe that the country can get rid of lawlessness by repealing a law. Well, it can't. Lawlessness is in the heart and if it can't find one law to violate it will find two.

"Understand me, scribbling boy, I want to see the Volstead Act modified. I want to see the Eighteenth Amendment smashed like a sherry glass dropped on a tile floor. But I don't want to see half the people of this country disappointed by the repeal of the thing, as half of them were disappointed by the passage of it. I haven't got an audience any more. But you can still speak out in meeting. And I wish you would tell 'em that they will not get rid of lawlessness by modifying the Volstead Act, which I believe they will do, or by repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, which I hope they will do.

"They say that the bootlegger will go when prohibition goes. We had the bootlegger long before prohibition and we will have him long after it. I started tending bar in eighty-eight, and I paid attention to statistics about liquor from that time on. Just about forty per cent of the cases in Federal

court during all those years were bootlegging and moonshining cases. I don't reckon that bootleggers sell much more whisky now than they always did. The quantity of whisky sold has fell off by about what the saloons used to sellnearly. Why did people buy whisky from the bootlegger then? Because he could sell it cheaper. And the outlaw, untaxed, always can sell it cheaper than the regular man under any system of regulation. That's why we'll always have the bootlegger.

"They say that we will be rid of rotten liquor when we are rid of prohibition. We always had rotten liquor for exactly the same reason that men always bought liquor from bootleggers. It was cheaper. I'll agree, that it

came out of the Government warehouse pure. But when once a saloonkeeper, or a wholesaler, got it inside his walls there was nothing to keep him from doctoring it.

"As near as I was ever able to figure it out, somewhere between fifteen and twenty per cent of the whisky that was sold over the bar was pure. The other eighty to eighty-five per cent was of different degrees of impurity, running all the way from rotgut to cut rye. The bootlegger isn't half as smart as he is given credit for being. Most of his tricks were worked out in the saloon, not so much by the bartender as by the boss in the back room.

"You say that will be regulated under the new system? Yes. And it will take an army of inspectors just about as big as the army of prohibition agents-and just about as crooked, I reckon. it will be enforced just as well.

And

The big

"But I'm talking details. point is this. The prohibition repealers are just as foolish or just as hypocritical as the prohibition promoters were when they claim that lawlessness can be got rid of by changing a law. They are using the same old argument that the prohibitionists used and which has been proved false. Tell 'em so.

"We are going to get rid of prohibition because it's wrong. And, when it is done, we will have a lot more respect for ourselves if we haven't lied to ourselves to bring it about."