From All the Earth
The New Republic suggests that all may not be well with the Ford industry. " No one else can yet sell a car quite so cheaply as Ford. But others can sell as good a car so close to his price that the motor world is agog to see what he will do next." * * * Bird Notes (now enlarged to twenty-fmir pages) has an interesting article on " Birds as Colliery Workers " : apparently Redpoles are more active and sensitive to the effects of gas than cage-bred canaries. Mr. Redfern states that rescue men sometimes administer oxygen or apply artificial respiration to birds in a state of collapse, and adds, " I trust that before long there will be invented a proper hand instrument, so that there may be an end to the use of birds, even on errands of mercy, into the bowels of the earth." * * * In four hundred cities of the United States a city manager has been appointed in place of municipal councils, says Public Administration for October. * * * The Mask, edited from Florence, and chiefly concerned with things theatrical, always has some- thing interesting. Some years ago, we read, when the population of Milan was half a million, it was determined by accurate enquiry that there were 3,000 people who were lovers of art and the theatre in that city, and that they would contribute nearly £250,000 per annum for their enter- tainment. At this rate London should be able to spend £5,000,000 on its theatres. * * * The Design and Industries Association (6 Queen Street, W.C. 1) sends us a pamphlet reprinted from articles in the Manchester Guardian Weekly about modern design in industry and public utilities. It is certainly a confession of artistic stupidity that the modem liner has to build dummy funnels because " the public, so we are told, thinks of power in terms of funnels." There are two excellent photographs of a shop window; one showing old so-called " ornamental " lettering and numbering, and the other, the same window designed according to modern standards, legible, simple and perfectly adapted to its purpose—therefore artistic. * * * The Navy for October has an article on a projected new type of cruiser called a Centaur-ship which is half cruiser, half aeroplane- carrier. * * Mr. Talbot, in the British-Russia Gazette, says that " Aroos, the Centrosojus, the Moscow Narodny Bank, the All-Union Textile Syndicate, and the Kozsyndicat (Leather Syndicate) are each a veritable hive of industry. I am quite sure that the managing directors of some of our own banks and great trading and industrial companies would be astonished if they could see for themselves how really excellent the methods and systems of work are in these great Russian organizations on the spot in Russia." If the Soviet Union is becoming so prosperous it seems a pity it does not pay its debts. * * * Mr. Alfred Pemberton tells us in his Magazine that he was recently " one among almost a half- Million people who gathered along the streets of Philadelphia to watch a magnificent night parade in honour of a convention of advertising men. From a window on Broad Street I could see.at least fifty thousand. Not a beggar, not a drunk, not a mountebank in the lot." * * * A very profound magazine, the Philosophical Quarterly, has recently been started by a group of Indians in Calcutta. The subjects treated include " The Background of Upanishadic Philosophy ". and " The Monistic Spell in Philosophy and Religion." In the plains of the Ganges live some of the deepest abstract thinkers in the world, and this quarterly is worthy of the attention, not of dilettantes, but of serious students of philo. soppy in tEiWest. * * * Life is always a staunch upholder of 'Anglo-American friendship, and the followine is worthy of note : " Reappraisal is likely to be made in due time of the debt _which troubles England now, and if we are in, as Some people think, for great world. crises -in the course of the nest twelve veins," Great Britain and the United States, out of their community of aims and ideals, are likely to be drawn to a closer co-operation than ever before."
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