THE EDITOR'S UNEASY CHAIR

Fashion expert

E. W. ("Red") Newsom has edited Vanity Fair's men's wear pages for the last six years. "Except that I was born in Canada." he writes, "and got my schooling at Phillips Exeter and Princeton, I have spent all my life in New York. At Princeton I was chairman of The Tiger, the university's humorous magazine, whose pages I marred with any number of cartoons. 1 believe these cartoons are the only things in my past which I really regret."

A truth for a truth

Dear Sirs: I am the author of a little unpublished volume on astrology—a poor thing, sir, but mine own, as Shakespeare has it—and it pains me to observe such a feature as your September "horoscopes" of famous filmland stars. The "horoscopes" were fairly true in a general way, but each one of them was vague to a degree. I hate inaccuracy in any form ; but it is specially hateful when it helps to degrade an ancient and honorable science like the science of astrology.

ARTHUR Smith.sox.

We definitely did not wish the "horoscopes" to be anything more than true in a general way. And, much as it pains us to criticise a correspondent, we feel obliged to point out to Mr. Smithson that accuracy begins at home. What Shakespeare really said was—"An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine OWN."-THE EDITORS.

Street seen

Dear Sirs: Allan Seager's "The street" in the September issue of Vanity Fay is one of the finest stories I have ever read and I am sure there are many others who enjoyed it as much as I did.

If the editors of Vanity Fair will favor stories of this kind, they will probably come back to life.

RODNEY DE SARRO.

Problem in entertainment

Dear Sirs: As the newly appointed chairman of the Book Club of the Women's Club of Bala-Cvnwyd, Junior Branch, I am coming to you for helpful suggestions.

As the name implies, the club is a circulating book club, consisting of about twenty-five girls who are interested in cultural things. Our treasury, which is not too stupendous, goes entirely for the purchase of new books. As a result, the entertainment at the meeting suffers badly. It is my desire to make a definite go of it this year, but I do not know of any other such club from which to get ideas. Vanity Fair was first in my mind as a possible source of originality.

The only plans that have presented themselves to me so far are the inevitable book reviews, and speakers— if interesting ones could be got without charge!

LILLIAN LITTELL.

Cynwyd, Pa.

The thought of twenty-five young ladies, feeding their minds on book reviews and their hopes on the slender chances of getting speakers without charge, made a swift appeal to our chivalry. But we have wrestled with the problem in vain. We print this letter, hoping that some reader will be inspired with suggestions for brightening a difficult situation at BalaCYNWYD.-THE EDITORS.

Out of the frying pan into der fuehrer

Dear Sirs: I opened my September Vanity Fair at an article called "Hollywood and its civilization" by Gyorgy Halasz: it struck me as being in wretched taste. Then, by some mischance, I turned back to John Gunther's "Has Hitler a mother complex ?," and that exercise in inelegant muckraking absolutely burned me up. And I thought your magazine was supposed to be an arbiter of taste!

GREGORY FISHER.

Boston, Mass.

Exodus

Dear Sirs : Reading your magazine at the Quincy Public Library I am disgusted with your article on the Legion of Decency.

This attack is unjustified and only serves to show that Vanity Fair is ignorant of the fact that the "jazz age" is old stuff, and that when jazz went out, sex went with it.

A. H. VANDEN BOOM.

Quincy, Ill.

We must confess that the large departure which Mr. Vanden Boom mentions in his second paragraph had altogether escaped our notice. But we can't believe that a year which has produced quintuplets, two royal engagements, and the Mdivanis has been entirely lacking in the tenderer emoTIONS.-THE EDITORS.

Callico debunkered

Dear Sirs: I present myself to you, a very indignant young woman. What has provoked me is Mr. Gallico's assumption—in his September article, "Golf is not really a game for ladies" —that we women find our main excuse for living in being decorative, and that only through the perversity of our natures do we go in for sports at all. Golf happens to be my favorite sport, and personally I don't give a hoot whether I waggle or not, nor how peculiar I may look bestriding a bunker and digging in the rough. I'm having a perfectly swell time, as long as I'm not bothering anyone or holding up a foursome behind me.

I suppose, however, that you will put me down as another specimen of Mr. Gallico's "the muscle moll". Well, I'm not. I like to think of myself as a cute little piece of femininity. At any rate, I do not wear mannish clothes, spend many tedious hours at the beauty shop, have a curly bob, and, need I add, a nasty disposition when sufficiently irked. So there!

A. L.

Silver Spring, Maryland.

We give IN.-THE EDITORS.

Harvard novelist

George Weller, author of the short story, "I Cannot Tell a Lie."on page 44, has been roaming Europe for the past four years. The first two he spent in study at various universities and also at Max Reinhardt's school of the theater, where he acted in several plays. At present he is, and has been for some time, the New York Times correspondent in Athens. For months he lived in the shadow of Samuel Insull, and is probably the greatest living authority on how an exiled capitalist acts on foreign shores. It is one of fate's ironies that on the day when Mr. Insull finally arrived in New York, his reportorial doppelgangcr sailed on his return to Athens after a two months' leave.

Although "I Cannot Tell a Lie" is Mr. Weller's second published story, he has written a novel—Not to Eat, Not for Love—which appeared last year. It was about Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1929, and is accepted generally as the definitive word on the subject. The notes for it were begun in Arizona, where he taught in a boys' school during his first year out of college. and the book itself was completed two and a half years later in Capri.

Bridge expert

William J. Iluske was born in Richmond, Quebec, Canada, on May 18, 1879; and educated in the public schools and at Bishop's College at Lenoxville, Quebec. He has written numerous articles on all phases of the game of bridge, and served as editor and chief writer for Ely Culbertson in his syndicated articles. Besides being one of the most widely read writers on the game, Mr. Iluske is generally recognised as one of the best contract players in America. He was editor of the Auction Bridge Magazine in 1928 and is now editor of Bridge World. His article, "The new game of Towie," which appears on page 47, precedes a book which he will soon publish on the strategy and tactics of this latest development among games of the whist family.

Hairdresser's meditations

Dear Sirs: Kindly permit me to start right in with the customary opinion that I enjoy Vanity Fair. But are we to be talked down to by George Jean Nathan indefinitely? In your September issue he cleans up the most interesting part of the universe with a barrage of slide-rule wisecracks; so couldn't you persuade him to take another vacation in Europe, where a brilliant man has every chance of recovering his sense of humour? Often the thought occurs to me, "Georgie, you'll stick like that, one of these days."

BERT KING, Hairdresser. S.S. Berengaria.

But then, "the most interesting part of the universe"—by which Mr. King presumably means Europe—could do with a little cleaning up.

-THE EDITORS.

No more boxers?

Dear Sirs : You run so much to the ring for art and articles that I always wonder if I haven't gotten the Police Gazette by mistake.

PHILIP S. BROUGHTON.

Mr. Broughton couldn't really have mistaken us for the Police Gazette, which is pink all over. And we think our artists and writers do a pretty neat job of—as it were—painting the cauliFLOWER.-THE EDITORS.