At Geneva

Six score of the biggest noses for news from all over the world gathered last week at Geneva, Switzerland.

They listened to Harry Lawson Webster Lawson, Viscount Burnham, proprietor of the London Daily Telegraph, outlining the purpose of the first international conference of press experts.

They adopted a resolution that press despatches should have precedence over private despatches on the wires of the world. Doubt was expressed as to whether this resolution could be passed in the world's legislatures.

Most important was the item of recognition of the property right of news. U. S. delegates protested against theft of exclusive news, scoops and beats, averring that the newspaper which discovers news first should have the sole right, for the day at least, to print the news. British newspapers were opposed, arguing that whatever happens is the property of the people, not a private organization.

The conference was summoned by the League of Nations. U. S. representatives were sent by the Associated Press, the United Press, the International News Service, the Scripps-Howard newspapers, etc., etc.

Taylor's Intent

When Deems Taylor resigned as music critic of the New York World to compose the first really successful U. S. opera, The King's Henchman, he lifted his keen, stocky self from a platform of newspaper authority to a pinnacle of international fame. Ordinarily, the fortunates who are able to take such a stride, seldom retrace their steps. But, according to Mr. Taylor, "newspaper work is like drink. The only way for some to quit is to have left it alone in the first place." So he accepted the position of editor of Musical America, and introduced his regime last week with a declaration of intentions. In them may be traced the influences of a career that included free-lance writing, editorship of the Western Electric News; War correspondence "on space" (the New York Herald Tribune), punching player piano rolls in a New Jersey factory, music critic of the World.

The declarations:

1) To be entertaining and understandable from cover to cover. ("We cannot promise you George Bernard Shaw every week but we do promise you a group of contributors who have mastered not only music but the English language and an editorial staff that knows how to make a magazine look interesting as well as be it.' )

2) To be incorruptible in reading matter and trustworthy in advertising. ("If we run this paper solely for the benefit of our advertisers, we lose our readers.")

3) To be accurate in the presentation of facts and unbiased and authoritative in the expression of opinion. ("What might be called 'the authority of print' is not only a privilege but a heavy responsibility.")

4) To be fearless and uncompromising without being intolerant. ("[It] will attack sham and dishonesty where they appear; but it will try to remember that people are generally what circumstances make them and that it is more useful to attack conditions than men.")

5) To be patriotic without being provincial. ("This is potentially the greatest music-loving country on earth. . . . Europe can still teach us much. ... So far as government interest in music is concerned, ours is not even civilized judged by European standards.")

6) To be hospitable to all honest criticism, favorable or adverse. ("We would far prefer to have 10,000 subscribers writing in every week to abuse us heartily than to have 10,000 subscribers saying nothing and dropping their subscriptions.")

Broun's Progress

New Masses. Heywood Broun, colyumist-at-large, last week wrote an article on the Sacco-Vanzetti case for New Masses, radical monthly published in Manhattan. New Masses, counting on the large Broun following reading the New York World, from which Mr. Broun recently retired because that newspaper refused to print two of his articles on the same case, submitted to the World an advertisement. The World wrote to New Masses: "We decline to publish [the advertisement] because the advertisement is misleading in its implication that the New Masses is publishing an article written by Mr. Broun and rejected by the World."

Nation. Colyumist Broun has contracted to write for the liberal Nation a weekly article entitled "It Seems to Heywood Broun," in which the colyumist will have untrammeled rights of expression.

Magazine Changes

Youth's Companion. That portion of the population sometimes insultingly termed "kiddies" has a new toy. It is a familiar toy, enlarged and repainted. The Youth's Companion, famed youth's companion, appears this month monthly. It is larger--more pictures, more stories, more advertising. The editor reports no change of policy, purpose or ideals, these having remained the same since the paper was founded by Nathaniel P. Willis. Mr. Willis then stated: "This is a day of particular care for youth. Our children are and characters are prepared for the scenes and duties of a brighter day." With these destinies and preparations in mind, the Youth's Companion has purveyed to the nation's youth dog stories, hero stories, contests, jokes, editorials, educational stories, travel features, selected advertisements in weekly form for exactly 100 years.

Bookman. Formerly owned by George H. Doran's publishing firm, the Bookman was what is known in the trade as a house organ. It was recently purchased by private capital for Burton Rascoe, editor. The new magazine has a gay cafe au lait cover. Inspection of its con- tents, leads critics to suspect that (like Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, etc.) the Bookman is feeling the sharp spur of the American Mercury in the sluggish sides of thoughtful periodical publishing in the U. S. Among the articles is one by John Farrar, whose editorship (starting in 1921) brought the Bookman from a position of dignified obscurity among publications to a place of literary desirability.

The North American Review, born 1815, and thus the oldest magazine in the U. S., will (with the October issue) become a monthly instead of a quarterly. It will remain an "article" magazine dealing with current events. More sprightliness, timeliness, is promised.

It has been

Bimonthly May, 1815--July, 1918

Quarterly Sept., 1818--Oct., 1876

Bimonthly Jan., 1877--Nov., 1878

Monthly Jan., 1879--July, 1924

Quarterly Sept., 1924--June, 1927

Reflex has been published this summer. It is a monthly, not unlike the American Mercury. It is "essentially interested in a new busy, creative Jewish life."

McClure's will take on new life. A successful editor of Adventure (Arthur Sullivant Hoffman) has been hired, and promises a high quality of entertainment with emphasis on youth, the great outdoors, the picturesque.

Plain Talk. In October will appear Plain Talk, under the editorship of G. D. Eaton. Mr. Eaton wrote a novel, Backfurrow; and edited the literary phases of the New York Morning Telegraph. He is the kind of person who disagrees and expects to be disagreed with. Among the contributors to the first number will be Clarence Darrow, Will Durant, Emil Ludwig.

Police Stories has disappeared. Richard E. Enright, onetime New York Police Commissioner, headed its inauguration in 1924. Bankrupt, it owes $82,209; has assets of $13,195. Mr. Enright is the heaviest creditor, $20,268.

Death of Strachey

Death came last week in London to John St. Loe Strachey, 67, onetime editor and proprietor of the Spectator, 30 years a foremost British journalist.

Scion of a famed Elizabethan family, like the Cecils, Mr. Strachey was, to use an old English expression, "to the manner born." He was, in other words, a living symbolism of the courtliness, gallantry, selflessness inherent in the term "gentleman." Descendant of a long line of statesmen, empire builders, scholars, he was the embodiment of good breeding.

Born in 1860, son of Sir Edward Strachey of Sutton Court, Somerset, he was educated by private tutors until he entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he had great difficulty in mastering enough Latin and Greek to graduate. After Oxford he studied law at the Inns of Court, London, and, developing a passion for English literature, he wrote for the Saturday Review, the Standard Economist, other periodicals, eventually, through his father's influence, securing a position on the Spectator, for which he reviewed books until Lord Oxford and Asquith (then Herbert Henry Asquith) relinquished the editorship. In 1897 he himself became editor and proprietor, a position that he resigned in 1625.

Books he wrote include: From Grave to Gay, The Manufacture of Paupers, Problems and Perils of Socialism, The Practical Wisdom of the Bible.

Sheep, Brisbane

In Kansas two fierce woolly dogs killed 100 sheep, injured 200 other sheep, causing a farmer a loss of $2,500.

Wrote Arthur Brisbane, Hearst savant: "There is intelligence lacking in a country that has more dogs than sheep, when the dogs are useless, and the sheep keep down weeds, feed and clothe millions. This is a beautiful country."

Graphic Description

The day after the Sacco-Vanzetti execution the Evening Graphic, gum-chewers' sheetlet published in Manhattan by Bernarr Macfadden, blazed on the newsstands with a huge headline:

SACCO AND VANZETTI ROASTED ALIVE

Delving within, palpitating readers found the story of the execution by one Jack Grey, Graphic reporter.

"Come into this death house with me," began Mr. Grey. Lurid details followed. Among them: "Elliott, the official killer, stood to the right of him with a fiendish grin on his face. ... He leaped, literally leaped, to the switchboard. . . . The switch went in. ... Sacco's hands . . . doubled into a knot. The veins in his long, thin, white hands began to rise and kept on rising until I thought they would burst and drench all of us with blood. . . . Sacco's neck was swelling to a huge inhuman size. . . . The saliva was literally pouring out of his mouth. . . . Try to compare 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit* [the temperature of the death shock] with 100 degrees in the shade when you complain of the heat and you get some idea how cultured and conservative Massachusetts roasts her murderers alive. . . . And how these Bostonians get a dead man out of the chair! . . . Elliott . . . started to put on the electrode and now I observed that Vanzetti was getting nervous. . . . There was a sickening stench of scorched flesh in the abattoir. Vanzetti's neck was slowly but surely turning to a blood red and the jugular veins were doubling up in knots. . . ."

A decidedly graphic description. Gullible readers devoured it. Careful readers laughed, for it was a fact, published in newspapers throughout the land, that W. E. Playfair of the Associated Press was the only newspaperman permitted in the death house to view the execution.

Queried in Manhattan, a man who said he was Jack Grey of the Graphic insisted that he had been in the death house. He said Boston was his home town and that he "had influence" there. He refused to tell how he got into the death house; or to tell where he stood. He refused to give any factual information at all or to be photographed. The city editor of the Graphic said that Mr. Grey had told him he was in the death house, and that he had had to accept his word. . . .

* False. A death shock consists of 1,500 to 2,000 volts of electricity. The resistance of the prisoner's body would not produce 1,000 degrees of heat unless the current were continued for about four and one-half minutes. Because of its high voltage, the death shock does not have to be and is not protracted beyond one and one-half minutes. No great heat is generated in the victim's body in that time.--ED.