All Round Europe

P: In Milan one issue of the Mussolini family newspaper, Il Popolo d' Italia, was sequestered, last week, by the Fascist censor, because it contained a "sensational" story headed:

WOUNDS HIS FIANCEE AND

KILLS SELF IN FATHER'S

PRESENCE

In Italy it is forbidden to publish sensational stories. Said the Editor of Il Popolo, Arnaldo Mussolini, brother of Benito: "We have been justly sequestered. We are the first to admit it."

Observers considered the sequestration a "plant," designed to strengthen the Censor's position when he moves to sequester other newspapers. The sensational story, it was explained, was inserted in Il Popolo by irresponsible underlings "late one night, after the editor had gone home."

P: At London famed H. Gordon Selfridge, rich U. S. proprietor of England's first and greatest department store, said, addressing London's Master Printers' Association: "I shall never be quite happy until I have a really good newspaper in London. If any one of you has a good newspaper you want to sell at a very low price, I shall be pleased to take it over or. talk the matter over with you."

P: In Bucharest, Capital of Rumania, the new Peasant-Prime Minister Juliu Maniu said: "We have abolished all censorship. We invite the Press to criticize our acts. We hope and expect that Rumanian editors will try to criticize as friends."

P: At Paris, New York Times' star European correspondent, Edwin L. James, presumably read with indignation the following critique of his despatches by Hearst Editor Brisbane:

"Mr. James writes from Europe about America and Coolidge in a way that must be applauded by all the debt-dodging nations. The New York Times that prints his writing should be paid advertising rates for 'full position, next to pure reading matter.' "

P: In London a King's Bench decision was handed down restraining the Press from subscriptions getting by what is known as a "Football Competition."

Readers have been asked to pick in advance the 24 teams which would emerge victorious from a list of 24 scheduled football games. The Court observed that the chances against success in making this guess were 282, 429, 536, 481 to one. Nonetheless several satisfied Britons have guessed right, during the past season, thus winning prizes up to -L-20,000 ($100,000).

Several winners confessed that they had hired agents buy bales of the newspapers in which competition coupons appeared, fill out the coupons in hundreds of combinations, and mail them in by the basket-full.

P: At Moscow, famed Walter Duranty, veteran New York Times correspondent, was notified, last week, by the 0. Henry Memorial Award Committee of Manhattan, that he had won their latest $500 annual prize for the best short story published in the U. S.

Messrs. Doubleday, Doran will exchange O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1928 for $2.50. Turning to page one, buyers will read:

The Parrot

By Walter Duranty

(Reprinted) From Red Book (Magazine)

The box car rattled and swayed as the train jerked slowly out of the station, but the big sergeant standing at the open door balanced himself easily in his thick felt boots.

He held Sergey McTavish by the collar of his astrakhan tunic and the seat of his breeches, kicking and wriggling like a retriever pup. Then he swung the boy up level with his shoulder and threw him sprawling on a snowdrift.

"There," he said, "you young devil, that will teach you to steal potatoes from the army and sell them to dirty food speculators. You have the red head of an imp from hell and the black heart of a capitalist. We have done with you."

So ended the six months' career of Sergey McTavish as mascot of the Seventh Battalion of Red Army Riflemen. . . .

Thenceforward the story proceeds to get Sergey McTavish into more and more trouble. Finally he rescues an American called up before a shrewd Soviet Judge who has a parrot. Each prisoner must poke his forefinger into the parrot's cage. If parrot bites finger, the sentence is Death. Smart Sergey McTavish saves the American's neck by rubbing garlic on his finger, causing parrot to cringe, not bite.