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A pre-War favorite of such light-hearted Manhattan newshawks as Frank Ward O'Malley was Jacques Lebaudy, son of a French sugar tycoon, who in 1903 hatched a scheme for irrigating the Sahara Desert, proclaimed himself "Jacques I, Emperor of the Sahara," fitted out an expedition to conquer his new province. Routed, he sailed for the U. S., established himself in Westbury, L. I., furnished copy on dull days by such stunts as uniforming and drilling an army of messenger boys and farmhands. In 1919 his "Empress" shot him dead.

Last week U. S. citizens were again reminded that not all grandiose nuts & nostrums are homegrown. Some ten years ago an engaging young Russian who had taken the name Anatole de la Marti appeared in Manhattan, attempted to interest the late Ivy Lee in publicizing certain large schemes for economic betterment which he had conceived. Meeting no success, M. de la Marti returned to Europe, was forgotten.

Last fortnight the New York Herald Tribune received from Paris copy for an extraordinary advertisement. Investigation disclosed that it had lately appeared in the Paris Herald, that the advertiser had been directed to the Herald Tribune by its Paris branch. Since the copy was accompanied by a check in full payment, the Herald Tribune proceeded to set it up. But the text was so astonishing that the Paris Herald's advertising representative in New York felt impelled to proofread it himself.

When the readers of the Herald Tribune opened their papers one day last week they found an eight-column streamer headline: END OF ECONOMIC CRISIS. Beneath it, crowding the whole page with small, close-packed type and spilling over into an extra column, was advertised a cure-all for the world's ills. At the top of one column appeared a photograph of the nostrum's author, Anatole de la Marti. After plowing through a column or two. most readers were too dazed to proceed. But the gist of M. de la Marti's plan was to establish a "World Record Service . . . for carrying out competitions in all fields of economic activity, with new and hitherto unknown stimulus, and with large cash prizes. . . . The journal or official organ will be the central supporting beam for the success of the competitions and announcements, and the financial part of the enterprise. Its circulation will be enormous. ... To facilitate the work of the World Record Service a HOUSE OF NATIONS will be founded in every country. . . . Here concise accounts will be given on conditions of welfare and economics of all peoples."

M. de la Marti closed his prospectus with a solemn protest to the League of Nations that "the Government of a Country . . . has insidiously seized the ideas and propositions contained in my plan . . . misusing them for its own selfish purposes, the consequence of which will be that all economic life in the entire world will go to ruin. . . . For that country (or countries) which is realizing my plan only for its own sake and its own egoism will despotically usurp hegemony over the entire world, and drag all humanity into servility."

Unlike Jacques Lebaudy, Anatole de la Marti is not rich. To Paris, where he is a well-known public character, his means of livelihood is a mystery. Apparently all the money which he secures from his disciples goes to buy advertisements of his plans. Last week's venture in the Herald Tribune cost him $1,900.

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