THE EDITOR'S UNEASY CHAIR

Migrant

James Francis Dwyer, the man in mufti who wrote about Bidon Cinq, in the Sahara, for page 24 of this issue, was born in New South Wales, Australia, sixty-one years ago. In his 'twenties, he combed the farthest reaches of his native archipelago, as well as the palm-green shores of the South Seas, as a newspaper correspondent. But very soon, the lure of London took hold of colonial Dwyer, and he went to England in 1906. America followed, and since then he has familiarized himself with France, Spain, Egypt, India,—and the heart of Africa, last winter. All of this world-girdling he has recorded faithfully, as the author of eight novels and as a magazine contributor—in the United States, to Collier's, The Ladies' Home Journal and now, VANITY FAIR.

Press-agentry

DEAR SIR :

. . . Let me give you one grand tip. . . . Why, in your snappy magazine, do you continue to ignore the glorious metropolis of San Francisco ? You are missing great opportunities for interesting and beautiful photographic features—of things I'm sure the rest of the world would love to know about. Come on out sometime and I'll show you around.

. . . VANITY FAIR is a boon for chucklers.

Sincerely,

SALLY BROCKIIOFF. San Francisco, Calif.

This is a curious document— this letter of Miss Brockhoffs—, because ordinarily there isn't anything about California the world doesn't know. Much less San Francisco. Granted, VANITY FAIR is a barbarian project; but even tec know all about Golden Gate Park, Twin Peaks, the Bohemian Club, the Spreckels and the Crockers. Also, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which looked pretty glorious across two pages in our last issue. — THE EDS.

Nationalism

DEAR SIR:

. . . Your June cover—Pax tightrope-walking above a menacing array of bayonets—made me wonder. As long as the artist was using flags, to identify the bayonets with the various arms-conscious nations, why didn't he remember the U. S. A.? Or did VANITY FAIR decide that if an American flag were flown from one of the bayonet points, it would shatter someone's dream ?

Very truly yours,

LAMSON BI.ANEY.

Cambridge, Mass.

Note.—Certainly, the Stars and Stripes belonged with the rest, and we thank Mr. Blaney for spotting the oversight. He is. we believe, a sensible critic, not at all like a Mrs. C. J. Lowe of Seattle, Wash., who flew at us on account of another flag-matter. Mrs. Lowe is an Anglophobe and she despised our May issue because it contained the word Romney.

Toujours la qualité

... Is the motto of Roger Schall, the French photographer whose spritely and candid camera-shot of showgirl Beryl Wallace decorates page 19 of this issue. Schall and the Normandie maiden-voyaged together in June, and after two weeks' snapshooting in New York, he returned to Paris on the Champlain.

Schall was born at Nancy in 1904 but moved on to Paris seven years later where he has lived ever since. He studied architecture and industrial designing, and in 1925, after a colonial unrest-period in Syria, was decorated for bravery in the French Air Corps.

Although practically born in the dark room—his father was a photographer and his brother is an expert photographic printer—it wasn't until 1929 that Schall took up photography himself. Yet today his candid news-shots appear regularly in L'Illustration, Le Figaro Illustré, Vu, Voilà, the three Cogues, and VANITY FAIR; they are praised for their unusual lights and shades, and for the trick of faultless composition, which Schall credits to his early training in design.

During the Normandie crossing, Monsieur Schall took six hundred pictures—lots from the crow's-nest, and several while the Bishop was saying Mass. "You can't take pictures here," an attendant remonstrated, as the flash-bulb punctuated the cleric's good words. But Schall had, and said so. 11 is nerve never forsakes him, and, if necessary, he will climb into a wine glass, for a better view of the hostess.

Schall stayed in this country just long enough to find our climate more invigorating than the French one. lie preferred Harlem to the Rainbow Room ; and without knowing a word of English, he crossed and recrossed Manhattan in the subway for one entire morning, unguided and making six transfers.

Check-up

DEAR SIR :

Perhaps you don't admire statistics.

I don't myself—very much. But when 1 see my own fair city so maligned in print, I'm obliged to speak up.

In VANITY FAIR, for May, Arthur Poring Bruce says, in his article on Washington: "The colored people compose a majority of the population of Washington and they are everywhere." Perhaps that's the way it looks to Mr. Bruce, but the U. S. census for 1930 saw it differently. Its figures are :

Total Population 486,869

Negro Population . 132,068

Which means that the Negro population is about 27% of the total,— and that is not a majority !

Sincerely yours,

MARJORIE SFARTEI.. University, Virginia.

ED. Tremor.—We are all stripes around here, after Miss Spartel's statistical lashing. There is only one thing. Before we go and say something careless about her other town — University, Va.—perhaps Miss Spartel will tell us how many bricks Mr. Jefferson used building that serpentine wall in back of the campus dormitories, or why he built it at all. She must know.

Fifty-alarm

Questionnaire

The Permanent Literary Questionnaire, on pages 36 and '7 of this issue, follows on the cleated heels of Mr. Samuel Chew's Ultimate Horror in Questionnaires, which we published eight years ago. People have gone quietly bald answering Mr. Chew's questions, and they will mull until the crack of doom over this new set of unanswerables. A score of 10U will be considered "passing"; 20%, "remarkable"; anything above that, "undesirably well-read."

Da, da, Deyneka

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Deyneka, Professor at the Academy of Art in Moscow, is the outstanding Russian painter of post-Romanoff times. As show n on pages 28 and 29 of this issue, he paints two things: the liveability of Russia, these days, and the heartiness of its people. A year ago,

a canvas of Comrade Deyneka's was honorably mentioned at the Carnegie International Exhibition, and last winter, he came to Carnegieland in person. His frequent calls upon VANITY FAIR were a source of vast scholastic gain among the editors, who now say doswidanya as unconcernedly as it it were an revoir, a rivederei, or auf wiedersehen ! (Da, by the way, means "yes" in Russian.) While Deyneka travelled in this country his talent did double-duty ;—whenever he had trouble being understood, he drew what lie meant.

The report card

This month, Noel Coward and Will Rogers interview each other impossibly on page 32, and. in this connection, the latest Coward yarn comes to mind. In London, it is told, a well-known peer recently established a better-known actress in his home. The arrangement was expected never to lose its informal character ; but, just the same, the lady became very hoity-toity and began formally cutting her old friends. When Coward's turn came, lie promptly parried the snub.

"Look here!" he said, "you can't cut me, just because you're a duchess in your own wrong."

(EDITORIAL Memo.—This story was probably first told about Oscar Wilde, or Dorothy Parker.)