New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-09-05

his papers, caagse, crude and senaa.
tional, from Lands End to John q,
Groat's House.
Prints Murderer's Autobiography
The success of his first weekly 10
made with series of photographed
sketches written by chemist who haa
murdered his wife and three children
with slow poison. His papers having
announced the signing of peace With
the Beers the day before it comes afP,
bulmer rights the mistake the next
day with the headline. "Peace Signed.
The Daily Gazette Told You So Yes
terday. Who's First With the News
NowT' After iosing q suit fer libel,
ne Acknowledges in print "SI0o, zoo
Damages Against Balmer." lihels a
new victim in the same issue and
closes with. This may cost us $780,
600, but, by Jove! its worth it," He
picks up an artist lying starving on
the EmbankmenS and makes him in.
stantly his popular eartoenist. Phe
birth Of his child reminds him eyre
ought to have something called Our
Babies Corner"
By sheer power Of advertisement he
poisons half England with o tea made
to go further by being strengthened
with fannie acid. He announces In
black headlines the death of hia ewn
wife in . London air raid. Past and
t04&aRgA, the present 10 made accountable
to @e4ther. The moment la all that
exists for him. Taxed with his ineen-
sistenoy and weashervane shifting.
his anawer is:
"I'm the mirror Of the times, and 40
the times change the picture changes
Mirrors don't hold pictures. i.
My papers freeze life stiff for the
moment. They solidify a mood"
Net strictly possible, by the way. BY
the time life is in the press it is in
the past. But Caliban swallows Bul.
rner's frozen life as it would frozen
pudding and only acquires an increase
of appetite. Bulmer feeds 1T continual
minute shocks, like electric shoeka
from the parlor lamp, and, in uncer~
tainty OF approval or disapprovsl, ID
returns for more.
Book Holds Your Interest
Many modern novel depends for its
interest on giving that electric shock
sensations sensation not exactlv Of
pain and not exactly Of pleasure, neither
Of tragedy nor comedy in the classic
sense. Caliban is one of them, and the
interest is we'll sustained. Within the
book Janet Willoughby is the embodi-
ment of our uncertainty whether to like
or dislike, agree or disagree with Bull
mer and what he stands for; whether
to accept the present wholesale because
it is present, and fer fear of letting life
go by, or to discriminate against some
of it. She decides not to dethrone the
critical faculty. She decides not to
accept Bulmer. 1t is not easy to dis
cover Uhy you disagree, if you do, with
Bulmer's arguments for advertising,
majority rule, the motion pictures. de-
mocracy, woman suffrage, the war, So
cialism, anarchy, or whatever may be,
and so is. presumably, right.
Mr.. George states the arguments 30
| fairly that at times you are in danger Of
| mistaking them for his own. Just as in
the essay on "Tradition," he states the
case against the past with something
! like conviction. But he ends in both
instances as inconclusive as you could
ask. Tradition seems TO think we ought
to disregard, and yet perhaps we ought
not to. The present is thing we ought
to take as we find 1t, and yet perhaps
we ought not to. At any rate. we are
let into the kind Of doubts Mr.. George
is preoecupied with for the moment.
| He describes Bulmer as unassailed by
doubts. One doubt. however. does reach
Bulmer, out of the past or future Oh
somewhere. when Janet Willoughby re-
fuses TO be his second wife. He il
shaken in himself and disillusioaed to
the point Of saying:
"One doesn't hitch on TO anybody
One just messes shout bit In thu
middle Of life, and life sails away"