The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-04-08
BY WALTER d. HICKMAN


BY WALTER ID. HICKMAN
TN The Phantom President" by
\ George Worts, the country need
ed a President so big to pull the
nation out of the most terrible de-
preston it ever experienced.
Theodore K. Blair, the richest
industrial leader in the country, was
the real man to do it, but he lacked
mob personality and everything
that seems to make candidate
popular.
He was great thinking machine
and could save the nation, but he
lacked front" That the big
Four" the powerful group which
controlled the destiny of Blair's
party knew that. So they dug up
his double, Peter Varney, a rogue,
a criminal and a bad egg but a
man who had mob personality.
And for chapter after chapter, we
see Varney, the rogue copying the
mannerisms of Blair until he was
able to go on the presidential cam
paign train, meet millions and talk
to as many, while Blair, the brains
who wrote all the speeches that met
all attacks of the opposition and
Silenced all attacks.
The scheme might have worked,
although the shadow" caused Blair
to be elected to the highest office,
if Varney had not fallen in love
with BlairS future wife, and had
not come under the spell of bill
lions and power.
But Varney walked into a death
trap while impersonating the Pres
ident. He was fatally shot while
going to public function.
This tragedy forced Blair into
continual living oblivion as THE
President" was dead.
A startling theme but told in the
best manner of modern story tell
ing.
One thing that 1 liked about
The Phantom President was the
satire that the author injects into
his political discussions.
He claims that the country would
not vote for a great intellectual and
industrial leader who was nothing
but thinking machine" but that
'the country would elect, not a
thinking machine, but warm and
pleasing personality; a President it
could call Bill, Jim or Hank; who
shook hands, loved small children,
gave apples to horses, and pointed
with pride to the tenement or
humble farmhouse where he had
been born. On its Sickhed, the
country called, not for a doctor, but
a court jester"
Here is absorbing fiction and a
new masquerading pattern as writ
ten by Worts and published by the
Jonathan Cape 81 Robert Ballou,
Inc, New York, for 50 a copy.
You recall that said in this de-
partment that The Deputy at Snow
Mountain" by Edison Marshall
(Kinsey) deserved to be a best
seller because it was corking good
reading matter, The A. C. Mcclure
81 Co. now reports that it is one
of the best six sellers in fiction
throughout the country.
All business depressions are
fundamentally caused by mans in
ability to control gold as a basis of
value Sir Josiah Stamp, economic
adviser to the British government;
director of the Bank of England
and chairman of the London, Mid
land and Scottish Railways, declares
in the corrected proof of his forth
coming book, 1.-THE Financial After
math of the War which he has
just delivered to his American pub
fishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. 1t
will be published in the latter part
of April.
Margaret Aver Barnes, author of
Years of Grace and Westward
Passage" does not agree with Vir-
GINA Woolf that a novelist is nee
essarily choked by the family
sitting ROOM" but says that she
finds her greatest stimulus in an
atmosphere of pleasant domestic
confusion" She admits, however,
that sometimes she resorts to a
distant room on the third floor.
The trouble with some of lis is
that We don't have a third floor,
says I.
Frances M. Frost, young Vermont
poet and author of book of poems,
Blue Harvest" will follow that
soon with another collection under
the title of ''These Acres" Hough-
ton Mifflin will be the publishers.
The May choice of the Book
League of America will be Maids
and Mistresses," by Beatrice Kean
Seymour. The trade edition will be
published by Alfred A. Knopf on
May @
Bobbs-M Merrill of Indianapolis
seems to have another winner in
Julia Peterkin's Bright Skin" 1t
has been selected as the April choice
of The Book League of America.
And that puts it at once in the best
selling class.
Paul Green, who is best known as
a playwright, will soon have his first
novel. The Laughing Pioneer" pub
lished by Robert M. Mcbride & Co.
Green at present is in Hollywood
writing q screen play for Richard