Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1940-08-08
WHO'S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTON

By LEMUEL F. PARTON
consolidated Features-WNU Service.)
NEW YORK;. B. Priestly and
L the U. S. A. got along nicely to-
gether until his play, "Time and the
Conways," began to make trouble
Voice of England this plav. Mr..
Takes Jab at Our Priestly went
Radio Commanders metaphysical
and conjured
time into fourth dimentional I'M
reality. Perhaps because they had
long felt the urgency and reality of
a newspaper deadline, the Ameri-
can dramatic critics didn't quite get
it and scored the play as just $3.50
and maybe not even that. Mr..
Priestly said they were rude and
boorish about it and challenged not
only their time sense, but their sense
of propriety and their fitness for
their jobs.
That must have gone deeply
under Mr.. Priestly's skin, since,
as the ''VOice of England at
moment when time, at any rate
seems to be real, he takes
short-wave, short jab at radio
commentators in this country.
He thinks that "people who are
not prepared to fight anything,
anywhere" should mind their
manners and not belittIe others
who can and will fight. While
that may not necessarily make
"Time and the COnways" good
play, it reveals Mr.. Priestly,
and no doubt England, as ready
to meet all corners, and that
seems all to the good. Perhaps
when television comes, we'll be
saying, "Smile when you say
that, pardner."
This reporter, having once talked
with Mr.. Priestly, can testify that
he has nice smile. While his esti-
mate of our present or potential
belligerency may have been some
what tactless, in his novels and
articles he has shown
much more sound discernment of
the American scene than the writ
ings of certain other visiting Brit
ons, who kiss and run and there
after engage in long distance smear
ing. He, at any rate, said his say
while he was here.
Mr.. Priestly, 46 years old, took
honors in literature and history at
Cambridge. went to London from his
native Yorkshire and found the lit
erary ladder just an escalator.
His novel, "The Good Companions"
was his first big success. This read
er thought there was deep insight
in his midnight in the Desert"
written after his stay in Arizona,
with his family. In his routine
short-wave address, he stresses the
common cultural ties of England
and America, without being oily
about it and has seemed to this hear
er an effective special pleader. But
he does seem to look on our critics
as alien parachute-jumpers, or even
something less admirable.
THE professor who pieces out the
= dinosaur from a single bone has
a distinct advantage over interpret
ers of world events. Nobody can
Jap War Minister T Th3s MIN MIN.
Bears a Feather has Just fin
On His Shoulder ished reading
a magazine
article of 1884 about Lieut.. Gen. Eiki
TOTO of Japan, in which it is made
clear that he is typical of the head
strong army caste, sure to destroy
itself, and that quickly.
But here today is General Toto
named war minister in the new army
cabinet which seems bent on de-
stroying anybody or anything rather
than itself. In the short view, at
least, the dinosaurs of totalitarian-
ism are subject to laboratory obser-
vation-but only in the short view,
close to deadline.
Little is known about General
TOTO in this country, but avail
able data indicate that his rise
to power will not be reassuring
to those who look for peaceful,
pleasant solutions of world dis
cord. His betes noir are the
U. S. A. and Russia.
Like Pericles of Greece, he adj
vanced himself by kicking up war
scares. He agrees with the doc
trine of Adolf Hitler, expounded in
"Mein Kampf," that all alliances
are push-overs and that the only
tough and durable nation is the one
that stands alone. He is smart,
hard-boiled, resourceful and con-
temptuous of theories, sentiments,
and negotiations. He is of an un-
reconstructed feudal family, and has
been in the army since his early
youth.
Stubby, bespectacled little Yo-
suke Matsuoka, Japan's new
foreign minister, is cut out of
the same cloth. At the Univer-
sity of Oregon, he was an easy
cOnformist in superficial mat
tiers, picking up sports-page idi-
ON and playing poker cleverly-
never caught bluffing. After he
led Japan'S cOntemptuOus walk