"CAESAR EATS A FIG"

Last Wednesday Mr. Israel Zangwill, British novelist and playwright, set what is believed to be a new record in systematic fault-finding. With such startling rapidity were his points of criticism against the United States rattled off that Mr. Zangwill bids fair to equal famous football teams in being a point-a-minute machine.

There is a refreshing and Manichaean completeness to this condemnation. America represents the highest development of vulgarity, stupidity, and selfishness which has ever yet appeared. New York papers solemnly ask Benny Leonard, lightweight champion of the world, as to his opinion of the merits of the various candidates for judicial positions; America went into the war to make the world safe for democracy and has continued instead to make the world safe for dictatorships; America's immigration policy is cruel and hypocritical: America refuses to help Europe because it sees no immediate money profit in so doing.

It might be pointed out to Mr. Zangwill that his own Britain is just as prone to listen to the opinions of the unqualified as America. It is notoriously true that the British amateur strategists who possessed political importance were able to make themselves felt during the War in military affairs to an extent which greatly hampered the British Army. Nor has Britain come out of the World War without important compensations in the way of new colonial possessions. Still, if Mr. Zangwill really feels this way, it is much better for both his audience and himself that he should get it out of his system. American audiences have too long been fed on polite lies by European visitors and will derive much benen from honest, frank criticism. While Mr. Zangwill, paradoxical as it may seem, will doubtless begin to find good points even in Americans now that he has told them the worst.

But if Mr. Zangwill really feels this way, it will do no harm to his audience to hear stnoera criticism rather than polite nothings. And after all Mr. Zangwill, like Shaw's Caesar, may have been speaking on an empty stomach. A good dinner might change America's whole aspect.