"GENEROUS AMERICANS"

While young Hugo Stinnes tours this country in plutocratic style searching in every nook and cranny for good investments for his opulent father, there is all the more pathos in the current trip of Oberammergau's peasants to America. These simple folk have always been so absolutely apart from the outside world and its cares that even the most cosmopolitan person cannot but feel that the Passion Play and its actors belong only to Oberammergau, and that if the world wants to see Anton Lang and his fellow-actors it must go to the little German village to do so. But like the remainder of the German poor, the actors of Oberammergau find themselves forced to rely largely upon the "generous Americans."

It comes as somewhat of a shock that even they must chase the almighty dollar in their exhibition of handiwork which opened in New York yesterday, but most people are of the opinion that such a course is preferable to entering the movies--and of course one enterprising cinema promoter has already made such an offer. It is a mistake to believe the motion picture cannot be associated with anything artistic or sacred, but the Passion Play of Oberammergau in the movies? Well--.

While America is rife with feeling pro and con as to Germany's actual financial condition and the support her population deserves there cannot be a person, however much he may dislike Germany, her ways, and her people, who does not hope that the peasants from this broken country will find in New York enough "generous Americans" to assure themselves that the Passion Play will not become a thing of the past.