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Show auu iw mnuiii iuiiuim iai i ( i - . itflt ' ; '-: . : mum WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK I I By LEMUEL F. PARTON (Consolidated Features WNU Service. I NEW YORK. J. B. Priestly and the U. S. A. got along nicely together until his play "Time and the Conways," began to make trouble . , - . in 1937. In 'Voice of England thisplayiMr. Tahea Jab at Our Priestly went Radio Comment en metaphysical metaphysi-cal and conjured con-jured time Into fourth dimentional unreality. Perhaps because they had long felt the urgency and reality of a newspaper deadline, the American Ameri-can dramatic critics didn't quite get it and scored the play as just so-so 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 a moment when time, at any rate seems to be real, he takes a 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 belittle others who can and will fight. While that may not necessarily make "Time and the Conways" a good play, it reveals Mr. Priestly, and no doubt England, as ready to meet all comers, and that seems all to the good. This reporter, having once talked with Mr. Priestly, can testify that he has a nice smile. While his estimate esti-mate of our present or potential belligerency may have been somewhat some-what tactless, in his novels and magazine articles he has shown much more sound discernment of the American scene than the writings writ-ings of certain other visiting Britons, Brit-ons, who kiss and run and thereafter there-after engage in long-distance smearing. 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 literary lit-erary ladder just an escalator. His novel, "The Good Companions," was his first big success. This reader 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 hearer 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 Interpreters Interpret-ers of world events. Nobody can . , dispute him. Jap War Minister This writer Bears a Feather has just fin-On fin-On His Shoulder lshed readin a magazine article of 1934 about Lieut. Gen. Eiki Tojo of Japan, in which it is made clear that he is typical of the headstrong head-strong army caste, sure to destroy Itself, and that quickly. But here today is General Tojo named war minister in the new army cabinet which seems bent on destroying de-stroying anybody or anything rather than itself. In the short view, at least, the dinosaurs of totalitarianism totalitarian-ism are subject to laboratory observationbut obser-vationbut only in the short view, close to a deadline. Little Is known about General Tojo in this country, but available avail-able data Indicate that his rise to power will not be reassuring to those who look for peaceful, pleasant solutions of world discord. dis-cord. His betes nolr are the U. S. A. and Russia. Like Pericles of Greece, he advanced ad-vanced himself by kicking up war scares. He agrees with the doctrine 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 contemptuous con-temptuous of theories, sentiments, and negotiations. He is of an unreconstructed un-reconstructed feudal family, and has been in the army since his early youth. Stubby, bespectacled little Yo-suke Yo-suke Matsuoka, Japan's new foreign minister, is cut out of the same cloth. At the University Univer-sity of Oregon, he was an easy conformist in superficial matters, mat-ters, picking up sports-page Idiom Idi-om and playing poker cleverly never caught bluffing. After he led Japan's contemptuous walkout walk-out from the League of Nations in 1933 he made no further gestures ges-tures toward Occidentalism. They call him Japan's Clive of India, signalizing his long Industrial Indus-trial outreach on the mainland. |