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Show BEAVER PRESS THE WHEAT AND EMERALDS OUR COMIC SECTION New Russia Puts Past Behind Her Halliburton Doubt People Vill Be Forever Satisfied With Wheat; Holds Emeralds as Big a Part of Life as Bread. I1 SNOOPIE I rrup C I Him V s in i i i These photographs by Richard Halliburton illustrate the metamorphosis which has overcome St. Petersburg since the formation of the communist government: 1. Soviet workers make themselves at home in the parks and palaces which once belonged exclusively to royalty. 2. Symbolic of the old Russia they know nothing about are the statues around which these young Soviets gather. 3. A group of Russian students. By RICHARD HALLIBURTON Author of "The Royal Road to Romance," Etc. most important story THEthe world today and the most interesting is Russia. This is not a phrase from the Soviet propaganda book, nor the outburst of a parlor pink. It is my own opinion, and no one could be more thoroughly American, nor more of a champion of the right to live and pursue happiness in one's own manner (contrary to the Soviet system) than myself. i Riding Into Leningrad from the airport, I passed along streets turned upside down with pavement construction, and walled with scaffolding behind which new factories and apartments were rising ten stories high. My motor car had to plow through dense throngs of busy, hurrying pedestrians, for in the fury of the new enthusiasm, work goes on 24 hours a day. The 'noise of the traffic, the concrete the steel mixers, the steam-rollerriveters, was deafening and sweetl It took me a full day to dig down under all this mass of steel, trucks, and swarming workers who are building Leningrad, to find what I really had come to see St. Peterss, burg. Aristocracy Built Culture. The capital of old Russia was one of the noblest, most beautiful cities on earth. It had spaciousness, dignity, leisure, wealth, power. Peter the Great, who built it on marsh Islands at the head of the Gulf of Finland, had no less vigor and n imagination than the worker's of today. With a wave of his hand he swept aside all obstacles to create public squares of enormous area, and surround them with public buildings that are the largest and most lavish in Europe. The richest class of people in the world during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the Russian nobility, flocked to St. Petersburg. Each noble tried to outdo his neighbor in the construction of palaces and in his show of splendor. In this competition the czars kept well in front, spending money and gathering treasures to an extent incomprehensible to us today. The resulting magnificence, built on the anguish and enslavement of the masses, shune with a blinding light. The Russian aristocracy developed taste, culture, sophistication. They became distinguished throughout all oilier countries f ,r their renal manners, their extravagance, their incomparably beautiful women and lordly men. The greatest collection of pictures outside the Louvre found their way to the Hermitage gallery, the music of Tschai-kovskand Rimsky-Korsako- f (despite his radical tendencies) flowed from every orchestra. The art of ballet-dancinbecame a Russian monopoly. St. Isaac's cathedral, an architectural wonder of the first magnitude, rose from the marshlands. Summer palaces were built to rival Versailles in splendor. Emeralds big as hen eggs glittered from the crowns of Russian queens. In the art and the grace of fine living, St. Petersburg, right up to 1914, led the great capitals of the coun-cilme- at Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine, because, like the czars, she had starved them in order to create immortal grandeur. On my first night In Leningrad I went to the Marinsky theater to see a ballet, "The Hunchbacked Horse." I felt a real surge of excitement. This theater was almost holy Here the most exalted of ground. the old regime gathered to hear glorious Russian music and watch incomparable Russian dancing. To attend the Marinsky, the nobility donned their richest jewels, their whitest gloves, their most lavish gowns and uniforms. Here the czar and czarina with their son and daughters came frequently, to sit in the Imperial box. A more glittering, royal gathering has not been seen elsewhere. No theater have I ever seen as beautiful as the Marinsky. The walls are covered with yellow damask, and each seat in the orchestra is an individual arm chair upholstered with the same rich silk. At the back is the Imperial box, and on the sides the smaller boxes of the grand dukes. The decoration has faded very little since they sat there. Into this regal auditorium the new masses were pouring. Some had on no coats, some had shirts but no neckties, only half the men had shaved that day. Not one woman wore anything but the plainest, dress. Not a cheapest, sack-likjewel, not a flower, not a graceful attitude, not a beautiful person. A sailor and his girl sat on one side of me. Two slovenly students in colorless wool blouses sat behind; next them, two women with gold teeth who were probably street-ca- r conductors or brick layers. From the Imperial box leaned six laborers, probably from the shoe factory, eating pastry. The musicians in the orchestra wore wool shirts and no neckties. No class consciousness anywhere and indeed why should there be! Everybody present was a peasant farmer or a factory worker or a soldier or a sailor. There is no other class left in Russia. All others have been exiled or exterminated. The ballet, I am happy to report, was superlatively good. Here is one czarist art the proletarians have not let die. Magnificent costumes and color and light and skill (lashed from the stage for four hours. The audience ate apples all during the performance. Otherwise they were well behaved. Satisfied With Barest Necessities. The violent transformation of Leningrad from imperial to proletarian is evident on every side. The ducal and palaces, e run-dow- are now Yusupov woe-begon- workers' apartments. The palace where Pnnce Felix murdered Rasputin is a "house of culture and rest" for teachers. The great suburban estates have been turned into pleasure grounds where the workers go to escape the desperately crowded quarters in which they live. The old Nevsky Prospect, now called the Prospect of October 23, once one of the smartest and richest streets in the world, is now one of the dingiest. True, three times as many people parade it as before, but they are dressed in sacks Instead of furs, and have copecks to spend Instead of gold roubles. The shops that once oiTered only the best and the most beautiful are now poverty stricken, half empty and displaying only the cheapest and most unattractive goods. No earth. individual is allowed. Splendor Recalls Czars. Every place is state owned and All this Is gone, utterly, irretrievstate supplied. Taste and quality are incredibly bad. There are book ably, vanished. Leningrad hates, defames, jeers at what she used to stores, but only revolutionary hisbe. Just as the revengeful and tories and treatises can be bought bloody-fistepeasant women jeered There are cinema houses but only y g shop-keepin- films can political, be shown. It seems to me that the Soviets discourage their people from having anything more than the barest necessities. Clothes, flowers, motor cars, simple romantic entertainment, are considered dangerously in the hands of private Individuals. There !s very little money among the workers to buy these things with, and any accumulation of money is a capital crime. And if the Russians did have the money there Is almost nothing on which to spend it. In one fur shop I bought a sheep-skiCossack hat. It cost 100 Soviet roubles. The average monthly pay for a worker is 150 roubles. My good German camera was stolen out of my hotel, and I tried to buy another one. There was not a single camera (except a few Russian imitations) to be bought in all Leningrad. On an island in the Neva river stands the Fortress of Peter and Paul, built by Peter the Great to protect his newly founded capitaL This place is held in particular disfavor by the Soviets, for to its prison were sentenced the political enemies (now heroes) of the former government All they did was to throw a bomb under the czar's carriage and blow a few of the royal family to bits, which, as we know now, was a pious and glorious act of rebellion against the capitalistic Soviet-glorifyin- counter-revolutionar- g 4pan I I Y IT'S (SETfiMff SO NICE OUTS.DE I TL I tie WARM AMD ALL -- POMT Vol) so JpoW i WWK P TelH LT0TODHA?i y W EVEM IF I SAlDl NO VJE'D STILL -- LUM CH A b&m VJEL- L- THiMK 1 "lypJH, Woh-O- OKA-Y- d SSI place is I AS cioOD AS nu 7 ' IS Asja ' !. PT i own JJ- -j Uets n l after R i H- J tLs. --v f 7 RBALLV vou THiK This is A but-i- o A MOW -- FlPTV cam-- Good Picmic 2 ( Good 2 v I" TV S it's perfect SECTS MILLlOM I IM ci dt ted t be wkoh&JI ftroiov ... fit. J iov Fthc system. As a prison, however, the place is unspeakable, and the agonies endured there in the name of political faith helped drive the liberal-minde- d people of the country into blood-thirstrevolt. Tombs of the "Tyrants." Another reason the Soviets dislike the fortress is that its church shelters the tombs of all the czars from the time of Peter the Great to Alexander, the father of the last Romanoff. Large groups of workers are led through this church now ugly and unkept, and stripped of all the splendor it once knew and shown the tombs of their mortal enemies, the czars. The accompanying lecture, in brief, is this: "Here lie the devilish tyrants who fought against the demands of the workers. Let us be thankful that the Romanoffs are dead and all the corrupt Russian capitalists with them." On another day I visited two of the most celebrated summer palaces Peterhoff and Detskyoye Selo, The former is famous for its fountains which when they play create a scene of extravagant loveliness and luxury. Here the czars and their courts danced and wore their emerald crowns. In Detskyoe Selived in imperial lo, Catherine splendor, amid her 50 drawing-roomher rooms walled with amber, with silver, with priceless murals. Here she received in her gold and crystal ballroom, dined with a hundred dukes in her banquet hall of jade and lapis-lazulThese two monuments to czarist glory are now museums used to teach the modern proletariat how criminal and shocking were the days and ways of the Romanoffs. This all seems to me to be as lopsided a system as was the previous one. Formerly a few people had too much cake and too many emeralds, while the masses starved for wheat. Now the masses all have wheat and no emeralds. But man cannot live by bread alone. The supply of emeralds is Just as vital as the supply of wheat if lifa is to be worth living the purely decorative and esthetic Is as necessary as the useful and practical. In Leningrad, alas, the emeralds heve all been trampled underfoot Only the wheat remains. e B1I Syndicate. WNU Servlc. ten at - y Fl I Pi 'iVllfrW IM ;llWdAiV SI V H nJ fa, wmut's HEV - vvj.t- THAT SHTUFP GlT IT ofti This? IMSOIDE" V Iraty-- rCT 1 THE F' r r.pt t t-e- I SO-T- ' V LANDLORD M' PUT WEZ OUT, EH? v. V I -- " V OWe SOME II 'IM THE: RET RENT THERF te T ?AE1!k S j EAH. I X5i 1 i MOMlHy s, V,7VJ By Ted yiSll -- WNrr I OVER THE RAIL I- "-" "Jiv'C Lli,r-.T- X 9 "1 rt, w ix "vl?ic ;'i5E5V !l - -- A l?-r- Results Count "Ueahlly," remarked the lad, "you Americans have tact with the aristocracy. 1 have often, for instance, the Earl of Gooseberry's 7iL3 - MORE SPEED, BRO181" no con- Now I shot at country SZJl "Who do you think will win the high jump at the track meet?" "Jim Grasshopper there he Is now look at that practice Jump." City Boarder I suppose you hatch all these chickens yourself? Farmer No. We keep hens for that purpose. j., . V jCV V$M iT r SV, -- A c'J TO. vv friA 1 fj' f 'rd L la. hor I,1 - They're Experts :,00C English scati" "Izzat so?" queried the American boy"D'dj'', cver hit it?" H hi SA i. "If vou want to fight, work has got to be JuS' mH it has to be fight if you don't want to fast-"Vc- |