Mr. Will Hays's decision to ban the Aimed version of Sinclair Lowis's "It can't happen here" on the grounds that it would be Insult to Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler is probably, in all the circumstances, a wise one. In his most striking novel Mr. Lewis has! depicted what might happen in the United States if a nowly elected president, by a coup d'état, seized dictatorial powers and proceeded to turn "the country" Into something parallel to cither Germany or Italy. Indeed he goes further and in a foreword suggests that the story as he has written it depicts what might occur in other countries where there was any attempt to. install such dictatorships, The novel is replete with ineidenis similar to those which fare reported to have taken place in both Moly and Germany, from. the whippings and castor all of Italy to the alleged brutalities of the concentration camps in Germany, and, with the graphic pen which Mr. Lewis has at his disposal, nothing is lost of the horrors which' he secks to portray. His American equivalent of the Blackshirts and the Nazis are the Minute Men whom he makes guilty of all that has been alleged against the first two organizations. 'The novel tone of the strongest pieces of anti Fascist and anti-Nazi propaganda that has yet been devised, and the production of a film which In any way approximated the book would be even deadlier' than the written word. It would always be a matter of contention as to how truly the descriptions given by Mr, Lewis In his work was fiction and represented the facts in the case of Tlaly and Germany, though there Is no doubt that his incidents are based on newspaper reports of oceurences {n both those countries, Tf they are true then the book and the film would be the best possible example of the old adage "The greater the truth, the greater the libel," and there can be very little doubt that if it wore ever displayed in publi either in the United States or other countries the protests which would be Todged would be of the strongest possible nature, 'The book of letters from the front, written by German students who fell In the Great War, published some years ago, Is now to' be followed by anthology of letters from soldiers representing all sections of the panulation for which the War Victims' Welfare Oreantzation Is now gathering material,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.