Life — June 23, 1921 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY VOL. 77. No. 2016 London Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs. London, E, C, A Seer many people get . into the pa- per without warrant merely because some- thing happens to them. Some of them like it. Some of them do not. Some of them do not care, There is the Princess Anastasia, so called, of whom it was lately reported by cable by the Associated Press from Paris that she had undergone a slight operation successfully and ex- pected to have another. The cable says she has an_ intestinal from which she suffers, as well as also a young son who tours Europe in an airplane and gets engaged to girls whom the mother had not selected and from whom, we pre- sume, she suffers (possibly) as much as from the intestinal troubles. One has sympathy for her, of course, in all these pains and operations and disappointments, and thinks of her as the Princess Anesthesia, exuding ether and melancholy. But why should this lady's pangs and sorrows be communicated to the public at so much expense? Are her intestinal af- fairs of so much importance? The in- nards of all Europe are disturbed, and be- side Poland and Silesia and Russia and all these troubles, the ?rincess's internal disturbances seem negligible, and as to the son who navigates the empyrean and makes unauthorized engagements—pigeons do the same. Why so much about the son in the papers ? Are he and his mother “ af- fected by a public interest,” that their per- sonal concerns are so much reported? Who is this Princess? One sees her described as the former Mrs. Leeds—not apparently the Mrs. Leeds one reads of in the Stillman case, but the widow of a tinplate merchant in Pittsburgh, who solidified a good deal of money and died leaving it all behind him. His wife went abroad aad invaded polite and_ political disorder 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York life and married, it scems, one of the imported Princes of Greece. All that is an interesting story enough for one telling, but does it really make this Princess Anesthesia a character whose private sufferings must be given to the world by telegraph and cable when her doctors make an effort to relieve her? Me EDWARD BOK, whom we all with admiration as the long-time editor of a know so well and so much successful periodical, having retired from that activity, seems to give himself now entirely to good works and to the en- couragement of them in One hears of him giving away money, and in quite large quantities. In the entire his- tory of the United States, if not of the world, was there ever another case of an editor of a periodical who was able to retire in middle life with more money than he needed to support him? Perhaps the Prohibition Amendment has helped to make Mr, Bok’s living expenses small, but probably not, for other people have not been helped much in that way. It must be that he has an ample supply of funds, At any rate he has established a fund to provide an annual prize of ten thousand dollars as a reward for the greatest ser- vice to Philadelphia. Every year the man who does the best stroke for Philadelphia gets that money if the judges consider that the stroke he has done is good enough. But-he must be a Philadelphian; that is, he must belong to the Philadelphia district, though he need not live within the city limits. What is the best thing one could do for Philadelphia ? This question was put to a resident of that city and he said, others. “ Burn a lot of it!” but that would Le too irregular. A man could not get Mr. Bok’s prize by extended arson, especially now that housing is so scarce and building so high. Most old cities need large fires and most of them get them first or last, but it is not lawful to set them, and no unlaw- ful act could win a prize put up by Edward Bok. An expert in periodicals, be- ing invited to suggest how the New Re- public could be improved, said, “Leave a lot of it out!” which, of course, is the same idea as the Philadelphian had about Philadelphia. Neither idea is quite prac- ticable. Ke AS CITY dispatch says that the Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, Super- intendent of the International Reform Bureau, has announced his purpose to send a letter to Henry Ford to tell him that he must frame legislation that will stop the use of the motor car for immoral “purposes, That seems rather a large order. Dr. Crafts says that motor cars are fostering vice all over the land, which is probably true more or less, though they foster more or less virtue also. But to stop motor fostering vice, Ford especially, is about as hard as to improve Philadelphia, No legislation that one can think of can do it. The great way to im- prove Philadelphia is to improve mankind, including the Philadelphians, and the same remedy would diminish the objection to motor cars as vice carriers, and indeed benefit the whole world. The motor cars are all right. Philadel phia has good points and is not so bad. It is man that is the devil. It is he who cuts up and makes trouble. It is his cars cars comicbooks.com