A Mayor Abroad

Romping through Europe like an urchin through a formal drawing-room, forgetting his manners but unable to lose his impudent charm, James J. Walker, New York Mayor, continued last week to fill U. S. news-sheets with reports of casual misdemeanors, carelessly missed engagements. He went to the Tower of London, found the execution block "a pretty nifty chin rest," offered to provide New York with material for a demonstration but refused to name names. A Belfast newspaper said that he had been late for every engagement in Ireland and suggested as a parody on the Mayor's masterpiece* as a tin-pan-alleyist, "I'll meet you in December if you arrange for May." The Mayor left his train outside Berlin to avoid threatened Sacco-Vanzetti disturbances (TIME, Aug. 29), visited U. S. Ambassador Jacob G. Schurman, with him called on Burgomaster Boess of Berlin. The next night he, a half hour late, whizzed to a banquet given for him by the American Club. Questioned on prohibition, the Mayor said that he was "a human being" and made an after-dinner speech in praise of beer. The streets through which he passed were lined with Berliners who gaped that such a buzzing little macaroni should be the Burgomaster of New York. Gasped one newssheet: ". . . He dresses like an operatic tenor. . . "Gasped another: ". . . He is quick, quick, quick. . . ." When Mayor Walker had listened to some children from Berlin's North End (comparable to New York's East Side) while they sang songs for him, he contemplated organizing a similar chorus in Manhattan. Then he said "Dankeschoen, liebe kinder." ("Thank you, dear children.")

The New York Times appeared with a story to the effect that "a delegation of visiting firemen from America stormed the Hotel Adlon and with imitation fire gongs and shrill whistles awoke the Mayor." No other Manhattan newspapers mentioned this incident. Alert Times readers laid fingers along noses: the night before the alleged firemen's intrusion, Mayor Walker had attended a banquet given by the American Club. The president of the American Club and the toastmaster at the dinner, they knew, was one Lincoln Eyre, able War-time correspondent for the New York World, now correspondent for the New York Times. The story which they were reading bore at its head black letters: By LINCOLN EYRE. Alert Times readers had a mental picture of lanky-fun-loving Lincoln Eyre, accompanied by Berlin barflies in firemen's garb, prancing into the presence of the Sleeping Mayor. On his departure from Berlin, Mayor Walker committed some of his customary witticisms: "Berlin has something that New York lacks --wonderful beer. ... If I were an expert in the science of chemistry, I would say that the difference between New York and Berlin is about the same as that between ether and hops."

Baden-Baden received the Mayor with flags and cheering, despite the immediate outcropping of his ir- repressible tendency to jest--this time a decision that the town "ought to be called Good & Gooder." At the races, dressed in a white hat, blue coat, blue & white trousers, the Mayor met the King of Sweden and won an odds-on (5-1) wager.

* "Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?"