More War Pictures

Potshots at the President-elect, a bank holiday, a many-decked New Deal, a World Fair, Mae West, the midget on Mr. Morgan's lap, Repeal, Rolphing-- last year they all laid headlines across the country, inked rotogravures, filled newsreels drumtight and gave Vanity Fair's (then) Cinemacritic Pare Lorentz an idea. With an eye on Laurence Stallings' photostory, The First World War (whose pictures have boomed in more than 50 newspapers--TIME, Feb. 26), Cinemacritic Lorentz edited the pictures of the first New Deal year, pictures of the war on Depression. Last week he published the result with captions and running comment.*

Editor Lorentz gives major space to New Deal economic experiments, labor troubles, Russian recognition; prints President Roosevelt's picture 18 times. The book borrows frequently and happily from the omnipresent newsreels, more frequently but less happily from plate photographers. Rivers and dams, airviewed and minuscule, announce the Tennessee Valley Administration; nine scenes in Russia herald its recognition. Good shots: Assassin Zangara looking pleased with the headlines; a laughing lynch-crowd in California; empty freight-cars in a yard. Grisly shot: the naked, charred body of Negro Warner, lynched & burned near St. Joseph, Mo.

Editor Lorentz paces his captions to the measure of war, does a thorough piece of reporting in his running commentary on last year's history. Not comparable to Stallings' book in power, Lorentz's picture-book suffers from a weakness inherent in last year's biggest story: economic theories cannot be photographed.

From China last week came the photographic story of another war, /-the Sino-Japanese quarrel over what is now Manchukuo. Compiled by Dr. Joseph Yu. head of Shanghai's Nantao Clinic, it presents 87 pages of war pictures which Dr. Yu took with a Brownie, seven pages of advertisements (venereal cures, toothpastes, virility drugs, sun lamps). Because doctors work behind the lines, there are no pictures of actual combat, many of the wounded. Sample caption, in English & Chinese: "The Wounded Receiving Eatables."

*THE ROOSEVELT YEAR--Funk & Wagnalls ($2.75). /-MEMORIES OF KUPEIKOW by Joseph Yu, M. I).--Liang Yon Printing & Publishing Co., Ltd., Shanghai ($1 gold).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.