Scopes and Big Bill

THE "American Inquisitors," as its subtitle shows, is a commentary on Dayton and Chicago, and their respective problems of American education, in which religion, on the one hand, and patriotism, false or real, on the other, came into conflict with what in some other places are called the higher aims of education.

Walter Lippmann, always an extremely lucid writer, turns on the Scopes trial and Mayor Bill Thompson's campaign against English propaganda a mind trained to observe and comment. His series of six brief essays turns both cases around and upside down, exhibiting to the reader far more facets than he would ordinarily have considered.

Not alone do the people of Tennessee and Chicago fall under Mr. Lippmann's incisive analysis. We who laugh will on reading "American Inquisitors," laugh less noisily, for the essays are also a commentary on our whole American civilization.