Ordeal by Bombs

Lolling each night before palpitant play-goers at Vienna, a black buck Negro toys with white, honey-haired girls, boasting that no woman of their race has yet resisted him. The scene is the climax of Johnnie, a jazz opera now the hit-show of Vienna. One night last week, race-conscious Austrian students rebuked the decadence of an audience which was applauding Johnnie by tossing from the balcony numerous assorted smoke, stench and sneeze bombs. . . .

Next morning there arrived inopportunely at Vienna famed U. S. negroid danseuse Josephine Baker--in figure like a long string bean, in color a prepossessing tawny chocolate, and in motion either sinuously undulant or mechanistically "jazz mad." Would she, whom smart Paris has huzzahed at the Folies-Bergere and toasted at her own night club, Chez Josephine Baker, be rudely welcomed among Viennese as is the hardy pilgrim who ventures among disapproving skunks? Prudently a strong police escort was accorded Miss Baker between the station and her hotel. Thereafter, although a few students skulked in the vicinity for some hours, La Baker was not subjected, last week, to ordeal by bombs.

She was, however, at least temporarily, restrained from making a stage appearance by the City Council of Vienna which delayed and temporized when besought to issue a license by her manager. Finally, lest the powers of darkness should triumph, a deputation of rival Christian Socialists waited upon their great but dour leader, Monsignor Ignaz Seipel, Chancellor of Austria, and besought him to "prevent the nude, brazen-faced and heathen dances of Fraeulein Josephine Baker from taking place anywhere in Austria." Chancellor Seipel, perhaps reliably informed that Miss Baker always wears some article of adornment when she dances, sternly cut short a Deputy who rose in Parliament to interpolate the Government upon its intentions.