U.S.S.R.'s

" SHAKESPEAREAN SCIENTIFICCREATIVE CONFERENCE " Prom Our Russian Correspondent.
A special " Shakespearean ScientificCreative Conference " has been convened in Moscow to commemorate the 375th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.
In connection with this jubilee, " workers of the periphery theatres " spoke of the tremendous enthusiasm with which actors study their parts in Shakespeare's plays.
According to articles in Isvestia, Shakespeare is the favourite playwright all over Russia, his plays being enacted not only in the cities, but even by Red Army amateurs.
A certain Morozov (Isvestia, April 23) discusses this Shakespearean vogue :
" Never has he (Shakespeare) been as great as he is now in the Soviet Union. . . . The Soviet theatre is the latest and paramount commentator of Shakespeare.' "
Othello is the favourite play in Shakespeare's "new motherland," probably because the hero belongs to one of the " oppressed races." Shakespeare's thought rose far above individualism to the collective man : only a society creating the new social man is able to understand the tragedy of the great humanist. " And especially Shakespeare is dear to us because of his realism and materialism."
" MR I. SELLSMUT " Catholic University Joins U.S.A. CleanReading Crusade
Students of the Jesuit-controlled University of Notre Dame, Indiana, have contributed to the campaign of the National Organisation for Decent Literature by issuing a pamphlet entitled " No Smut!"
Containing several illustrations, the pamphlet presents facts concerning the widespread distribution of offensive literature, and says: " Four hundred magazines which violate the very sensible code set up by the Committee of Bishops are now being published in the United States. Fifteen million copies of this erotic filth leave the presses every month. Therefore, presumably, 60,000,000 persons-among them perhaps your brothers and sisters-read these magazines.
" Three-fourths of these lewd magazines have been launched since 1930. Money-hungry, unscrupulous Mr I. Selismut has capitalised on the leisure of unemployed youth by pumping poison into their veins, making sewers of their minds. The United States leads all other countries in the publication of smutty magazines. More than 100 of those printed here are banned in Canada and Australia."