END TO A NOVEL VENTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 71, 21 September 1937, Page 8

END TO A NOVEL VENTURE

N America, with its reputation for ingenuity in invention, enterprise in journalism, and a picturesque underworld of gunmen and gangsters, may well feel a little sore that effete old Europe has stolen a march on tlie new world in a unique venture in specialised publicity. Even Hollywood, with the fertile imagination of its keen producers, must own that truth is stranger than fiction, when it looks to what Warsaw has done in the way of something new. "Owing to the extremely specialised character of a journal called 'Our Life Will Come to a Sad End'," reports a cable message from the Polish capital today, "the editor and staff have been arrested." This in itself might mean much, or little-;—for the title of the suppressed organ hardly indicates the special line of information published. The message, however, goes on to describe it as

the first professional journal for thieves and burglars, containing special articles on safe-breaking and smash-and-grab raids, how to burgle without leaving finger-prints, and other trade information. The advertisements included offers of courses of training by skilled practitioners in the trade and implements for sale and hire.

This is highly remjniscent of the days of Bill Sikes and Fagin, with his school for pickpockets, and no doubt they would have been the first to advertise. One could imagine the Dr. Moriarty, of the Sherlock Holmes tales, also taking a warm interest in this technical journal of crime, if somebody had thought of it in his day. It is easy to understand that such a unique example of journalism would find wide circulation in the international underworld, and so it appears, for the cable states that "Our Life, etc.," had a vogue abroad as well as in Poland, and that a subscription list is "leading to many arrests." There should be a lively demand among collectors for extant copies of this unique essay in| "literature."