In Paris

Salvos of cannon thundered across the Place de la Concorde and through the gardens of the Tuileries while President Doumergue, accompanied by the principal members of his ministry, marched to survey the opening of the International Exposition of Decorative and Applied Arts. All the important nations of the world, with the exception of the U. S. and Germany, were .represented. The affair, though it affected a pompousness amounting almost to dignity, greatly resembled the exposition of Architectural and Allied Arts held, last week, in Manhattan (TIME, May 4).

Of the applied arts, plumbing and heating were less stressed than in the U. S. exposition; rug-making, stained glass, lace, goldsmithery were glorified in bannered booths. Special pavilions were consecrated to French wines, French cookery. A lottery bond loan provided the funds for this national advertisement.

In some rooms on the Tuileries whose grave silence was only faintly rippled by the roar of Doumergue's cannon, the Spring Salon opened its doors. Because the Exposition made space hard to get, the Salon was small, the work of a high quality. Soberness of execution, startling in such a land, roused as much alarmed comment as the single extravagance of the Royal Academy's exhibition (see below). For the first time since 1913, the exhibition escaped from the influence of the military; hard horizons, khaki browns diminished; dead men in rutted lanes gave place to somnolent picnickers under willow trees. Sculpture, allowed a surprisingly limited space, also displayed more of the amenities of art, less of the chaste rigidity of tombstone-cutting. Russian exiles and Americans were hung in fair numbers.