Foreign News: Glorifying Paris

People who dislike public advertisements can avoid reading or even seeing them in U. S. cities by walking about with their eyes cast pensively upon the ground.

But in Paris last week the Municipal Council took vigorous steps to stamp out such old fogyism, to force everyone who is not blind to see advertisements.

Plainly the pavements of Paris are hers to rent. In substance the Council announced that they can now be rented by anyone who will install certain approved types of lettering made with myriads of facets to reflect the sun by day, equipped with concealed lamps to blaze up from the pavements at night. Ordinary painted signs will not do. For they do not support the shrewd Council's alibi.

The alibi: Paris, famed as "the City of Light," will not be debased and commercialized by the new scheme but made brighter, more glorious.