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The Channel Road. Critics customarily agree that Guy de Maupassant's Boule de Suif (The Ball of Fat) is one of the very great short stories. The ironic tools of the author were never more sharply employed than in this tale of several wealthy French refugees during the German invasion of 1870 who were detained at an inn by a German lieutenant because he had been scorned by a patriotic French prostitute in the party. The aristocrats wheedled and mentally coerced the girl until she surrendered to the officer. Then, as the group was permitted to move onward, she found herself figuratively spat upon by the people for whose sake she had sacrificed her honor, if not her purity. This cruel anecdote has now been adapted for the stage by Drama Critic Alexander Woollcott and Critic-Playwright George S. Kaufman (whose June Moon, written with Ring W. Lardner, was last fortnight's laughing hit, TIME, Oct. 21). As might have been expected, the force of the original is considerably dissipated. The rewriters have indulged in too much "fine writing" at the expense of de Maupassant's bleak power. They have devised a moralistic ending in which the German lieutenant forbids the haughty gentry to continue their journey, but gives safe conduct to the prostitute. Messrs. Woollcott and Kaufman have, however, happily restrained their tendency to wise crack, although at one point the prostitute, asked if she is going to church to atone for her sins, is made to say: "I'd need a cathedral." What remains is a picturesque, dilute version of de Mau passant which at times vibrates with two splendid performances — yellow-haired Anne Forrest as the harsh-voiced harlot; Siegfried Rumann. a seasoned German, as the lieutenant of will, wit and philosophy. The Bonds of Interest. Why Walter Hampden thought he could vitalize this fantasy by famed Spanish Dramatist Jacinto Benavente, which was several years ago a Theatre Guild fiasco, seems likely to remain one of the season's mysteries. Its Hispanic tempo is that of a noonday doze in the patio. Mr. Hampden plays the part of a panhandler who cozens an innkeeper out of many a square meal and also secures an heiress for his backward henchman. These vagrancies are first described in tedious speeches elegantly read by Mr. Hampden with his best grand opera gestures, then acted with the velocity of a tortoise. Mr. Hampden and his cast, who bear such frolicsome names as Harlequin, Columbine, Polichinelle and Pantaloon, appear to regard themselves as very droll indeed. It must be said in their behalf, however, that the play, which possibly lost its verve in translation, affords them not a single shining line of dialog, nor one situation which cannot be foreseen, in anesthetic deadliness, a half-hour in advance.